What's the deal with all the hating on mobile phone camera pics? It occurs to me that there's absolutely no valid reason for this.

Let's take my mobile for example - it has a 2.0 meg camera, fixed focal length of something like 6mm. It's a light secure box with a hole in the front, as cameras have been since camera-time immemorial. It is, in fact, technically far superior to the first cameras.

So why can't I take a perfectly good picture with a fixed 6mm lens camera, regardless of the fact that it lives inside my cellphone?

Is it because the lens is no good? Well, let's look around and see the popularity of Holgas and the like. The images from these cameras are "cool," not despite the fact that they produce shitty pictures, but often because they produce shitty pictures. Shabby-chic dictates that polaroids are "cool," even though they are actually shitty in technical terms - and what's with fakey polaroids? It's only my opinion but that has the odour to me of pretentious pseud nonsense. It's just a white frame with a fat bottom - get over it. My cell phone certainly produces better quality images than a regular polaroid. A 6mm focal length certainly gives you a pretty sharp image with such a truncated hyperfocal distance (yeah - I am throwing in techincal jargon to appear to strengthen my case. It's still true though )

Is it because the final image is limited in size? Maybe, but so what? There is a long tradition in fine art of miniatures, so this in itself is not a legitimate objection. Finely crafted miniatures are in fact extremely collectible, and unless you are going to produce a large print (and are you? really?) it doesn't actually matter.

It seems to me that there are two reasons why people hate mobile phone camera pictures - the first is that the kind of pictures taken with them are often the myspace type - I don't think I need to elucidate, since I'm sure everybody knows what I mean. But myspace pics are produced with a far wider range of cameras - including and perhaps especially "toy" cameras, and this is not an argument in itself against mobile phone photography.

The second is camera snobbery - the belief that your camera ought to be "worthy of art" before you have a right to be taken seriously. This is manifestly gibberish. One artist famously said that he could produce a fine drawing with a muddy boot on a clean surface, and he was right - it's about the artist far more than it's about the materials (I can buy the most expensive brush in the world but how much will it improve my painting?)

Anyway, that's my thought for today. There's no legitimate reason why the right person can't take a fine photograph with a 2 meg camera fized at 6mm.

In fact, you have a far better chance of doing so than with your trendy toy camera. But you won't be allowed to hang with the cool kids

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