Tuesday 22 May 2012

The last days of Point and Shoot Digital Camera.


“The best camera is the one that’s with you, when you are standing close to that special shot, coz you don’t take pictures, you create them”

Before I begin, just ask yourself that in the last 2 years, how many times have you taken your point and shoot digital camera to take pictures as compared to your cell phone. All of you know the answer very well, coz the later is always with you in your pocket.
Nikon Coolpix point and shoot digital camera.

When I first saw the point and shoot digital camera in front of my eyes the first thing that came to my mind was “wow, no need to buy those 36 shot film roles and then preserve the negatives, in case if a reprint is required, now a memory card would take care of all the pictures and what's more, you can view all the pictures you take instantly on the digi cam display”. Point and shoot cameras were nothing short of a revolution in digital photography when they first hit the markets. Everyone went bonkers about them. They were compact, they carried with them enough zoom for day to day stuff, and we no longer had to purchase those clumsy KODAK roles (100, 200, 400). Well, now we have ISO settings in built.


But then, at the time when the digital cameras were making waves, another device was slowly and steadily catching up and had caught everyone’s imagination. Today it would be right to say that we can’t just live without it. Yes, it was the cell-phone. What was considered a luxury became a necessity with time. By the time cell-phone had spread to the masses it was not just a cell-phone anymore, not just a device to make calls or send messages. The cell-phone had evolved in every aspect. It brought with it a whole lot of improvements and features as it evolved. It could now play your favorite tracks, act as a GPS, play high definition games, play high definition movies, tune into favorite radio station, browse the World Wide Web, send emails, record high definition videos and yes, CAPTURE high resolution pictures.

Digital cameras obviously did not stop improving. They now had better sensors, better lens, a host of new features, better memory and most importantly they packed in a lot more megapixels than what they did around 10 years back. Digital cameras were doing good until a guy named Phillipe Kahn took the first cell-phone camera picture of his first child on June11, 1997 and shared it instantly. And rest as they say was history.
First cell phone picture taken by Phillipe Kahn after his daughter's birth.

Digital camera shook hands with the cell phone, which was a defining moment of the last decade. People no longer had to worry about not having a camera with them whenever they wanted to capture that special moment. Memory cards grew in size, higher resolutions were introduced, new features were added and camera phone could now take full high definition videos too.

So would it be fair to say that the cell-phone cameras are now on par with point and shoot digital cameras in almost every department ?? Or may be even better than them in some departments... Let’s have a closer look……

·        Cell-phone manufactures have now started introducing cameras with Xenon flash, which is comparable to point and shoot cameras
Sony Ericsson C905 Cybershot Phone equipped with Xenon Flash, the one found in point and shoot Digi Cams..


·        Cell-phone cameras come loaded with tons of features like Auto Focus, face detection, image stabilization, smile detection, macro mode, panorama mode and so on.
·        Cell-phone cameras these days are loaded with megapixels as compared to first cell-phone cameras which just had a VGA resolution (less than one megapixel !). Nowadays, It is very common to see cell-phone cameras with 5 and 8 megapixels. Recently at the mobile world congress held in Barcelona, Nokia announced a monstrous camera phone, NOKIA 808 pure view, which packed in 41 megapixels, that’s more than any current D-SLR . Icing on the cake was that it also comes with Xenon Flash and Carl Zeiss optics.


Nokia Pure View with 41 Megapixel Sensor, Carl Zeiss Optics and Xenon Flash


·        Cell phone cameras come with image editing software these days – All the basic corrections that you wanted to do with your not so good image to make it look better can be done on your cell-phone itself. Whereas hardly any point and shoot cameras come with this utility. You can also combine all your favorite pictures and make a slideshow to view on your cell-phone with your favorite tracks playing in the background.


 
·       Instant image share/transfer – As we all know once we are done with clicking pictures with our point and shoot cameras, the first thing that comes to our mind is take out that USB cable, turn on your PC, transfer pictures to your PC and mail it to your friends. Pretty tiresome process!! What do you do with your cell-phone if you clicked a picture with it and want to share it with your close ones ?? Just power on your Bluetooth and share the picture instantly. The latest tech for instant file transfer being NFC (Near field communication) technology which supports high transfer speeds. Just tap your phone with another NFC device and that’s all you need. The file gets transferred almost instantly.




·       Cell-phone cameras can do geo-tagging, which means your photos can be tagged on a map with help of a GPS in your cell-phone and can be viewed later to see where exactly the photograph was taken.

A picture Geotagged...


·         Video calling – This is one feature that is non-existent on Point and Shoot cameras.

·       Picture sharing over social networks – One click is all that is required to share a picture taken from your cell-phone cameras over your social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter. There are very few point and shoot cameras capable of sharing pictures instantly over the social networks.


·         Cell phone cameras have bigger and better displays to view pictures.


Cell-phone camera attachments – The digi cam killer..!!

These days a new revolution is taking place. Various attachments for your cell-phone cameras are now available in the market, which makes the cell-phone more value for money product. These attachments ensure that your basic cell-phone camera lens becomes a full-fledged picture clicking monster.

      Lets have a look what these accessories can turn your ordinary lens camera into.

Telephoto lens for Samsung Galaxy S2 with Tripod Stand


Various lens attachments for I phone are available in the market.


Underwater Camera Kit to take pictures while diving.




Telephoto Lens Attachement for I phone



     And finally invading the SLR Territory......
They came, they saw and they conquered....

Cell-phone cameras have certainly invaded into point and shoot camera territory. In the coming years it would be hard for the point and shoot camera manufacturers to convince a cell-phone consumer to buy the point and shoot digi cam. No matter whatever the features might be loaded in the digi cam, the cell-phone will always win this battle in the coming years. Point and shoot camera has to bring something out of the box to reclaim its position in this very important and decisive camera market otherwise it should start counting its last days….

Garry..




7 comments:

  1. Garry great going yaar.. u are too good when it comes to history and research into everything interesting.. love this blog too.. good luck for writing many more of such amazing stories :)

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  2. nice informative blog guria. i certainly cant fit a slr in my pocket wherever i go. your blog now makes me want to buy the s3.

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  3. Good Stuff Garry ! Very Informative.
    Mike.

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  4. This is such awesome stuff Gary !!! The article is very informative, very interesting to read. You have an amazing knowledge base, very thorough research done... well done !!

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  5. Great stuff Garry. Keep up the good work.
    Monty

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  6. Again a very informative post!
    Not many people take the pains of researching like you do, getting to the chore of the subject..
    Good job, bhaiya! :)

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