Last week I spent 11 hours in a huge, crowded theme park. I saw rides, sweaty children, overpriced commemorative plastic cups and lots of people taking photographs. There was the occasional weirdo with a DSLR (who can navigate an amusement park with one of those monstrosities?), but most people were point-and-shoot photographers. And most of them were using phones.
As the camera optics in smartphones improve, I don’t know how camera manufacturers are going to keep up. I bought a Canon PowerShot about a year ago and rarely touch it. Why should I? My iPhone 4S is always with me. It’s got 8-megapixel resolution and a flash. It’s small, light and has decent storage. Plus, the iPhone lets me immediately edit and share photos in a huge number of ways. The Canon makes me wait until I’m home. Even then, I must connect to a computer, upload the photos, get them into an app and then work with them.
My own observations suggest that people use phones to take casual photographs more often than point-and-shoot cameras. That’s anecdotal, of course, so let’s look at some empirical data.
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