Less is Mohrer.TUMBLR

The Unifunctional Camera Is Dead

I really wanted to love my new Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 with pancake lens. People that own it, love it. And honestly, the camera did live up to expectations. It produces DSLR quality in a smaller form factor. It’s small enough to fit in cargo shorts pockets, the lens that it came with makes any subject look great. It lets an amateur take great pictures. Look how great my wife looks!

The GF1 lived up the expectations; this picture is technically better than anything I can do with the iPhone (though with iPhone 4 that’s almost not true), but that’s not the point.

I was confident after I got the iPhone 4 that I would never need another unifunctional camera again, but had last minute doubts about not having a “real camera” on my Maui Honeymoon. But the unifuncitonal camera has been burdensome and I will be returning it when I get home.

The iPhone camera has an unfair advantage over the GF1: it does everything else too. Here’s why the iPhone (or perhaps any smartphone-camera) is the only camera I’ll ever need.

• I like having every picture I’ve taken since 2007 on my person, locally. Yes, Flickr has a great app, but I look at pictures on the subway platform, on airplanes, and in other situations where internet is unavailable. And at 1-2 MB each, scrolling through pics remotely is cumbersome. I want them all with me, locally, unconditionally.
• I want all my pictures in one place. Some on Flickr, some on my home computer, some on my memory card. BLAH. This just doesn’t work. 4000 pictures in my pocket. I know the timeline of the last 3 years well enough to find any picture pretty quickly.
• Geotagging (“Places” on the iPhone). This has been my single favorite feature of iPhone 4. Every photo I’ve taken with iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 has been getting a geographic coordinate attached to it, so I can look at a world map and see where I’ve been. It even works when you don’t have voice/data service, since GPS is independent of those protocols. I have a picture of the island of Maui with little red tacks all over it. And back home, I can easily view every picture of Petra I’ve ever taken at Cafe Mogador (30+ so far)
• And of course the obvious one: carrying fewer devices. To me, empty pockets is the ultimate luxury. I’d gladly let them implant a chip in my hand to never have to carry around keys or a wallet again.

I always wanted to be good at taking pictures, but as I get older I’m finding it necessary to zoom in a little bit and focus on the few things I want to be great at. Maybe I’ll adopt photography later in life and get a killer camera and learn how to use it. For now: iPhone!