The Best Camera...

Is the One That's With You

In addition to being a great quote, this is the title of a cool little 6"x6" book, The Best Camera Is the One That's with You, by Chase Jarvis.

All the photos in the book were taken by Chase on his iPhone. Granted, Chase isn't your average cell phone photographer. But his book is inspiring for it's examples of photos that are not digital SLR sharp, but do a great job of evoking a feeling or mood. It makes me want to quit blowing off my cell phone camera and actually use it! Chase did post-process some of his photos in his iPhone app (which is conveniently for sale for $2.99), but I still think it's impressive that he didn't use Photoshop or any other high-end photo software.

Some of the photos remind me of photos taken with old film cameras. There is a school of thought that says that imperfect photos taken with old film cameras (like those from the old Brownie cameras) actually capture the "truth" of the subject more than today's super high-res, exact-replica cameras. (Some examples of Brownie photos.)

Here are a few examples from his book that especially caught my eye:

In addition, there are several quotes from the book that I think are classics:

There's an old adage in photojournalism: "f/8 and be there." Now we don't even have to remember the "f/8 part".

If you don't think you can take a picture of something with a certain camera, you're playing by the rules.

People usually ignore the camera that's built into your phone because they consider it useless. That comes in handy.

The dirtiest secret in photography: shoot a hell of a lot of pictures to get the ones you want.