I spent an hour or two on the UNSW campus this morning trying out the inbuilt camera of the Sony Ericsson C902 Cyber-shot phone, which I have had the use of for the last couple of months.

I have posted the results to a special Flickr set. The camera was set to daylight, landscape, and auto-focus mode for all these photos, and I did not make any adjustments (brightness or contrast, for example) before I uploaded them.

By way of a comparison you can view some earlier photos taken at UNSW with my Pentax Optio.

A few observations:

At full, or default size (2592 pixels wide by 1944 pixels high), the results are rather grainy. You’ll notice this if you view the full-size image of any of these photos. When I started reducing their size in Photoshop they looked a little sharper though.

The camera has a wide range of settings so it pays to be familiar with these and make the best selections, depending on the conditions (daytime or night), and the sort of photos (macro, landscape or portrait) you want, before taking any pictures.

It is also possible to reduce the megapixel resolution to three (3) or even one (1) from the default of five (5) if you wish. And remember more megapixels do not necessarily make for “better” photos.

There is a few seconds lag, or buffer, between shots - that is the delay before you can take another photo - but that should be fine for most situations. Fashion photographers who require 100 frames a minute should seek out another camera.

Considering the C902’s camera is part of a phone, and not the other way around, you’re not going to end up with a top-of-the-line camera, but it will still produce some good quality photos.

I see the C902 taking some great party, and dining-out sort of pictures, and it will certainly save you having to carry both a camera and a phone when you go out.