Travel Tech: iPhone 4 Eliminates Need For Point-and-Shoot Camera

By National Geographic Adventure Contributing Editor Steve Casimiro, editor of The Adventure Life


With 1.7 million iPhone 4s sold in three days, you don’t need me nudging you toward the Apple store. If anything, I should be trying to pull you back, since I don’t have mine yet and supplies are short. But I want to add my two cents, because the reason I’m buying a new iPhone isn’t the sexy allure of a slimmer phone (nice, but so what) or the new operating system (already got it on my 3GS), it’s because it will eliminate one more device: my point-and-shoot camera.

There are many good point-and-shoot cameras. My Canon G9 has been updated twice (by the G10 and G11), but it still rocks, with nice pictures, great video (including time lapse mode), and the ability to shoot in RAW format. If I were going to replace it, I’d get the Canon S90, but there are three or four others I’d consider. And as a pro shooter, I’m especially picky–remove my biases and there are scores of great point and shoots.

But the gap between the quality of images (and video) produced by a pro-level DSLR like the Canon 5D Mark II or Nikon D3, both of which I use, and that produced by point-and-shoot cameras is huge. The difference between the new iPhone camera and point and shoots? Not so much.

My thinking is if you’re going to shoot low-res photos (and even the best compact cameras shoot low-res compared to DSLRs), why should you carry two cameras to do it? The images and video I’ve seen from the iPhone 4 are more than good enough for 90 percent of our photo uses–Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, blogging, etc. For printing, maybe not, but that’s not a priority for me. When resolution matters, I’ll bust out the big gun. For everything else, the phone.

Upgrades to the iPhone’s image capabilities are what sway me. The first and most important isn’t the 5 megapixel sensor, it’s the addition of a flash. Earlier iPhone cameras are bleak in low light–grainy, fuzzy, muddy–and they lack the flash that opens up the night. The second is the video quality. HD means nothing really (that’s high def?), but the videos it produces are leaps ahead of the 3GS's…it’s like getting Lasik. Finally, the ability to control the focal point in videos, that’s another key. It adds up to an easy decision.

Now then. I have a camera and a phone for sale. Anyone interested? Didn't think so.