It's not the camera, it's the photographer: Photo Assignment

The point is not that ANY photograph made with a terrible camera can be fixed and turned in to something awesome.

The point is that it is possible to do excellent work with anything, as long you work within the scope of the camera's ability. Obviously I'm not going to be shooting sports with a 640x480 cell phone camera, but I might do moody abstracts, or soft pictorialist landscapes. Photoshop or equivalent is pretty much necessary here, since the stuff these little/old cameras produce is generally pretty flat and unpleasant. SOOC is awful with these things, in my experience, but the results can be fine with a bit of post.

This is generally true, you have to fit the tool to the job, or the job to the tool. Lesser cameras mean less flexibility, not necessarily lesser results. Attempting great architectural work with a high end DSLR and some mediocre zoom lens is only slightly less silly than trying to shoot fashion with my ancient Nokia phone.

Note that I am carefully NOT saying that you can shoot any photograph with any camera, quite the opposite.

 

Editing was done in my cell phone as well. I could take identical shots with my D90 and the biggest difference would be how large I could print and the actually image quality.




The camera you use does not change the quality of light you capture....

 

I posted this a few days ago on the portrait section and was shocked when people did not beat me up for it. It was done with a Kodak Point and Shoot Camera with my wife and I in the photo, the photo taken via the 10 second timer on the camera.

[/URL] Well Hello There by Plowpoints[/IMG]

 

This would have to be one of my favourite photos and I took it on my iPhone 3GS! Didn't have my canon with me when i spotted this beautiful sunset so used the only item I did.. Have to agree its not what you use but how you use it

 

So then I guess it's time to nut up or shut up.

 

Here is an iPhone 4 picture I took a while back of turbo on an abandoned golf course.

 

iphones take some pretty cool images. They have this way of turning rays of sunshine into little orbules. My husband got one the other day of the sun setting behind a tree that I just love!

http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/309246_10152026282250484_496261403_n.jpg

He has another one I seem to recall liking better than this one but he hasn't uploaded it. =/

 

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How about this:


Taken with a home scanner (not a very high resolution scanner). You can get really cool effects from using scanners =)
This is one image. Contrast added to the original but other than that no photo shopping was done.

 

Taken with iphone

 

In general I agree with you, however looking back at this whole thread, now I read the title in some more general and slight opposite way.
Some pictures are awesome but some are crooked, with cut parts, with centered subjects, under/overexposed, bad pictures of nice places or things, etc: I feel some posted the best the camera could do in technical terms (e.g., color rendition), not the best they could do with a limited camera.
So, this is another proof that the photographer is the major source of variability in quality, even starting with limited features.