There’s hope for cell phone cameras

(This also was posted on the EnthusiastGroup.com blog.)

Cell phones represent great promise for grassroots media. Most of us carry around with us phones that have a camera feature, so we’re always ready to snap an image when something good comes up. Cell phone users represent an army of “citizen” content creators.

Alas, cell phone photo quality has been poor, albeit improving. But something happened on YourMTB.com (an Enthusiast Group website) that makes me think there’s hope for phone photo quality.

The YourMTB “Post of the Week” is the photo below. I learned from the photographer that he snapped it with his cell phone!

OK, it’s not crystal clear; you can tell it wasn’t taken with a Nikon D80. But until he told me the truth about the picture, I assumed it came from a digital camera. Especially given that the flying biker is moving pretty fast, that’s not bad for a phone!