The humble mobile phone camera has come a long way since if first appeared; now being able to be used for video conferencing, glasses free 3D viewing, and still snapping that good off-the-cuff picture when on the move.

But how good are mobile phone cameras when compared to a DSLR, or in particular can the Apple iPhone camera match up to a DSLR when put to the test?

Well Steve Russell of Geekaphone decided to find out and placed the iPhone against his DSLR in a comparison test and compared the contrast between the devices to “emphasise the strengths and limitations of the iPhone camera.”

The article is fairly lengthy, so I’ll just summarise here and you can of course check out the full article by hitting up Steve’s website. So Steve lists the limitations of the iPhone camera as…

The iPhone user cannot control shutter speed, cannot control aperture setting, has no interchangeable lenses, image quality degrades in low light, no white balance control, the small lens limited producing quality prints bigger the 8 x 10, and is a 5 megapixel camera.

However the iPhone does appear to have one advantage, and that is its portability and is usually always with the user for those moments when that off-the-cuff picture opportunity turns up and is less intrusive when taking pictures than a DSLR and of course you can immediately email an image from the iPhone making the iOS device more convenient.

So there it is basically the iPhone and its camera are more convenient that carrying round a DSLR, but if you are really looking for that high quality picture than can print larger then the DSLR comes out tops.

Do you agree that the iPhone is a convenient way to take pictures or are you a dedicated DSLR user and wouldn’t use a mobile phone camera to capture the good images you’re after?