It works well.

Given the poor ergonomic design of any cell phone when it comes to taking pictures, the iPhone 4S is not half bad. Sure, you have to hold the wretched thing feet from your face while you ponce about and squint, trying to make sense of what little you can make out on the screen, but iOS5 software makes the ‘+ Volume’ button into a shutter release and there’s a small built in flash (which I have yet to master and which refuses to work when I want it to) to lighten the shadows, or something. Maybe it just enhances the specs?

Coming from an ancient iPhone 3G there is a lot to like here. Sort of like when the torturer moves from ripping out nails to mere thumbscrews.

Nor do I for one moment agree with the tired dictum that has it that “The best camera is the one you have with you”. Pure rot. If you meander around hoping for something to happen, well you might as well wait for the next Hindenburg to blow. Please. Good pictures are made when you have A Sense of Purpose. Sorry, swanning around is not going to cut it.

But after the massive migraine induced by getting iCloud working and OS Lion upgraded and the new iPhone 4S responding to commands, more or less, I was just happy to go out for the groceries.

And I took the 4S with me.

And I saw some things.

Search me how the iPhone 4S determines the ISO, or anything else for that matter, but I do know you just push the button, bang away (the shutter lag and inter-frame delay are very short) and the picture looks like it may print at a decent size. Or at least one in which this old fart can actually make out details.

The lens has a full frame equivalent focal length of 35mm which is ideal for street snaps.

From the iPhone’s ‘lock screen’ all it takes is two stabs at the Home button and a touch of the camera icon and you are off. Nice UI design given the appalling ergonomics.

So there’s some serious potential here, not least for the fact that no one takes you seriously if you are pirouetting about with a cell phone. That is worth a lot for this street snapper. I was not kidding when suggesting that the point-and-shoot camera makers were in big doo-doo.

More to come.

A few words on Lightroom 3 import settings.

Imported JPG snaps from the 4S are overexposed compared with the usual RAW imports from my G3/G1, so I adopted the following import setting for the best results:

The sharpening settings are identical to those for the Panny G3 and may be a tad too aggressive.

The files size is 3264 x 2448 (4:3 aspect ratio), for 8mB a snap. My iPhone 4S is the cheapest 16gB model, so that means if I leave 1gB free I can still store 125 snaps. If space runs out, get on wifi and upload your pictures to the iCloud, erase from the iPhone and bang away some more. With iTunes Share coming at the end of October, the need for local storage drops greatly so it’s hard to justify the premium asked for the 32gB and 64gB iPhones 4S models. Maybe if you like to carry a lot of games on your iPhone more memory makes sense.

More snaps and field feedback appear in Part III.