Making the call on digital images

If you haven't already bought a digital camera, there's a good chance that when you do you'll be just as likely to use it to say "Hello?" as "Cheese!"

That's because camera phones were a big hit in 2003 and are expected to ring up plenty of sales in future years, too — affecting the way people take pictures, share images and get prints.

It may even springboard folks to other digital imaging products.

"There will be a huge proliferation of images conceivably if this isn't just a fad that people are buying these and not using them," Kristy Holch, principal for the InfoTrends Research Group Inc., said at the recent International CES consumer electronics expo in Las Vegas. "If they're actually taking the pictures and using them, it could have a huge impact (on the digital imaging industry)."

"It's all fairly chaotic right now, as you take some of the predictable patterns of how people have actually consumed and shared images over the past 100 years. That's all up for change at this point," said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of the graphic business division of Adobe.

"Many people will continue to print images, but I think with wireless and with digital, there are patterns of behavior that fundamentally we don't all understand, and images are moving beyond just personal memories to systems of communications, systems of community."

While camera phones have their problems, consumers have found them attractive because they are both easy to use and handy.

"It really is a new kind of visual communications," said James Joaquin, executive vice president of Kodak's Ofoto. "It's a more empowering way of sharing your pictures. And that's why we take pictures, to share them and preserve memories, and if the camera is on the phone, you can capture it because you always have your phone with you."

Lamkin said camera phones have swayed the balance between cameras' traditional uses: creating personal memories or documenting something. Now people use their camera phones to document the type of fitting they need before they go to a hardware store or the type or roof tiles they're considering buying.

"I don't need a stand-alone camera for those things that are not trying to optimize the quality of one image, but much rather trying to capture the sense of an event or trying to document an event," he said.