How the Worst Camera on the Market Became the Most Popular Camera on the Web
Posted on Oct 26, 2009 by Charlie Maffitt
NOTE: This post was originally posted on my work blog at Plexus.
This August, Mark Milian of the LA Times reported that Apple’s iPhone had surpassed the Canon Rebel XTi as the most popular camera on Flickr. Let’s distill that down to its essence — the most popular camera on the world’s most popular photo-sharing website isn’t a camera, but a phone with a camera in it.
If you have an iPhone, or have seen pictures taken by one, you know that the camera which comes bundled inside Apple’s ubiquitous pocket-computer isn’t the best in the world. In fact, it’s barely passable as a camera. The pictures it takes remind me of the first commercially available digital cameras that came out in the late 1990’s – terrible resolution, washed out colors, poor focus and virtually no depth of field. Forget about action shots or night photos. Those cameras were basically toys which cashed in on the novelty of a film-less camera. Then, as the technology improved and became more affordable, digital cameras became more acceptable in terms of photo quality, and now there are DSLRs available for under $500 which can take pictures of a professional quality.
The Canon Rebel XTi, while still a bit above that $500 mark, is one of the current breed of DSLRs that shoot incredible pictures. A search of XTi-taken photos on Flickr quickly reveals a array of stunning images. Canon and Nikon also both make point and shoot cameras which are remarkably capable of taking high-quality shots in the right hands.
The iPhone, on the other hand, takes blurry, washed-out photos that no self-respecting photographer would want to add to their portfolio. Since quality of images doesn’t explain it, what IS the reason for the iPhone’s popularity on Flickr?
One word: Connectivity.
The iPhone lets you go from point and shoot to sharing on the web in a matter of seconds, thanks to its internet connectivity via WIFI or 3G. I can take a photo with my iPhone, post it to Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc , and be receiving comments in less than a minute. The picture itself becomes more relevant because it is being seen almost in real time. On the web, freshness counts. Which means that if we want to quickly snap a photo to share with friends online, the iPhone is the instantaneous choice, despite its poor quality. It’s already right there in your pocket anyway. While a Nikon D90 or Canon Rebel might take a picture that’s 100 times better, it requires downloading the shot to a computer, then uploading it to the web, which means you have to be near or return to your computer before you can share anything. So lately we’ve all been sacrificing picture quality for speed, convenience, and above all connectivity.
I’m no different. In the last 15 years I went from being a photo snob that only shot on slide film with an SLR to someone who grudgingly accepted digital cameras because of their web-friendliness, to someone who doesn’t even use the digital camera I have anymore because basically every picture I take is on the iPhone so that I can get it up onto Twitter quickly & easily.
So what are the implications?
First, it indicates to me that high-end camera makers like Canon and Nikon need to be developing technology to integrate internet connectivity into their cameras. If I could shoot pics with a Nikon D90, then upload those pics to the web from the camera via WIFI, I would be a lot more inclined to use said expensive camera because then I’d have the best of both worlds — quality and web connectivity. Real-time photo sharing within a micro-blogging framework with (gasp) high-quality images. At present, there have been a few half-hearted efforts at the point-and-shoot level, but none have full web connectivity.
Secondly, Apple will doubtlessly improve the iPhone’s camera quality over the next few years. Just like the awful digital cameras of the 90’s, the technology will improve and become so cheap that before long we will carry around 10+ megapixel cameras bundled inside our phones. A competitor’s phone will out-camera the iPhone, and Apple will respond. The soon-to-be-released Motorola Droid purports to have a much better camera than the iPhone. But in the meantime, the web is being flooded with terrible pictures of interesting things, and I think that’s a shame. We’re stuck in another low point in the evolution of cameras, (like the 90’s digital camera gap) where the one everyone uses is awful, despite the fact that high-end cameras are available and affordable.
Think back to your family’s pictures from the 70’s, when everyone was using 110mm film. Remember the rounded corners on the prints, the flat tonality of the colors, the yellow-orange tone to everything? Those shape our memory of that time. When we look back nostalgically at the Ought’s (as I intend to refer to this glorious time), will the only tangible supplements to your memory be blurry, washed out photos, scalable to no larger than 640×480?
I’m writing this post as much as a chide to myself to use my good camera and not my pocket novelty camera, but that connectivity issue is such a big one that I think it’s worthy of mention. So make an effort to take a picture with a good camera this week, put it on the web, and then share it with me, because if I have to look at too many more blurry, washed-out iPhone images I just might wipe the inch of dust off my Nikon SLR and start shooting on slide film again. I need some clarity.
Tagged: photography, cameras, photo sharing, web, flickr, wifi, connectivity, iphone, canon, nikon