Yesterday, Apple announced their newest iPhone, the 4S. While many people were hoping for more significant upgrades, the one area that was greatly improved upon was the camera. The new iPhone 4S boasts a staggering 8 Megapixel camera. I say staggering because we are talking about a cell phone. That’s only 4 megapixels short of my full frame digital SLR!  The all new custom lens has five precision elements which allows for a sharper image. Combine that with the ultra wide f/2.4 aperture, and you have one seriously versatile lens. The iPhone 4S also records full 1080p HD video, and comes with real time video image stabilization. I’m not saying this phone is going to replace your professional grade camera, but it’s certainly bridging the gap in terms of it’s capabilities. The iPhone 4S is available October 14. Pricing starts at $199 for the 16GB model.

Pull out your iPhone in moonlight, candlelight, or under little white lights. Or shoot in bright light. Like at the beach. iPhone captures low-light and lots-of-light moods beautifully. So darks aren’t too dark and lights aren’t too light. Even action shots are less blurry. The next-generation backside illumination sensor is engineered with increased sensitivity and a shorter exposure time to achieve the same scene brightness — colors are less saturated and you’ll see more details. And the refined LED flash automatically kicks in when it’s needed (but you can always turn it off)

It’s not just an amazing camera. It’s an on-the-fly editing studio. Crop, rotate, enhance, and remove red-eye right on iPhone — without the help of photo editing software on a computer. Then organize your shots into albums, so you know where your favorites are when you want to show them off.

Tap HDR and take a photo. iPhone 4S captures three photos from that one shot, each with a different exposure level. Then it layers the shots together to create a single photo that combines the best parts of each shot. The wide range of light is more accurate in an HDR photo. And iPhone saves both the original and the HDR photo in your Camera Roll. You can clearly see the difference.

With Photo Stream in iCloud, new photos you take are automatically sent to all your devices, so you can show them off on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC.1 Post them to the web the second you take them, and they’ll be the envy of your Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter world. Share them on your HDTV with AirPlay.2 Or send your photos through iMessage or MMS. Or go old-school and send them in an email.

Link: Apple iPhone 4S Camera Specifications