It seems everyone has a camera phone these days, but are those cameras any good? DPReview (Digital Photography Review), the respected website known for its epicly detailed gear reviews, today launched Connect, a platform "dedicated to the fast growing world of mobile photography."
Connect promises to deliver many things, but the most needed is its new phone camera performance testing. DPReview is going to put readers' favorite smartphones through the technical rigor typical of its reviews of market-leading DSLRs, which will hopefully hold manufacturers' feet to the fire to actually keep quality high.
"We're not interested in call quality, battery life, LTE/3G, any of that," says Barney Britton, reviews editor at DPReview. "Cellphone reviews will be focussed entirely on their performance as cameras."
Not a day passes without hoots and hollers about the advances of cellphone imagery - Instagram's $1 billion valuation, sexting scandals, citizen journalism, hashtag campaigns and corporations competing to literally get in our pockets.
But all phone cameras are not created equal, even though most are simply lumped into the bucket of "camera phone image." The iPhone's camera is not the Samsung Galaxy S3's camera. And just like DSLRs or point-and-shoots, it's not just the resolution that matters. It's the sensors, lenses and software that all contribute to the look and quality of the images. In an age when smartphones capture 27 percent of all photographs taken per year (in 2011 at least), it's time people started paying attention to the hardware behind them.
Working with DXO Labs to incorporate their image-testing metrics into cellphone reviews, Connect "will be combining DPReview's qualitative assessment of performance and image quality with technical testing," says Britton.
DPReview, which expects the cellphone camera reviews will run at approximately nine to 10 pages, is in the process of designing a new, comprehensive studio comparison scene.
"We'll be able to test cameras and phones using a common scene which greatly improves on our current setup. This means we can shoot from a reasonable distance away on cellphones, avoiding issues with distortion and sharpness that plague attempts to shoot smaller scenes with fixed wide-angle lenses/cameras," says Britton.
In 2012, smartphone sales grew by 58 percent, while point-and-shoot sales dropped by 17 percent, and with the iPhone 4 positioned as the most-used camera today, reliable information on performance is needed now more than ever. DPReview anticipate that their testing will develop over time "as the line between phones with cameras and cameras with connectivity options becomes blurrier," say Britton.
Connect will also pursue interviews, tutorials, portfolio and opinion pieces for which DPReview has recruited prominent photography bloggers and mobile photographers, including Star Rush, Misho Baranovic, Oliver Lang, Richard Koci Hernandez and Anton Kawasaki.
"The whole point of this new site is to provide content, and a forum, for a new generation of people who maybe don't even own a camera, but who are exploiting new technology to take creative photographs using their mobile devices," says Britton.
Additionally, Connect will feature an extensive database of mobile devices and apps, accessible through a range of search and filter tools developed and refined over the last 10 years on Dpreview.com.
"Scrutinizing social connectivity will drive much of Connect’s energies, with particular attention devoted to making it easier for users to engage with each other across apps and social networks, regardless of what the technological flavor of the month may be," says DPReview.
