I regularly read how good smartphone cameras are and that most of the time there is little reason to carry round a heavy bag full of digital SLRs and lenses. This may be true in certain situations and for certain types of photography but is definitely not true if you are shooting sports or are shooting in low light for example.

This does of course rely on you having a half decent smart phone which, until recently, I did not have. I am now using a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini which has an 8MP rear facing camera. The S4 Mini is far from being a top of the range phone but is relatively modern and so I decided to try it out while out with the family in Saltaire the other week and came across a classic car show.

Overall I am quite pleased with the image quality though I have touched the images up in Photoshop to get the desired contrast.

The main issue I have with these shots is there was quite a large amount of flare which I suppose is not only because of the limitations of the lens but also down to the large amount of reflected light on this subject matter. I have tried to minimise this flare in post-processing.

Of course having a fixed lens with awkward controls is never going to be as good as having a dedicated camera which has been ergonomically optimised purely for taking photos but in decent lighting conditions I know I can get decent images with my smartphone.The shutter lag is still very noticeable and in low light the noise is way beyond unacceptable but if I am out without my SLR then at least I still have something which could take a decent pic. It is certainly not worth carrying around my old compact digital camera.