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Not an EIS Subscriber yet? Subscribe Now: Your $500 discount on "4 x 6 Shoot-Out: Are Camera-Phones Ready To Make Consumer Prints?" pays for your subscription! Camera-phones are on the verge of delivering the snapshot capabilities that people currently expect from single-use film cameras and entry-level digital cameras. The recent release of two-megapixel camera-phones by all three Japanese wireless carriers raises the question: Why buy a digital camera?
The purpose of this 36-page study, including 119 figures, charts, and tables, was to determine if currently available camera-phones are capable of delivering acceptable consumer prints and to assess how the images produced measure up to those produced by the most popular standalone consumer cameras. Prints from images obtained by camera-phones with resolutions of 640 x 480 (two models), one megapixel, and two megapixels were compared to those from a single use (OTUC) film camera, a single use (OTUC) digital camera, and digital point-and-shoot cameras of one-, two- and three-megapixel resolution.
Six test subjects, representative of standard consumer photo activities, were photographed: a house in full sunlight, an interior shop display, an outdoor portrait in bright open shade, an indoor portrait, a close-up of small objects, and an antique spice rack in dim interior lighting. Standard consumer 4 x 6-inch borderless glossy prints of all 54 test shots were made using three different methods — a home inkjet printer, thermo-autochrome equipment at a corner drug store kiosk, and an online service that uses a silver halide-based process. We used the prints from these various sources as the basis for our evaluation of the results. Prints were scored in four performance categories — sharpness/level of detail, color accuracy and saturation, compression/interpolation artifacts, and dynamic range, yielding overall quantitative scores for each device for each subject and for each performance dimension.
40-page study, including 119 figures, charts, and tables
A CD-ROM containing all the original images used to make the prints is also available. View: Table of Contents, and Page Sample (Adobe PDF document)
Analyst BIO: Tony Henning
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