My father in law, lucker though he is, happened upon loads of boxes of cool camera equipment a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been dying to have a rummage through these boxes since I heard about them and now I’m back with a couple of new toys! The box even contained my very first SLR camera (Minolta Dynax 500si), which was a trip down memory lane.

The main prize is a Nikon fit Tokina 60-300mm ƒ4-5.6. I’ve never relied on manual focus for regular shooting before, so this will be an education for me. Upon first use, I have incredibly shaky hands! I stacked it on three extension tubes, and it’s pretty nifty for macro. Just need to dig out my Raynox MSN-202 and we’ll be in business. Does anyone remember where I put this?

There was also a couple of mirage filter attachments and a Raynox XL 3000. I was really looking forward to the Raynox, but it seems to be only for video cameras and needs to be mounted about 3ft off the end of an SLR lens, so it’s a no-go. One day I’ll just punt on a fish-eye or something. Samyang do some cheap ones.

On to the relatively good stuff.

My new moviepeg also got delivered. On first inspection, the packaging is adorable (that’s right, I said it. Adorable) and the material they’ve used seems to be far superior to that of the iPad version. I don’t know about anyone else’s, but mine have all but petrified now and are basically useless. Post hoc ergo propter hoc though it may be, I’d say that Brendan took my comments on board. I might even go as far as to say that I’m basically the inspiration for the new material.

Visit mum, drive home, go to hospital, fall asleep next to dog, eat pizza, Simpsons, bed.

MEGAPIXELS! At last, we’ve got some megapixels. Anyone who’s anyone knows that if your camera doesn’t have megapixels coming out the wazoo, it’s not worth your precious time. So, now that the iPhone is rockin’ 5 whole megapixels, it’s automatically good. Because, a shitty, blurred, noisy photo is automatically better when it’s bigger.

I’m super-impressed with the quality of images coming out of the new iPhone. Yeah, there are probably better cameras you can put into a phone, but there aren’t better phones so that argument becomes kinda moot from my point of view. The way I like to test a decent quality camera is to take low-light photos with it. You’ll find that you can get a decent result with basically any camera if there’s abundant light, but how often do you get perfect light? Never, that’s how often.

So, on my sobering-up, American-Dad-watching journey home from Hove last night, I thought I’d see what sort of results I could get from the updated iPhone camera. I am pleasantly surprised with the results:

The first thing I noticed to my tastes is how noise is handled. Yes, the images got quite noisy, but the deviation from the true colour is much improved with this new camera. By contrast, by iPhone 3G would always throw purples into noise, making it look quite terrible. A lot of cameras do this; I don’t know why.

The image also appears quite stable. The (not always correct/intended) focal points are in focus, even with my rubbish trembling hand, which is another marked improvement on the previous phone.

The iPhone camera is now much quicker to respond. This is a huge advantage over even quite expensive point-and-shoots that I’ve had the displeasure of using. When I hit the shutter release, that’s when I want the photo taken – not in a few seconds. Charlotte’s Canon G9 is a huge offender for this, and phones I’ve used previously have been as well. One of the main reasons for my preference of SLRs over more consumer-aimed cameras (I know, who hasn’t got an SLR) is that the shutter responds instantly. This is the first (admittedly, not of many) non-SLR that has an acceptably immediate shutter release.

Whilst I could go further into the clarity of images compared with previous iterations, you can see all that from the photos. These points are the main, non-immediately-obvious reasons that the iPhone camera has vastly improved with iPhone 4. I even went out yesterday for the first time in nearly two years without taking my main camera with me.

I should point out that these images aren’t intended to be an exercise in “look at this beautiful photo I’m proud of”, more, “look at how well this performs in these conditions”.

If you’re wondering how I feel about my latest purchase, my SC-29 off-camera-flash-enabler, it looks a little like this:

If you’re wondering how Charlotte feels about it (and, indeed any other photography-related purchase I make), it looks something like this:

CLS is awesome, and and off-camera master gives you so much more freedom to experiment with shadows than using the built-in pop-up as the master. I am very pleased, and will be overusing this greatly in the near future. See more from this evening’s photoshoot at flickr.