Apprentice managed to lose a days pay

[Huge]

... totally inadequate.

[Jules Richardson]

Well, I like having a decent camera with a decent lens, the batteries last for ages between charges, and if anyone I know is so impatient that they can't wait for half an hour for something I'd probably just tell them to f*ck off anyway.

[Simon Finnigan]

Which works for you, personally I prefer being able to take a good quality photo at any time without needing notice to bring my camera with me. Not to mention having to carry a bulky camera, spare batteries, something to back the photos up onto............

[Simon Finnigan]

Hardly - not even the camera snobs I know are making the claim that a good smart phone camera is inadequate. Maybe if you want to print photographs at A0 and bigger, but for most people in most situations, there's so little difference between a smart phone and a consumer level camera you'd be hard pushed to tell the difference when printed out at normal size, or viewed on a normal monitor.

[Simon Finnigan]

Much easier to always have a good camera with me, rather than having to plan everything and carry a bag with me for the camera, laptop, tablet, diary etc my smartphone replaces :-)

[SteveW]

Indeed. Some companies already ban smartphones from being brought into some meetings, as any such phone infected with a virus could be remotely commanded to enable the microphone and/or camera and forward confidential information.

SteveW

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Which will fit neatly in your pocket, like a phone?

[harry]

Wot, no flying saucers?

[harry]

Or attach it to the dog. Or best of all, don't bother with one. Cease to being a public niusance

[harry]

There's always Photoshop in any case.

[John Rumm]

No really, a phone camera really is inadequate for pretty much any real photography...

Even when the clarity and resolution are adequate, the inability to change lens is a show stopper. The physical size of the optics and hence the tiny apertures make for unattractive results in many cases simply because you can't limit the depth of field adequately.

[tim.....]

You've got that the wrong way round.

If these things did happen on a daily basis then you would carry your proper camera with you at all times.

It's because they don't that you need an occasional use camera immediately available as a backup

tim

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

How true. I'm reminded of a snapshot taken in a Glasgow street, by a bloke who happened to have a pocket Rollei with him. A ned was being chased down the road by two plain-clothes coppers and turned around to take a swipe at one of them with an open razor or knife - click, and the pic was taken.

By the way - The snap won the Press photo of the Year award. The bloke was a Press photographer on his way to lunch and all his work kit was at work, as you would expect.

So, all you camera snobs - shove that up your arses.

[tim.....]

Good god you are taking conspiracy to a new level.

Everywhere, that I've come across such a rule it's just been because you can't be 100% sure that you can "trust" the human attendees. However nice people that they are, they are just your (fellow) employees and statistically one in a few thousand of them is going to be dishonest (and you don't know that you haven't got him in the room with you).

tim

[John Williamson]

One of these, perhaps? :-

[dennis]

8<

I don't think you know what a decent phone camera can do these days. They have similar performance to compact cameras but tend to have weak flashes and no zoom. The lack of zoom actually makes them better optically than many compact zoom cameras.

While I prefer to carry around my waterproof compact most of the time I wouldn't be worried if I had to use the phones camera as it easily matches the Nikon compact.

Of course if you know you want to take some snaps the DSLR is the better choice for quality, its just not very portable and mine doesn't do 1080p video like the phone does..

[dennis]

Not very bright are you?

Pulling the battery doesn't show where you pulled the battery and the last known position for the phone could be miles away. It also doesn't give the exact time when it was done.

Turning the phone off will always give the position of the phone and the exact time it was turned off.

Also the phone battery could have gone flat while turning it off is a known action.

[alan]

You don't have you answer it. Conveniently there are many dead spots for mobile reception or the battery has gone flat.

[alan]

All you need these days is the smallest of compact 16M pixel cameras with a x20 zoom.

[Clive George]

Rollei is a camera snob's camera (I have one :-) )