UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

Right, peripheral to authoring but I do occasionally need pictures.
My cunning plan was to get a phone on pay as you go, and all I'm really interested is how go is its camera and wifi
(Because it'll be out of signal, switched off for 90% of the time)

Is 5 megapixels good enough for photos for blogs, book covers and similar?

Jim wrote: "Right, peripheral to authoring but I do occasionally need pictures.
My cunning plan was to get a phone on pay as you go, and all I'm really interested is how go is its camera and wifi
(Because it..."

I think you could make do, although for book covers I start to worry. But surely someone on here has an old smartphone with a 5 megapix or better lying around that will do photos and wifi without having to get a plan from the phone company. Isn't there someone out there wanting to score some karma points by sending a fellow starving writer their old device they've just got lying around? (Or is it laying. Never can keep that straight. Patti will correct me if I'm wrong.)

Jim

5 megapixels should be fine for internet work. The bigger problem may be whether the phone camera can take the sort of pictures that you'd want to use. It's not just about the resolution. It's also about the zoom, the sensitivity to light and the controls.

Buying a camera for a phone is a bit like buying a car when all you need is a radio. You're paying a lot for stuff you aren't going to use. The cameras in phones aren't very good.

Instead you could pick up a basic camera for less money. Here's an 18 megapixel camera for just £29:

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/cameras-...

Or a much better equipped camera for £79:

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/cameras-...

Okay, so neither has wifi, but I'm not so sure that you need it. It's pretty easy to transfer photos to a PC.

I take on board the comments made about a proper camera.
Part of the cunning plan was that my current phone is over 10 years old, it's one of the first 'colour' ones and is impossible to read in sunlight (not that this is a common problem)
The sellotape holding it together it still pretty sturdy, and it lives switched off in a bag/pocket if I'm travelling, or a drawer when I'm at home.
So the thought was to replace it with a phone with a camera, still on pay as you go, because there is no way I'm having a contract. On chap persistently tried to sell me a phone which he said fit my bill. It was £110 (he might have been right, it might have been the one I needed)
But he was telling me I really ought to have this wonderful contract that would give me everything I would ever want. Given I had pointed out that I hadn't sent a text in two years and the current phone costs me £10 a year tops and doesn't get switched on every month he didn't seem to grasp the fact that eleven months into the contract I would have already spent more money than if I just bought the phone on pay as you go.

The reason for the wifi is that if our computer breaks down/has to be serviced, we have no access to our email or whatever. Having to drive round to a friends to scrounge ten minutes on their computer is a drag.
So the idea was that the phone would also enable me to at least keep up with email, and make sure I didn't miss anything important. Luckily going and checking on somebody else's PC meant that I didn't miss a meeting somebody set up at short notice.

Hence the cunning plan was to kill two birds with one stone, get the camera and emergency email device together. I set an arbitrary budget of £50 because I soon realised that sales staff normally found something just on the budget but admitted sadly my perfect choice was a mere £20 over the budget
Whatever figure you give as your budget :-)

I got a phone to use as pay as you go from Amazon, a Doogee that cost about £69, but there was a cheaper model

I have once used a tablet camera for a book cover (out soon) but I wanted a specific, ancient, grainy effect. Having said that, I have no idea how many mega pixels it has.

It's lying, David. Chickens lay.

Will wrote: "Jim

5 megapixels should be fine for internet work. The bigger problem may be whether the phone camera can take the sort of pictures that you'd want to use. It's not just about the resolution. It's..."

Modern phone cameras are excellent and often surpass stand alone cameras. My phone camera knocks my, none too cheap, camera into a hat.

But....if you have no need for a phone and everything then a camera will serve you better than a phone.
5MP is a bit of a misnomer as the quality of lens, sensor and processing make the actual MP irelevant. The first pro DSLR camera were only 5MP hit had excellent lenses attached.

Is 5MP sufficient? Take some pictures. Then print them at book covers size. Does it look good? Or does it look like little Johnny is doing his school project.

5MP is fine for 8x10, so book covers should be fine, though note the comments above. As an Internet backup, 4G may be handy. Our company supplier recommended buying PAYG smart phones from Argos, but you can save a bit on eBay, e.g. No name Chinese smart-phone

We bought an old iPhone off a friend who upgraded. The photos I post on Facebook are usually taken with it.
It's great to take travelling as it connects well to free wifi. It's 3G, which works better than 4G these days as most people are using 4G now. I paid £99 for it two years ago.

I'd suggest asking round your local friends and getting someone's cast off. Just move your current SIM into the new to you phone. If you do end up with an iPhone, any phone shop can trim the SIM card to size for you. iPhones need a smaller SIM card.

The sim card isn't an issue, because I don't care whether I keep my current number or not, nobody knows it. If I got an entirely new phone, I'd probably put three or four numbers into it manually and that would do.

Picking up something second hand sounds reasonable, my daughter dislikes her current phone but it's camera is better than her camera for the quality of pictures it takes and it's already hooked into my wifi :-)

My husband is a professional photographer, so my initial reaction is to yell 'get a proper camera!' but it does depend what you want it for.

