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A camera-phone that really works!

May 29, 2006

   I have a new toy – correction, a new camera-phone that's a legitimate business expense on two counts: It works fine as a mobile phone, which is a necessity of life these days for business or pleasure; and secondly and most importantly to me, it actually works very well as a digital camera.

    So it's far more than a toy; it's a tool. It's my new Sony Ericcson K750i mobile phone-digital camera. It's a ton of fun to use and it works far better than I expected as a camera, unlike my first ill-fated adventure a year ago in the camera-phone era. The less said the better about my former Verizon Motorola V710 phone-camera, which came to a bitter end in a class-action lawsuit over the disabled features on the phone. Anyone want to buy a 256 meg trans-flash card? (My new K750i uses a Sony Pro Duo card.)

    The V710 has a 1.2 meg digital camera, which is marginal in quality to start with. But I never was successful in getting an image from it into my computer due to its disabled memory card and its disabled phone-to-computer software and cable. The photos I took with it looked crummy on the phone's tiny screen, so I feel confident to predict they would have looked even crummier on my computer.

    But such is not the case with my K750i. My initial photos with it have far exceeded my expectations, being not only high enough quality for web graphics, my primary intent for its use, but to my surprise, even yielding sufficient quality for 8x10 prints! I printed a handful and everyone who saw them said the same thing, “You took this with your phone?!”

    The K750i is the first 2 meg camera-phone available in the U.S., along with two Nokia models, N70 and N90. Both of those cost more, but after reading reviews, I chose the K750i for its superior camera quality. I had two choices to get one. Find a local carrier that offers one – none available in my area of Rockingham, NC – or buy an unlocked phone on the 'Net and then find a local carrier that supports GSM, the predominant mobile-phone wavelength in Europe and Asia, but not in the U.S. I bought mine unlocked and then went looking for a local carrier that supports GSM phones. Cingular was the only GSM choice for my area and network quality here is as good as Verizon if not better. Plus, the advantage of an unlocked phone is I can remove the Cingular SIM card from my K750i whenever I'm ready to move up to the next generation of 3 meg camera-phones, put it in a new phone and it will work without a blip.

    The K750i has a fixed-aperture f/2.8 lens, fixed-focal-length 4.8mm (I'm guessing about the equivalent of 35mm wide-angle compared to 35mm film cameras). It has a 4X digital zoom, but that's useless, just spreading out the pixels. Auto-focus works well. It uses shutter speeds as the variable to control exposure, ranging to slower than you can handhold to at least as fast as 1/3200-second, which is the fastest speed it has summoned up for some of my bright sunlit pool photos. It does a fine job of stopping action in bright light. I won't be retiring my digital camera, but having the K750i with me at all times means I will no longer miss a photo because I don't have my camera with me.

    The thumbnails here are linked to photos I shot in and around my house and pool. The original images are uploaded onto my site here as unprocessed 1224X1632 pixels, exactly as they came from the K750i. Judge for yourself. All photos shown are shot at ISO 100, f/2.8, 4.8mm. Shutter speeds are specified for each photo. None were shot with the photo light, night mode or macro, three features I haven't used yet. As you can see, it does a fine job of closeups without using the macro mode to get even closer.

Sony Ericsson K750i unprocessed photos by John Myers
Josey the outlaw cat watching squirrel-bird TV, room light, 1/60th second.	Josey on her perch across the room in room light, 1/30th second, too slow for my poor hand-holding steadiness.	Front porch flowers in a pot, open shade, 1/100th second.	Front porch flowers in a can, open shade, 1/160th second.
Front porch flowers in a box, open shade, 1/400th second.	Front porch flowers in a box, open shade, 1/320th second.	Flowers in a pot by the pool, direct sun, 1/1250th second.	Flowers in a pot by the pool, direct sun, 1/1250th second.
Pokey the turtle spitting into the pool from a flower pot, direct sun, 1/1250th second.	Harry the pool dog in his raft with his favorite tennis ball, direct sun, 1/640th second.	Harry the pool dog in his raft misses catch of his tennis ball and water flies, direct sun, 1/800th second.	Harry the dog and Lucy the cat watch squirrel TV out the window, room light, 1/50th second.
Harry the dog and Lucy the cat watch a squirrel raid the birdfeeder, room light, 1/50th second.	Josey the outlaw cat watches a squirrel raid the birdfeeder, room light, 1/60th second.	Pool still life: raft and three of Harry the pool dog's tennis balls float in formation, direct sun, 1/3200th second.	Pokey the turtle spitting into the pool from a flower pot, direct sun, 1/800th second.
My lovely daughter Layla and her handsome son Nicholas, my grandson, reading beside the pool, open shade into sun, 1/640th second.	Pokey the turtle spitting happily into the pool, overcast lighting, 1/200th second.	More flowers by the pool, yawn, overcast lighting, 1/160th second.	Day lilies by the pool, overcast lighting, 1/250th second.
Still more flowers by the pool, double yawn, overcast lighting, 1/250th second.	Still more flowers by the pool, triple yawn, overcast lighting, 1/160th second.	Red day lily? I'm no flower expert, but yet another pretty flower by the pool, overcast lighting, 1/80th second.	Enough already, the last flowers by the pool shot, overcast light, 1/80th second.