It’s that time of year, you know where you get in the car, head over to Aunty, or Grandma or someone’s place and meet up with all those long lost family members. You get lots of goodies and Grandma always wants to show you her garden, what’s flowering this year etc (okay by now you’ve guessed this author is in the southern hemisphere – actually in the tropics as I write this).

We’ve been snapping shots left right and center – having a 14 month old opening presents will make you trigger happy. Different family members have been using different devices to snap pics and I got to thinking – just how do all these photos stack up?

Read on below the jump to see us pit the iPhone 3G against some top notch rivals.

The Devices

Okay first up, while I like photography I’m no crack photographer. This is not a scientific test, rather it’s a real life test. All we did was take photos that you might take yourself. (Oh and when I say we, I mean my brother in law and me)

First up we have the iPhone 3G, which as we know has a 2 Mega Pixel fixed focus camera. Now to be fair I didn’t always use the standard Camera App, instead I was often using Steady Cam as this I find has a huge part to play in taking a good clear photo with the iPhone. This camera does not have a flash.

Sony Ericsson w910i – we selected this phone because it has a similar type of camera which we hoped would give us comparable photos with the iPhone 3G. This mobile phone has a 2 Mega Pixel camera in it. This camera does not have a flash.

Sony Ericson G900 – this was selected not because of it’s camera but rather for the fact that it is a similar price touch screen smart phone, closer to the iPhone in specification than the w910i. We hoped this would give us a comparison of photo based on price of the phone. (That is if you are spending over $1000 on a phone, what sort of camera can you expect?) This mobile phone has a 5 Mega Pixel camera in it. This camera does have a flash.

Sony CyberShot DSC-W110 – this was our control, a 7.2 Mega Pixel digital camera bought in NZ on sale for $299, it’s cheap, it’s a camera and it’s getting a hammering over this silly season. This camera does have a flash.

The Rules

To level the playing field we had to have some ground rules:

• As the iPhone & w910i have no flash we decided to not use any flash
• No Zoom, No Macro – things the iPhone is lacking, so we decided the others couldn’t use them either (yeah I know, we’re biased)
• We could use what ever the phone allowed for taking a steady (clear) shot. On the iPhone we used Steady Cam on the G900 it allows you to set the focus point
• There was to be NO Photoshop – not even open and resize – we’d let Flickr do all the work
• All pictures would be taken as close to identical as we could – that is we had a line to place the camera on to take the picture
• There could be no winner, this is not about finding the best, it’s simply a comparison of pictures from similar devices based either on price or camera size

Note: you can click the photos to see the full size image on flickr.com

The Pictures

The duck shoot

We started out indoors with a simple test. 3 little rubber ducks against a green background. We used only indoor lighting which happens to be energy saver light bulbs.

Summary

The iPhone actually performed better than expected in this low light test, the colours are a little washed out compared to the Cybershot, but compared to the w910i the iPhone walks all over it. I’m surprised for a 2 Mega Pixel camera the iPhone did very well here.

The playground

The next day we popped out side around midday to see what other shots we could test against. Behind us is a little park & playground – a common place for pictures. So in the midday sun we snapped off some shots.

Summary

Here the iPhone began to suffer. It’s almost as if it’s set to indoor shooting as the pictures seem to have an overall blue tinge. The focus was good, and the colour range not too bad & I probably could remove the blue tinge in photoshop but I was expecting more from the iPhone.

The flower

Reds are often a good test for cameras – unfortunately we picked a bit of a hard subject to photograph in that it was moving. As you’ll see the digital camera did a fine job but all the phones struggled to focus clearly on the flower.

Summary

Again the iPhone suffered with a blue effect to the photos resulting in an orange flower rather than a red one. The Sony w910i surprised me here with the brilliance of it’s red and green, the closest to the real flower. The iPhone was the only one that came close to focusing at this distance.

Into the Sun

A challenge for any camera made harder without a fill flash to balance out the brightness of the sun, this shot saw all cameras lining up to photograph a rose against the blue sky with the sun just cracking the frame.

Summary

I was surprised that the two Sony Ericssons suffered so much, especially the G900. The iPhone while turning the pink roses red actually focused well, and handled the excess light pretty well too. They sky is a little gray at the top, but that doesn’t affect the rest of the photo that much.

Results

Overall the iPhone surprised me – and not in a good way. Where I expected it to fail it shone, where I expected good things from it, it failed. The Sony Ericsson w910i and iPhone should have been taking near identical pictures, but at times the iPhone performed closer to the better 5 Mega Pixel equipped Sony Ericsson G900.

What can you take from this? Well the iPhone is a mobile phone with a 2 Mega Pixel camera – don’t expect to be taking award winning photos with it. However take your time with it and it can take some surprising shots.

Reality kicks in though and I have to say, if you want to take photos – buy a camera. They are cheaper, take better shots, have heaps of features for focusing, macros, and of course they have a solid flash on them. You can, of course, see a huge range of digital cameras at Amazon.com.