As some of you know, I maintain a food blog in which I try to have a lot of food porn … um … photos. Mix that with restaurant reviews/reports. The upshot is that I take the pics at restaurants with my iPhone. My iPhone 3GS. You know … the one with the (now) sucky camera. It sucks in low light conditions, producing grainy pics. It doesn’t have a flash. So dinners tend not to be too photogenic.

Enter the iPhone 4 with it’s low light sensor and flash (not to mention a 5MP sensor compared to the 3GS’ 3MP). I put off buying an iPhone4 for a long time (in Apple-years). I finally decided to go for it, in the name of journalistic integrity. And a desire to simply take more pictures. Sure, I have a better camera (5MB, glass optics, optical zoom, flash, etc) but it doesn’t fit in my pocket, not to mention it being unable to play Plants vs. Zombies.

So tonight before dinner, I stopped at the nearby (oh so deviously nearby) Apple Store and (with impressive efficiency from the staff) got an iPhone4. Since I a) wanted it for taking pictures, specifically in low lighting restaurants, and b) I had my iPhone 3GS in my pocket … I did a small exercise. At dinner (Cumin in Wicker Park … to be appear on CafeSnobisme) I took pictures of our dishes as I am wont to, with each phone. Here, side by side are the results. These are raw from the phones, uncropped and untweaked in anyway other than sizing.

All I can say is “Holy shit … that’s pretty good!”