— Moritz Krüsselmann

How iPhone 4 can be the best camera in the world.

"The best camera is the one that's with you"

This classic from the photo-quotebox made me always avoid a DSLR and prooved to be completely true during the last four weeks of my Interrail trip through Europe. First – I’m not the “artistic” kind of photographer. For me photography is about capturing moments, sharing them with others and maybe swelling backin memories later on. That’s it.
However, to capture the real sense of a moment the camera needs a certain degree of sophistication. Basically light and colors should be about right and the photo shouldn’t be all too blurry. Until now this required me too carry around an “extra camera”, in my case the little Leica D-Lux 3. The 2 megapixels and lens of my iPhone 3G were just too bad when it came to low light, objects closer than 0.5 meters or wanting to print something for grandma. Consequently with the iPhone 4 I was keen to see weather Apple could finally provide me with the everywhere and everytime camera I was looking for?
For anyone in the same situation- Here’s a little roundup of how I got along with the camera under various conditions, what I liked and disliked and if this is finally excuse enough to upgrade your iPhones and contracts.

-Speed: Best new thing for me. Faster shutter speed combined with a drastic improvement in “launch-speed” really lower the barrier to reach in your pocket and grab that moment! Sadly there is no option to make the sleep or volume buttons work as a hardware shutter trigger. For the real “click” camera feeling, I just need buttons, sorry.

-Low light: Steves story about catching more photons really seems to makes sense here. Even with very little light the camera returns pretty decent results. Yes, ISOs go up to 1000 and the photos can get a bit grainy, but it is still enough to capture the situation and that what it all comes down to for me.

-Flash: For “no light-situations” like the obvious girls club portait you now have a fancy new LED-Flash. Although I usually prefer to go “flashless”. (flash makes people ugly and colors weird, I think) it works as promised, adding that the light doesn’t reach much further than about 1.5 meters from your object of choice and the led’s light is a bit cold for my liking (the LED makes for an awesome flashlight though!)

-Video: For low-light videos you can turn the Flash constant-on. Focus can be a bit slow and when you manually focus your finger’s impact on the screen is recorded live. STILL: Quality is mindblowing if you think that you’re holding mobilephone in your hand. Some moments just need moves and sound to be properly recorded!

-Sharing & Editing: Not much needs to be said about hundreds of apps to share, edit & cause instant real time jealousy amongst friends.( I use: Flickr, BestCamera, QuadCamera, Edwin & Photoshop Express/ What are your favorites?)

All in all iPhone 4 has just about everything I need to properly preserve the fluctuative highlights of life for the digital afterworld. Massive improvement if your coming from a 3G. Poor Leica will soon put on a solid coat of dust. What photo gear are you lifting around? How is the improvement coming from a 3GS?