I love taking pictures. I’ve been a fairly serious photo hobbyist since leaving college with a degree in photojournalism but a job as a reporter. I spend a fair amount of time following the happenings in the world of photography - though I’ll admit I prefer the “good old days” when photos were printed in a darkroom and not on a desktop printer.

I’ve never been a fan of the point-and-shoot camera, so I’m not sure how well positioned I am to judge this. But here’s a short article at wired.com that raises an interesting question following the release of the latest iPhone. Basically, the author suggests that the growing quality of cell phone cameras may soon be enough to satisfy the people who use the cheaper pocket cameras.

There are of course many things the iPhone camera doesn’t do. It doesn’t have a flash (although low-light pictures and video look surprisingly good), it has no optical zoom and it doesn’t have a dozen auto modes. But that is missing the point, and the point is that the 3GS camera is deliberately limited, but what it does do, it does well enough to make you leave your camera at home.

You don’t have to travel too far (just spend an afternoon at the Arch) to find droves of people using their cell phones as cameras. But I suspect a lot of those people are only using their camera phones because they are convenient. If they didn’t have them, they’d just buy postcards rather than carry a camera.

But how many people with even a mild interest in taking photographs would actually choose a cell phone camera over a point-and-shoot camera - even one at the lower end of the price spectrum?