Good morning!
Welcome to the Morning Comment—the replacement for the Morning Coffee. Every morning I'll talk about one reader comment from the last day or three. My responses are just my opinion. Even if I argue, I'm not necessarily claiming that I'm right and the commenter is wrong.
This morning's comment, from Frank Petronio: "The iPhone is the best small camera yet."
This isn't the first time Frank and I have to agree to disagree. He's a longtime reader and an excellent photographer but we don't always see eye to eye.
Or in this case, i to i.
The statement that the iPhone is a good camera has achieved the level of truism, but it mystifies me. Mine isn't, to me. I have an iPhone 4s, which I've been forced to carry far more often recently because it's temporarily the only phone I own. When I was young—to you younger people, that would be when Teddy Roosevelt was President and they hadn't invented the Victrola yet—cases for MMM (metal, manual, mechanical) SLRs were sold that were called "ever-ready cases." The standard joke was that they were really "never-ready cases." Because by the time you had wrangled your camera out of its case, your picture had retired and moved to Florida.
The iPhone is worse than those.
Granted, this is partially because I use a beautiful little leather iPhone case that interferes with the camera. So when I want to take a picture I have to: fish the phone out of my pocket. Flip open the case. Flick to unlock. Enter the number code. Hit the camera app. Unfold the case to get it out of the way of the lens. Squint at the poor viewfinder. Try to hold the phone still even though it's not meant to be held that way. Taking a picture with it is a bit like the famous walking dog: It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
My picture by that time had better be static; a fast-moving picture has long since escaped by the time I'm ready to "capture" it with an iPhone.
Of course if I do manage to take the picture, I'd better hope it's a bad picture, not a good one, because if it's something I want I'll have to suffer from having gotten the right picture with the wrong camera! Always a miserable fate.
I guess an iPhone is good enough for some people. David Hume Kennerly, who I met once in a line at a deli in Washington D.C., used one for a project
But to me, the iPhone is a wretched, paltry little camera, one that's only "good" insofar as something is better than nothing. I hate using it and I can't understand why anyone feels otherwise.
But then, I don't understand everything.
Mike
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