The iPhone is known for being somewhat of a slouch in the camera department.

First Generation

The first generation iPhone was released in 2007 sported a 2.0 megapixel camera and that was about it. The camera used was fixed focus where optical tricks are used so the camera focuses from a relatively close range out to infinity. Photographers reading this would refer the distances between which a scene is in focus as the depth of field and one way to achieve this is go a very high aperture. The iPhone’s camera does where it lets very little light into the camera giving it a wide depth of field, much like how a pin-hole camera focuses. That allows for a simpler fixed focus camera to be practical, cheaper and simpler. Sounds good but remember how the iPhone is achieving this, it’s letting in less light. Letting in less light isn’t an issue until something is dimly lit, then you need to capture the image using the camera chip for longer which blurs movement in photos and leads to brighter areas over exposing and strange colors. The camera initially didn’t shoot video and even Blackberry had it beat performance wise with autofocus and a LED flash.

3G yawn...

Apple released the 3G iPhone in 2008 and honestly nothing changed for the camera. By this time Samsung was offering the i900 5 megapixel camera phones with autofocus and LED flash. Did someone at Apple just forget to uograde the camera?

3GS

Finally with the 3GS Apple improved on the camera in the iPhone. The specs bumped to 3.2 megapixel with autofocus, auto white balance and auto-macro but what does that all mean?

Auto-macro

Well the auto-macro allows you to focus on things which are really near. There’s no zoom so to make something really little fill the photo you have to hold the camera close and this is when the auto-macro really helps out by letting the camera focus.

Auto-white balance

Auto-white balance tries to compensate for the lighting of a scene as not all white light is quite the same color. If you’re outside in sunlight the light is a different color than inside a parking building lit by neon lights. The neon will give more of a blue color to the scene due to the color of the white light and this is where the white balance will try and compensate to preserve colors.

Auto focus

Auto focus does what it says. The camera now has a small moving lens that lets it focus on different distances. The iPhone OS tries to figure what to focus on by itself but you can also tell it by tapping on the screen the area you want in focus. This feature allowed larger apertures improving low light photography but it is still very limited by available light.

There were a number of other cell-phones which already had all of these features but with higher resolution (aka more megapixel) cameras, but perhaps the closest competitor is the droid which released a few months later with a 5.0 megapixel camera, autofocus and dual LED flash. Something Verizon pushed as Droids many “does” items.

Missing Features

So far the missing features for the iPhone have been zoom & flash. Oh and of course more mega-pixels.

Fourth Generation iPhone

(Steve is probably thinking of a snazzier name right now)

Zoom

There’s been a number of apps offering digital zoom but most people should be familiar with this on their digital camera as just digitally enlarging one part of the image at the cost of resolution. This feature is going mainstream as part of iPhone OS4 being released next week. The leaks about the 4th generation iPhone report a larger camera but no optical zoom. Maybe next year..

Flash

The 4th Generation iPhone has a flash and it’s has a control bit in the API. Gizmodo’s phone had a LED flash build into the rear mounted camera.

Did I say “rear mounted camera”? Yes the new phone has a front facing camera for video conferencing.

More mega-pixels

The new phone is supposed to sport a 5 mega-pixel camera. Thats going to be a real improvement over the 3GS but it only closes the gap to the droid which is now a year old.

The one feature I would love is to be able to take self portrait photos within apps without having to try and hit a button I can’t see on a touch screen. Grr....

Here at Sparkplug Industies we’ve tried to address some of the shortcomings of the iPhone’s camera by developing a LED flash for the iPhone that powers from the Dock connector. Seems like Apple is in agreement with us that the camera performance in low lighting has not matched the competition and something is needed. They’re releasing a new phone while we’re helping existing iPhone owners. I think there’s space for both of us.

Check-out more on our LED flash here

Bill