The photos Americans are taking with their camera-ready mobile phones appear to fall into two categories: On-the-fly portraits of life in all its furious motion, and images of dubious quality that can charitably be labeled as "modern art." This latter category might be the fault of the person holding the camera-phone, but Kodak's chief executive suggests another culprit.
Dan Carp, speaking at a major wireless confab in New Orleans yesterday, said that cell phone cameras still fall short in practical areas such as battery life and printing capabilities, according to The Wall Street Journal's article on his talk. But Carp also said that the industry must do a better job of meeting customers' needs in the area of "image quality." Otherwise, he predicted, camera phones will fade into niche obscurity, the Journal said.
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It seems the king of Kodak is saying don't expect people to become better photographers, just make the camera take better pictures.
Is that asking a lot of the camera? It's true that the unofficial merger of mobile phones and digital cameras so far has produced photographs that don't always measure up to what "real" cameras can do. Never mind all that, though. If the technology doesn't work properly, don't mold the customer to it -- mold it to the customer.
How to solve the image quality problem has bedeviled equipment makers since daguerreotypes were the "in" thing nearly two centuries ago. Photography is at once a skill practiced by venerated artists and a pastime enjoyed by millions of amateurs, often using the same equipment. The reason that the artists reach their vaunted positions is because they have learned to make the machine reproduce exactly -- or almost exactly -- what their eyes see.
But for the rest of us, we have to rely on our own fumbling skills, if any, as well as a good dose of luck. Consequently, the photography industry tries hard to meet us halfway. It seems Carp could have made his comments 105 years ago as a way of introducing the Brownie, which cost $1 in 1900 dollars and is widely credited with making photography popular.
Electric Youth
While Carp told the wireless industry what it needs to do about improving camera technology, fellow keynote speaker Sean "P. Diddy" Combs gave the assembled execs and flacks a lecture on anthropology.
"Combs told the crowd of tech executives that youth culture and Hip-Hop in particular, was responsible for the boom in the wireless business," AllHipHopNews.com reported. "'The culture has become the dominant influence on youth culture today,' Combs explained. 'It's that culture that has been the first to embrace new technology. First the pager, then the cell phone and now it's the picture/video phones.' Combs stated that Hip-Hop culture specifically, has generated billions of dollars for the wireless industry each year, through ringtones, ringbacks, content and other offerings available to the hundreds of millions of wireless users around the globe."
And lest you think that the multitalented rapper, producer and fashion house chief can't talk the industry talk, think again. Combs apparently has mastered the corporate lingo that it takes to get the suits to understand what you're saying: "[We need] standard formats, standard rights and standard transaction methods to make it easy for every kid with a phone to know, use and buy."
People's Party Line
The wireless phone knows no ideology. Here in America we're concerned about photo and video quality on our phones, while over in Russia the Communists are trying to figure out how to program the Internationale as their ringtone.
