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 Century Precision Optics Schneider 8 IF WA Zoom Thru Wide Angle Converter $499.99 Time Remaining: 3d 1h 12m |
Can a cameraphone replace a compact camera?
At first, I was going to get a new camera and a new phone for Xmas.
A new camera would cost a few hundred Euro, and a new phone would cost about €200 anyway.
But now I'm contemplating buying the LG Renoir:
http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/kc910.jhtml
I can get it for €399.
It has an 8mp camera, Schneider-Kreuznach optics, and a Xenon flash.
It also have lots of camera gadgety features like face recognition and blink detection.
Although it does not have an Optical zoom, I would never need to use it anyway, and it still has a 16x Digital Zoom - so I could still zoom a little without losing that much noticeable quality as it is 8mp.
Should I buy it?
Oh yeah, it also has Geotagging.
Point ans shoot cameras have very small sensors. Your camera phone on the other hand has a sensor that makes the sensor on a point and shoot look big. Squeezing more megapixels on is not the answer. After a point too many megapixels on a sensor can actually decrease image quality. The rpoblem is the smaller the sensor the smaller the pixels have to be. The smaller the pixels the less light that gets to each one. Less light to each pixel = lower dynamic range, lower color saturation, lower geometric accuracy and higher noise. Didital zoom is not real zoom its just focusing on a smaller portion of the picture and using only that part. Imagine taking a magnifying glass and looking at your TV with it. The individual dots get larger and easier to see and picture quality goes down.
NAB 2010 Schneider Optics