I walked home in rubber boots again today, waiting for a snowfall that didn’t happen — or hasn’t happened yet, since it’s just a matter of time before we get another one. The weather has been rather wonky the last few days, swinging from frigid on Sunday to practically balmy yesterday (balmy meaning having to ditch the scarf and gloves but not quite the coat). Today was blustery but a rain jacket got me home, not a winter coat. But enough weather talk…
I took King Street home to drop off a roll of film to get developed at Toronto Image Works and prepaid it (ouch, the scanning doubled the price), thinking about the cost of photography in general and how far the cameras in mobile phones have come since their early days. There was once a time when people bought mobile phones and the cameras were merely an afterthought, a negligible value-add. These days, I think many people are buying iPhones for the built-in cameras and the apps made for them.
It sounds ridiculous, but of all the iPhone users you know, how many people actually use it to make phone calls? Now, how many people use it to take photos? I’d say more photos are made than phone calls. But probably the same can be said for Android and Windows phones.
And here I am to prove that point. After I dropped off the film, smarting from the thought that I just prepaid for 24 photos I haven’t even seen yet (pre-digital, this statement would sound absurdly obvious), I took photos in low light with my phone to see how it would perform. The first photo of the CN Tower was pushing the capability of the device, but the two below are quite decent.
The Fake Polaroid effect was applied in Picasa, which I have not used for nearly eight (!) years when I switched from PC to Mac. You may recall that in 2004, Picasa was only available on Windows.
