[corresation]

but photojournalism has never been about the capabilities of the camera

Fast frame rate. Very bright lens (e.g. f1.4). Large, high-sensitivity sensor.

It is very much about the capabilities of the camera, because the truth is that lesser cameras miss most shots, especially in a moving situation where you get a momentary window of opportunity. The iPhone camera may get there eventually, but in that situation right now the failure rate to get a shot is going to be incredibly high (obviously a chance is better than none -- the camera you have in your hand is better than the one at home and all -- but we're comparing to ready to go photojournalists).

We shall see how this decision plays out, but personally I think it is a horrible choice because it removes one of the few remaining differentiators between old media and the citizen news, which is that generally in the former you could find great, unique pictures by professionals who know what they're doing.

[sk5t]

You're right on target about the iPhone's unsuitability for photojournalism. There's the horrendous shutter lag, inability to control aperture/sensitivity/shutter speed to any meaningful degree--I can make all these adjustments using dedicated controls on my D3 without taking my eye out of the viewfinder. A big storage buffer, fast frame rate, and removable, redundant storage modules and replaceable batteries also remain essential. Oh, and interfacing with lighting systems, and of course proper lenses.

In a dynamic/dangerous situation, you need to get on the viewfinder and crank away on continuous-high shutter, and you'll take 200x the photos of even an ambitious iPhone user. Now think that out of 1,000 frames, maybe 2 will be head-and-shoulders above the rest... these are probably frames that the iPhone user had a vanishingly small opportunity to capture at all.

[corresation]

It would make for an interesting (and almost certainly viral) test to concoct artificial scenarios of a "newsworthy" event, having participants armed with each type of capture device. Instructing them that something important is going to happen in a few moments (already giving them more information than they would usually have) and then having a staged shoot out go through the scene, or a pretend robbery, etc.