Ditching the Digital Camera for the Mobile Phone (Onboard camera)

Categories: Citizen JournalismPosted on March 5th, 2008

Shifting to Onboard Camera on N95
Just about every year, I drop, lose, break, my camera. This time, I dropped my Canon IS700 in the streets of San Diego, and now it only takes blurry pics. No worries, I squeezed 10,000 (estimated) thousand photos out of that $300 camera, adding to my flickr account of over 22,000 photos. (Insert Asian joke here)

I’ve shifted to using the on board 5 megapixel camera on my Nokia N95, and downloaded Shozu, which is a photo/video management tool that lets me seamlessly upload in real-time photos to flickr or any social website of my choosing. It’s a slower process than a point and shoot, but what I make up for convenience of having one device, and automatic upload are worth it.

Convergence: Web, Camera, Video, and lastly, a phone
In many ways, the cell phone is a media platform, I can publish live streaming video using Qik, blog from wordpress, Tweet to my network of 3800, or call (the feature I use the least) any blogger friends to get the word out about anything almost anywhere.

Marketing happens everywhere, anytime
How does this apply to Web Strategy? This is both a threat and an opportunity for brands. Uploading content in near real time (good or bad) is so simple and easy, there are no more secrets, they just haven’t been uploaded to the web yet. If I’m ever having a great (or bad) experience with a brand, I’m very likely to want to let my network know, they deserve to know.

This impacts the media business: live concerts, sporting events, and other performances will be streamed live to the web, the only admission is internet access. I recently met with a client from Japan, they encourage customers and prospects to participate in mobile games real world games in their marketplace. Photo games, GPS treasure hunts, and self-expression are all encouraged.

The following photos are all taken by my Nokia N95
In any case, I’m still experimenting with the photo settings, this is a lone “photowalk”, but here’s a few sample photos from today, the subject: gorgeous San Diego, Catalina Island, and the USS Midway.

They were uploaded in real time by Shozu, there was no photo editing.

Staring down the nose of an F14

I’m going to experiment with live video streaming from the mobile phone soon, but I may need to but a spare battery, as I know it eats up power very quickly.

If you’re an expert at taking photos with mobile phones, feel free to offer me any advice.

Please note that as an Analyst, I have the opportunity to test, analyze, review products that are in my coverage area, as a result, this phone was provided to Forrester from Nokia.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 3:02 am and is filed under Citizen Journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

[...] WirelessInfo.com - Cell Phone Reviews and Wireless Plan Ratings wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt Shifting to Onboard Camera on N95 Just about every year, I drop, lose, break, my camera. This time, I dropped my Canon IS700 in the streets of San Diego, and now it only takes blurry pics. No worries, I squeezed 10,000 (estimated) thousand photos out of that $300 camera, adding to my flickr account of over 22,000 photos. (Insert Asian joke here) I’ve shifted to using the on board 5 megapixel camera on my Nokia N95, and downloaded Shozu, which is a photo/video management tool that lets me seam [...]

Posted by Ditching the Digital Camera for the Mobile Phone (Onboard camera) · Pageyou.net on March 5th, 2008 at 4:40 am

Great pictures! The N95 is an amazing device and having a personal media broadcasting device changes so many perspectives on so many things… Coincidentally, last night I also wrote about the N95, imagining how it could potentially be used as a “Personal Security Camera.” I asked the question “Could a Nokia N95 and Qik Save Your Life?” http://tinyurl.com/33vdkh

Posted by Jeff Sass on March 5th, 2008 at 4:40 am

I’ve been using my cell phone for pics for a while now, but there’s times when it’s just disappointing. My old Blackberry Pearl had a terrible flash and anything in motion was sure to be blurry. It might have looked okay on the little screen, but once I got it on flickr it was just another bad photo. I recently moved to the Curve which takes better photos, but if I really want to capture the image the Canon SD1000 always out performs the phone camera. I think cell cameras are getting better, but in my experience, they’re just not there yet - too grainy and too many compromises to fit in a phone size device.