Everyone loves to take great pictures, but no one likes to carry around a dedicated point-and-shoot camera around. But now, cameras on phones are getting more and more sophisticated. As a result, more people are opting to just use their camera phone to take pictures, instead of carrying around a dedicated camera.
A prime example, is the new iPhone 3G S, which sports a host of improvement in the built-in camera. Here’s a rundown on some of the improvements, what it means, and how it brings it closer to replacing your point and shoot:
Improvement: 3 Megapixel Sensor
What it means: The number of pixels in each image. An image taken on the iPhone 3G S will have 3 million pixels (about 2000×1600 image size)
Closer to your point-and-shoot? Not quite. Most point-and-shoot cameras are around 8 megapixels. However, when printing photos on 4”x6”, 3 megapixels is more than enough to produce sharp prints.
Improvement: Automatic White-Balance
What it means: Sometimes a camera will incorrectly cast a blue, orange, or green color on your entire image. Normally, settings on the camera have to be manually adjusted to compensate for this effect. The iPhone will now do this automatically
Closer to your point-and-shoot? Yes. Most dedicated point-and-shoot cameras have this feature, and now the same holds true for the iPhone camera
Improvement: Better Low-Light
What it means: All cameras suck when it comes to taking pictures at night. Usually, you need a flash to take pictures in these conditions, or you’ll need very sensitive image sensors to maximize what little light it receives. The iPhone achieves this through more sensitive light sensors, probably through a higher ISO.
Close to your point-and-shoot? No and yes. While the iPhone still doesn’t have a flash like most point-and-shoots, it has more sensitive image sensors.
Improvement: Auto-Macro
What it means: In order to focus correctly on the subject of the pictures, a camera usually needs to know whether or not the subject is close or far away from the lens. Since the camera doesn’t usually know, we have to tell it through a “macro” setting. The 3G S is now smart enough to know on its own, saving you one more step in taking that great picture.
Close to your point-and-shoot? Yes. Most dedicated point-and-shoot cameras have this feature, and now the same holds true for the iPhone camera
Improvement: Tap to focus
What it means: If you want to manually focus on something in your picture, just tap that object on your iPhone screen. iPhone will focus on that object.
Close to your point-and-shoot? Even better than point-and-shoot cameras, and even better than professional DSLRs. Professional quality digital cameras will have 20-30 focus points, and clunky interface to choose between them. The iPhone has an infinite number of focus points and a simple touch interface.
One of the features of Picwing prints is the ability to simply take pictures from your camera phone and email it right then and there to your Picwing album for it to be printed. But one question we sometimes get is whether or not the camera phone produces photos of high enough quality to be printed.
A while back, we ran a variety of tests on different camera phones and found by conservative estimates that most modern phones take good enough pictures to be printed in 4”x6” format. Now, with the arrival of better, more sophisticated camera phones like the iPhone 3G S, you can be certain that the pictures taken on your camera phone are good enough to be printed, and you can probably feel better about leaving that point-and-shoot at home.
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We are happy to announce the release of our free iPhone application. This is yet another great way for our users to send photo prints to their loved ones.
We’ve just released the world’s first mobile application that allows printing of photos from your phone. Using the “Print & Mail Photos” Android app, Picwing users need only snap a photo using the built-in camera on their phone to have them printed – the photos are automatically sent to the Picwing service and mailed to the user’s photo distribution list. If GPS is enabled on your phone, the nearest street address of the location that the photo was taken is even printed on the back of the photo!
We are extremely happy to be launching our affiliate with our very first partner: 
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