Henry Hagnäs

Book review: The Best Camera (is the one that's with you)

Chase Jarvis is a creative and talented photographer that is very active and popular on the Internet. Personally I don’t follow everything he does but my brother is a big fan and has shown me some of his best work. His latest project has been the combination of an iPhone application for taking and editing pictures on the go, aswell as a book to present them. All the pictures in the book have been taken and edited with his iPhone over the course of the last year. The application, along with the social community built around its users, has gotten alot of attention.

I ordered the book as a birthday present for my brother (at his suggestion) but had to thumb through it before giving it away…

The whole idea around the book is, like the title suggests, that the best camera is the one that is with you. Chase lives a way more interesting life than I do, with pictures from Alaska to Chile and so on but also presents them in the book very nicely. The application has lots of very “artsy” filters which are almost annoying to the layperson, I think with all the travel and eye for good opportunities he has the book could’ve been just as good without all the effects. That said, it’s a cool application (that should be used with moderation).

What the book does best is, however, to inspire you to use whatever camera you have at hand and look for fun photo opportunities in your daily life. The pictures are just Chase’s examples and by showing his pictures he in effect gives you permission to take pictures with your own crappy camera and reminds us that its the content that matters - not the megapixels and lenses.

Now I just hope that someone writes a similar application to the Maemo-platform so I have something to play around with on my N900, when it comes..