Camera Ready

About the quality of pics taken with my Pre.

In an earlier post, I discussed my experience of the camera on the Pre and included a few pics (two of which I also include in this post). This post, however, focuses not on my user experience of the camera but my impression of the pictures taken with my Pre. The images I include in this post are made large to expose as much as possible about the quality of the images.

Let me start by saying that I am not a professional photographer and so my opinions about the quality of the photos taken with my Palm Pre definitely fall in the "amateur impressions" category. Caveat out of the way, my opinion of the quality of pics taken with my Palm Pre is very positive: The Pre takes a great daytime and a very good night time photo.

On my travels in the last month, I have taken quite a few pics and have been impressed with most. Here are a few taken outside under decent conditions.

Photo #1: Outdoor Pic under Bright But Cloudy Skies

This shows a photo taken in the early afternoon under bright but hazy/partly cloudy skies. Under decent picture-taking conditions, what impresses me about this photo (other than the obvious stunning good looks of my puppy, Ruby) is the way the Pre responds to the challenges imposed by the subjects of this particular photo: the incredible detail and color variation captured both near (Ruby) and far (the National Cathedral in Washington, DC).

In person, the National Cathedral is an amazing structure with beautiful, intricate stone work, and it appears to me that all of that is really nicely captured by the Pre in this photo. Similarly, the golden/brown color variation of Ruby's fur in the foreground is also nicely captured in this pic. Unfortunately, the detail in the black of Ruby's eye and definition of the area surrounding her eye is almost totally absent in this pic.

Photos #2 and #3: More Daytime, Outdoor Pics

These pictures, though similarly taken under close to ideal lighting conditions, also have a somewhat challenging subject: In the first, the ginormous water spray created by Horseshoe Falls on the American side of Niagra Falls in the foreground and (look closely) the detail of the one of the falls itself behind the spray. In the second image below, you see the water in motion about to head over one of the falls that constitute Horseshoe Falls.

I took these three days after buying my Pre and really didn't know what to expect. Even so, perhaps most surprising to me wasn't that the photos came out as well as they did, but I was able to see on my Pre's display--smack dab in the middle of a supremely bright day--that they came out.

Photo #4: Outdoor Pic at Night

This pic shows how the camera performs at night without a flash. The subject in this photo is the skyline in Toronto, Canada. Honestly, I was not expecting this to yield anything worth including. However, as you can see, the camera does a nice job. It's certainly not as good as a higher megapixel camera would have captured. But for a three megapixel camera, I am more than happy with it.

The lights and buildings obviously constitute the detail and challenge for the camera in this photo, and both are not only evident in the photo, they are pretty nicely captured. Though there is some graininess in this larger version of the image, the skyline looks almost as stunning in the pic as it did in real life. Not too shabby.