Hi Riaan - Happy New Year.
I didn't realise that such a system had already been available - but then, I didn't ever have a cellphone camera before this one. I'm getting a bit tired of mine, though. I washed the car this morning because it wasn't that brilliant, and the lack of sunshine allowed me to get it dry without the hard-water streaking the sun loves to create. So, when it got bright again after lunch, I thought I'd wait until later in the evening and try a few more cellpix of the car near sunset. Which I tried to do. Frankly the overexposure was terrible, and I saw no way of cutting back. Because of my position, I could actually see the image on the screen this time, and the frustration of not being able to change exposure was making me go slightly mad. A lot of wasted driving, then.
I then went off to do some shopping, and have a coffee. After the coffee I went back to the carpark which, by this time, was in shade. So, out came the cell once more, and two quick shots. When I got home, having completely forgotten to do the shopping, I was a little more pleased with the exposure, but then I discovered another problem: the lens is so wide-angled that even stepping back a bit and cropping doesn't really avoid awful distortion. One shot, which I've done a little bit of work with, reveals this fault quite well: a side view of the car from just a little bit off-centre makes the thing look like it's bent in the middle - the two wheels are so noticeably different in scale that it looks ridiculous!
If I can get it finished this evening I'll add it to this post as an attachment just to show the problem. Okay - that's done; added some clone and blur to lose a few vans etc. but that doesn't change the problems!
Frankly, I think the bother with these instruments is more than the experiments are worth.
;-(
Rob C