How cell phone cameras ruin real moments

On a recent episode of Leo Laporte’s podcast This Week in Tech, panelist Dwight Silverman spoke briefly about a concert featuring David Byrne and St. Vincent. Prior to the performance, Byrne told the audience that smartphone photography was encouraged, but that they should put down their iPads.
As anyone who has ever seen a 10-inch screen held aloft in a concert can attest, iPads can be a severe distraction, making Byrne prescient as ever. However, I don’t think he goes far enough. As great as ubiquitous camera access is, we might all be better off if we used our camera phones less often. Here’s why – whether you’re at a concert or just out for a walk in the woods.
It distracts others
Getting close to one of our favorite performers can make us want to document that experience. But no one wants an iPad screen blocking their view. Concerts are best enjoyed when there is little inhibiting the interaction between performers and audience. An iPad between you and the performer on stage will be a significant impediment to appreciating a performance. Bravo, David Byrne, for dissuading the inconsiderate from ruining things for the rest of the audience.
I would actually encourage him to go further, and ban all mobile devices. Phones may not be as large a disruption as a tablet, but they are a distraction nonetheless. Plus, where do you draw the line? “Phablets” like the 5.5-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 2 make the distinction so difficult, it would be far better to simply ban them all.
It distracts you
Not only is shooting video at a performance going to distract others, it will distract you as well.

You only have so much attention to go around. If you want to record a quality video, you have to shift too much of your attention to making that recording good. That leaves little attention left to appreciate what’s happening on stage — and that’s not even considering the distraction of tired arms at the seven-minute mark of a nine-minute song.
Shooting video also prevents you from physically engaging with the performance. If you go see The Hives, you will want to dance or jump around far more than you will want to have a camera in your hands. Trust me.
Audio is better
Nobody wants to see that grainy cell-phone video that you shot from the 40th row. Bootlegging communities for bands like Phish and The Grateful Dead indicate that someone may want to hear an audio recording, though. In that case, you will need better microphones than those in your smart phone.



his can add a lot of overhead, and most non-photographers don’t have good workflows to get it done. For example: Why do I have a photo of the last pork tenderloin sandwich I had when last in Indiana? There was no reason to take it in the first place. Now it is a useless piece of digital clutter. Plus, it made my phone greasy when I took it, and now I really want a pork tenderloin sandwich — both big negatives.


It makes us worse people
Yes, your friend’s compound fracture is fascinating in a horrifying sort of way, but I might be better off if I didn’t have opportunities to see things like that online. There would be a lot less fodder for /r/wtf (not to mention even less-savory sub-Reddits) if we didn’t all have decent-quality phones in our pockets. And that’s to say nothing of the feelings of the injured party.
We may be at our very worst as a species when we’re rubber-necking for a longer glance at the suffering of others. Ubiquitous camera access feeds this behavior directly, as we take more time to get photos and personally appreciate them later, and vicariously, as we encourage others to enjoy another’s pain with us. Sites like Reddit make this even worse, as the most gruesome injuries will also be rewarded with viral attention.
If we were more restrained with our camera phones, perhaps there would be a little less celebration of the terrible things around us.
Conclusion
David Byrne would never get away with banning cell phones from his performances. The uproar would be too great. This one has to be on us.
The next time you are at a concert, put down the camera phone. Focus more on the performance and you might just enjoy it more. If you are hiking or camping, leave your phone in your pocket. Don’t miss the point of the whole endeavor. And, for goodness sake, if you happen to be at the scene of an injury, accident, or tragedy, have some decency and don’t snap a shot to share online. We might just all be better off.



Source: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/stop-instagramming-and-get-a-life-how-cell-phone-cameras-ruin-real-moments/#ixzz2AcBsf2LU

Read more ►

Nokia 808 PureView 2012

When the Nokia 808 Preview was announced earlier this year its 41MP camera sensor (for a maximum output resolution of 38MP) made headlines all over the tech industry. Not only does it feature the highest-resolution sensor of any mobile phone camera, but at the time of writing, the 808 PureView features the highest-resolution sensor of any current camera outside of highly specialist (and very costly) medium format equipment.

We've been eager to gets our hands on an 808 since the phone was announced, and a loan sample finally arrived in our Seattle office recently. We've been using it ever since. Please note though that this article doesn't touch on the 808 PureView's performance as a phone. That's not what interests us. We want to see what it's like as a camera...

Key Photographic/Video Specifications

    38MP maximum resolution (in 4:3 aspect ratio - output size: 7728 x 5368 pixels)

    1/1.2" CMOS sensor, pixel size: 1.4um

    ISO 80-1600 (+ auto)

    Five white balance presets (including auto)

    Exposure compensation +/-4EV in 0.3EV steps

    Carl Zeiss F2.4 8.02mm lens (26mm, 16:9 | 28mm, 4:3 equiv)

    Focus range: 15cm – Infinity (throughout the zoom range)

    Construction:

    • 5 elements, 1 group. All lens surfaces are aspherical

    • One high-index, low-dispersion glass mould lens

    • Mechanical shutter with neutral density filter

    1080p HD video (up to 25Mb/s) with 4X 'lossless zoom'

    Stereo recording with Nokia Rich Recording - rated up to 140db

Features

The Nokia 808 PureView's large CMOS sensor has 41MP total, outputting a maximum of 38MP (resolution drops to 36MP in 16:9 aspect ratio). Such a high resolution sensor would be little more than a stunt if the camera specifications aren't up to scratch, but Nokia has designed the 808 to be a serious photographic tool. As well as some pretty impressive hardware, Nokia has also included a raft of enthusiast-friendly photographic features in the 808 including manual control over white balance, ISO and exposure (via exposure compensation and bracketing). Exposure compensation is as good as it gets though, in terms of manual exposure control - the 808 does not offer PASM modes (not unsurprisingly).

While it might sound counterintuitive to shoot a 38MP camera at 3MP, it actually makes a lot of sense in a device of this type. Apart from anything else, if you are one of those people whose first reaction to this product was to scream 'you don't need 41MP in a camera phone! The world has gone mad! The sky is falling in!' in a sense you were right - most people simply don't need to capture such high-resolution images on a phone.

But what you probably do want from a cellphone camera is good image quality, decent speed and responsiveness, and wouldn't it be nice to have a zoom, too? That's what the 808's lower-resolution PureView modes are designed to allow.

PureView (3/5/8MP)

Putting optical zooms into cellphone cameras is hard. Really really hard, which is why manufacturers tend to include digital zooms instead. Effectively just cropping and upsizing, conventional digital zoom kills image quality. Normally, the instinct of any serious digital photographer would be to run away from 'digital zoom' features for precisely this reason. But the 808 is very far from conventional.

In Nokia's words, 'pixel oversampling combines many pixels to create a single (super) pixel'. In theory then, at 28mm (equivalent) - i.e., without any 'zoom', the camera's 3MP PureView output should give the best critical image quality, followed by 5MP, then 8MP, and then 38MP. When fully zoomed in, all four output modes will give the same pixel-level image quality, since at this point there is no oversampling going on  -as incated by '1:1' in the graph above.

PureView 'Zoom'

How much you can 'zoom' using the 808 depends on what output resolution mode you're in. If you're shooting at full resolution you can't zoom at all - you're stuck with the lens' native 28mm (equivalent) focal length. In 3MP PureView mode you get the equivalent of a 3.6X 'zoom' - this drops to roughly 3X in 5MP mode, and about 2X in 8MP mode. The table below shows four images, taken at the 'longest' extent of the 'zoom' in each of the 808's output resolution modes.

source:http://www.dpreview.com/

Read more ►