Mary Fisher wrote:
"Max from Holland" wrote in message
l.nl...

Some mobile phone cameras produce amazing results. We were recently hunting
with hawks in the Highlands and everyone (five of us) took lots of pictures
with good SLRs as well as digitals. The lighting conditions were perfect.
The best results were taken with a phone.

I wouldn't have believed it but they were all sent to me so I have the
evidence.

Mary




That's because phone cameras have tiny lenses, which means a very small
f-stop, which means a very long depth of field (focussing zone.) The SLR
was I imagine set to telephoto ("zoom"), which results in a shallow
depth of field. It also has a larger ;ens, so even at normal settings it
has a shallow depth of field.

But the hawk moves...

So the phone camera will get an "in focus" image of the hawk even as it
moves out of the shallower focussing zone of the SLR camera. So "at
normal viewing resolutions" the picture will look sharp. Try the digital
zoom in your image viewer, and you will see the jaggies sooner in the
cellphone image. Or try full screen, which also shows up differences in
image resolution. Cheap point'n'shoot cameras also have small lenses, etc.

Bottom line: for snapshots and 4x6 prints, point'n'shoot and cellphone
cameras are very good indeed. They're also often good for closeups, if
they can focus close up at all. They're also much lighter. :-)

But if you want images you can print at 8x10 or larger, an SLR will win
hands down.

--


Wolf

"Don't believe everything you think." (Maxine)