Selpong

Sharp 816sh (880sh in Europe)

What I currently use here in Japan. 2 megapixels, sharp images, and bright colors. This phone provides exposure compensation adjustment and digitial zoom (though I don’t use this). It can also do manual focus and has a macro mode of probably up to 2mm (just my estimate). It also contains features for panorama shooting, burst, etc. The phone also has an image editor to adjust toning or put nifty stuff like cute sparkles or hearts (well it is a Japanese phone).

On the downside, focusing is really really slow. You want to capture movement you better know when to click (I took several tries with this Shinjuku shot). Camera also tends to absorb a lot of light so pictures tend to be too bright at times. But night shots tend to be too dark which is a good thing for some. This means lesser noise in the photo.

Given that I’m in Japan where it’s law for cameras to have a shutter sound, I can’t just shoot pictures as much as I like. Good thing I’m a girl or I could be dragged to the police station for being a pervert. LOL!

A lot of ups and some downs, but hey, for phone cameras this one rocks!

I won’t comment on the phone LCD screen. It’s Sharp. What more can I say?

For more details: Sharp 816SH product page, Sharp 880SH product page

Sony Ericsson K610i

I got the Urban Silver one. This phone has quad-band so I use this for my roaming Philippine SIM card.

This phone also shoots 2 megapixel pictures and has a bunch of features for shooting B&W, sepia and even negative. You can set the white balance and also the digital zoom (ugh). The Sony Ericsson also has a more funky photo editor (PhotoDJ) for playing around with your photos. You can make the photos more cartoony, or frosty. For portraits, there is also a Java application that could make you look like Jay Leno (kidding).

The LCD cannot justify the quality of the images this phone camera shoots. That’s probably why I don’t shoot with this phone. I don’t really see if the picture would be great or not. However, you can set the shutter sound to silent in this phone.

I think the Sharp 816SH shoots better pictures than this phone, but I haven’t really used it too often to compare the two phone cameras. I’ll update this as soon as I get around that.

For more details: Sony Ericsson K610i product page