Photofocus

Unedited iPhone 3GS photo

Photos and post by Andy Ihnatko

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can see Andy’s entire iPhone 3GS Flickr set here.

Apple let me have an iPhone 3G S a week and a half before the release date. Here’s a whole bunch of pix I shot as I tested out the features of its new 3 megapixel variable focus camera.

The verdict? Awesome. It certainly isn’t the greatest optical hardware you can get on a phone; we’re still talking about a bead of glass perched a few molecules away from the film plane.

But the fact that you can do “spot metering” puts it among the neatest cameraphones available. Touch the part of the live image that should be properly-exposed and the Camera app will make all of its focus, exposure and white-balance decisions based on that sampling.

Bonus: by sampling from the bright, dark and middle areas of the image and taking three separate images, you can even do HDR imaging!

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Sponsored by PMA – It’s not too early to mark your calendar because this is big. For the first time in the USA, the PMA tradeshow and conference will be open to the general public – September 6-11, 2011 in Las Vegas. See you there – http://bit.ly/9yaL2I