The cell phone has replaced the point-and-shoot camera.

If you have an older phone, its cam­era is prob­a­bly not very good, but if you’ve bought a recent smart phone, you now know how good a cell phone’s cam­era can be.

I’ve always been a pro­po­nent of small dig­i­tal cam­eras. (My sec­ond, in about 2002, was a tiny Sony that was incred­i­bly sim­ple to use. I still love Sony cam­eras — my cur­rent non-cell-phone cam­era is a Sony.) The eas­ier a cam­era is to use, the more often you’ll take pho­tos. And if it’s small and light enough, you will carry it in your pocket, thus increas­ing your chances of not miss­ing a shot.

Soft­ware is the biggest rea­son why smart­phone cam­eras rule pho­tog­ra­phy today. I took the pho­tos below with my iPhone and used the Dynamic Light app to add effects. B is way over the top, but the fil­ters make the pic­ture a lot more inter­est­ing. I applied fil­ters with a lit­tle more care to cre­ate D. You might argue that C (the orig­i­nal) is bet­ter, but I like the more dra­matic result of D.

And then there is the abil­ity to share your pho­tos. With a reg­u­lar cam­era, it takes a lot of work to share a photo with your friends. With a smart­phone app, it’s just a few clicks away. Cre­at­ing art is great, but shar­ing art is even better.

In-phone photo apps are extremely easy to use. A pro­fes­sional using Pho­to­shop would spend ten times the effort to gain a sim­i­lar result. And yes, a “real” cam­era will give an ama­teur pho­tog­ra­pher bet­ter results, at least for the orig­i­nal. But again, the has­sle of lug­ging around a huge cam­era will cause many lost shots — and mem­o­ries of life events.

Another photo app I enjoy is Cam­era Awe­some, if only because of the fun mes­sages is pro­vides while the image is pro­cess­ing. “Carmeliz­ing kraken tenacles.”

Go forth and have fun with a smart phone, if you are able.