New online gallery shows cameraphone photos of Dixon area

If some of you remember last year I was photographing some photo features for Dixon Patch – things like tomato and olive harvesting, birds, and sculpture around town. Some of those photos were taken with my cameraphone.

In actuality, I’ve been doing a lot of photography with cameraphones over the past five years. I like the fact that I can always carry one with me and it’s small. I also like the challenge of trying to do as much as possible with a simple camera.

Now that I’m retired I’ve had the time to look over the several thousand cameraphone photos I’ve taken and saved over those five years. With the help of my son, a web site designer in Oakland, I’ve created a web site at www.cameraphonia.info that displays the best of my shots – around 250 in all. I hope you can take the time to check it out and be surprised by the quality of photography a cameraphone can deliver.

I began using a cameraphone in 2008 when I lived in San Mateo. My first model (a Samsung) had only a 1.3-megapixel resolution but was still capable of good shots. So if you look at my web site “galleries,” which are organized by year, most of the 2008 photos were shot with that simple cameraphone. Around the time I moved to Dixon in 2009, I bought a five-megapixel Sony Ericsson cameraphone which definitely upped the quality of the photos. It’s the one I’m still using today.

It has auto focus, macro focus (allowing close-up photos of things like bees in flowers, and so on), a xenon flash, and the ability to darken or lighten a photo before taking it.

Companies making point-and-shoot digital cameras have noticed a falloff in sales since cell phones with good cameras hit the market. Now, more and more people are taking pictures everywhere with their cell phones – and the results are pretty good. Of course, you can even use them to shoot video if you wish.

Cameraphones are recording events such as the conflict in Syria, which are then posted on YouTube for the world to see.

Personally I do most of my cameraphone photography (more in the artistic vein) while on early-morning walks around Dixon, or on bicycle trips around the area. When you’re looking for photos, you can see new things on every walk, even if you take the same routes. Just this morning I was passing a walkway going to the front door of a home along Washington Street. I’d been by probably 20 times, but saw for the first time that the walkway’s paving stones had imprinted on them an attractive grapevine motif. So I grabbed photos of them.

My usual method of taking cameraphone pictures, if I have the time, is to take three photos of the same subject. The first will be the auto exposure that the camera has selected. Then I’ll take one lighter photo and one darker photo.

I download the photos into my computer by removing the macro memory card that I use in the cameraphone, insert it into a USB adapter, and then insert the adapter into my computer’s USB port. Then I go ahead and look at all the photos on my computer screen, select the best, save them, and delete the rest. I like to keep as few photos left in the camera as possible, so I’m starting fresh the next time I go out.

I often use Photoshop to crop and otherwise improve the photos. But I’m not a Photoshop expert – I generally use just the simpler options.  

When I used to go on long bicycle tours, I carried along a heavy 35mm film camera and rolls and rolls of film. Nowadays, my cameraphone is sufficient – and a lot lighter! And there’s no film to buy and develop.

Someday, I’ll be upgrading to a new smart phone with an even better camera, with eight or more megapixels of resolution. What I would like to see in my next cameraphone is a quality optical zoom lens, an instant-on camera, and the instant saving of photos.

Again, if you’re interested, check out my cameraphone galleries at www.cameraphonia.info. There are many photos taken in and around Dixon and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the quality photos a good cameraphone can deliver.