The resolution from the phone would be fine for anything online. For a book cover, if you're doing a hard copy, then I really wouldn't reccomend using something you can just about get away with. The same goes if you hope to have work printed in magazines. A poor quality image will reflect on your words.

I'm talking of quality in terms of resolution. Obviously you need to get the picture in focus, properly framed etc whatever you use to take it on. A good phone camera should allow you to do that.

I confess to really enjoying the quality of the photos my S7 Edge takes - chose it specifically for that, but even on the minimum data plan through Three it's not a budget phone.

Not confident enough to attempt a book cover so sticking to Deranged Doctor for the next!

Had to phone somebody yesterday on the mobile. Got the message "You haven't got enough credit for sixty seconds."
So I was going to have to put some money on the damned thing. Anyway I wandered into EE and glanced around first. They had an alcatel pixi 4 with a four inch screen for £14.50 (but you had to get £20 of pay as you go credit at the same time)
So I decided that for £14.50 it was something I could play about with and get a feel for (and actually it was about the same price as the nokia when I bought it 10 years ago :-) )

Wow Jim! We may get you to enter the 21st century yet!

Maybe by the 22nd, lol

Are you feeling dizzy and light-headed Jim?

Gingerlily - Mistress Lantern wrote: "Are you feeling dizzy and light-headed Jim?"

No, my cap is wet from the constant drizzle and it provides a weighty and reassuring presence

Tim wrote: "Maybe by the 22nd, lol"

Why the frantic haste?

Patti (baconater) wrote: "Wow Jim! We may get you to enter the 21st century yet!"

I had thought of skipping it and perhaps going to the 24th directly (not passing GO but still somehow collecting my £200)

Jim wrote: "Patti (baconater) wrote: "Wow Jim! We may get you to enter the 21st century yet!"

I had thought of skipping it and perhaps going to the 24th directly (not passing GO but still somehow collecting m..."

By then £200 would be worth about 25p.

Then?

Sooner than that.

When does brexit take effect exactly?

By that time Europe won't exist any more. Countries will no longer be a concept, instead there will be Commercial Entities. You will no longer own anything but rent everything from Companies. There will only be Owners and Workers.

Patti (baconater) wrote: "Then?

Sooner than that.

When does brexit take effect exactly?"

Technically, when we hit the two year mark, that's it, brexit has happened and we're out. It doesn't matter whether parliament votes to reject the deal or various acts have been passed.
After all, parliament can vote to reject the deal but that doesn't mean that the EU has to offer us something different and it doesn't stop the clock, it's just posturing.

Gingerlily - Mistress Lantern wrote: "By that time Europe won't exist any more. Countries will no longer be a concept, instead there will be Commercial Entities. You will no longer own anything but rent everything from Companies. There..."

Sounds a bit cyberpunk :-)

Although, actually we might have more countries, Europe might be composed of independent states like Lombardy, Catalonia, Scotland, Brittany.
Companies suffer too many weaknesses, people rarely feel any loyalty to them at all and are perfectly willing to grass them up :-)

Ok, I may have to work on the concept a bit...

Dunno Jim. Japan has managed to make company loyalty almost a religion.

It worked for a while, anyway...

Jim wrote: "Patti (baconater) wrote: "Then?

Sooner than that.

When does brexit take effect exactly?"

Technically, when we hit the two year mark, that's it, brexit has happened and we're out. It doesn't mat..."

Doesn't mean anything to me personally. I've never not got a stamp in my passport when travelling in the EU. I loves the purty stamps!

Patti (baconater) wrote: "Dunno Jim. Japan has managed to make company loyalty almost a religion.

It worked for a while, anyway..."

I've been told that cynicism has set in

(I love the way that it always does :-) )

Oh, cynicism.

There's a fitting conversation for next week.

Patti (baconater) wrote: "Oh, cynicism.

There's a fitting conversation for next week."

I once said to somebody, "Forgive my cynicism, but in Agriculture it's an industrial disease"

They said, "No Jim, in agriculture it's an entry qualification."

Oh, very good.

Hey, where is the link to your latest blog post?

I think I saw a new one on Facebook?

Oh, nevermind.

This isn't the prawn thread.

Sorry, I need more coffee.

Gingerlily - Mistress Lantern wrote: "By that time Europe won't exist any more. Countries will no longer be a concept, instead there will be Commercial Entities. You will no longer own anything but rent everything from Companies. There..."

And Rollerball teams. Don't forget the Rollerball teams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVUxK1mNups

Patti (baconater) wrote: "Oh, nevermind.

This isn't the prawn thread.

Sorry, I need more coffee."

you do, I put it there ten hours ago :-)

but anyway, linguistic good taste https://jandbvwebster.wordpress.com/2...

I was asleep ten hours ago!

Patti (baconater) wrote: "I was asleep ten hours ago!"

I would ask the members of the jury to bear in mind that this was not in any way my fault!