I was at a sci-fi convention over the weekend. It was my first one, so naturally I wanted many photos. My experiment was to use just the iPhone. The results? Not great. With iOS 3 (can we call it that, or is it iPhone OS 3.0?), the camera was slow, but some magic made nearly every photo clear, sharp and amazing.

Leo Laporte (of TWiT) had an interesting suggestion on what used to happen. Taking a photo would cause the iPhone to take several photos at the same time. Then, an algorithm would process the photos and pick the cleanest, sharpest, best looking one and save it to the camera roll. This process is what caused the iPhone camera to be “slow” in comparison. iOS 4 makes the camera much faster (x2 or x3 faster, even), but it feels like every photo is blurry.

Every lighting condition, every situation, every object in the frame - I had to take two or three shots to capture it clearly. Even still, I’m not pleased with the quality of my photos. The gentle quivering of my hand caused photos to be ruined. Even my “clean” photos are blurry.

The pictured photos are of a mostly stationary person on the elevator with a silly shirt tagline as an example. It took five photos to get the “clear one” you see in on the right. I’m convinced that iOS 3 would have been one photo. Has anyone else noticed this? Seriously. I’m pissed.