The iPhone was made to take pictures at Arches. Look at the colors in the photos. Every one I’ve posted so far has come from my iPhone.

And autostitch, a paid program I spent $1.99 on, has done a fabulous job on the panoramas (see Landscape Arch and Delicate Arch panoramas). I just take the pictures, tell Autostitch which ones to blend, and it does. So handy!

As a Posterous blogger, I use their app to create galleries, which instantly tweets it, puts it on Facebook, and adds the pictures to Flickr. It’s incredibly easy.

Where the iPhone doesn’t perform as well are the low contrast shots. Double Arch looks beautiful. The red of the rock, the blue of the sky … ahhh.

But look at Landscape Arch. Nothing pops. Delicate Arch suffers a bit too.

Mary, using her super nice camera, has pictures where the cloudy skies look dramatic and add to the photo. Not here.

The other big downside is no zoom. The iPhone is great for Arches National Park because you can get so close. Pictures of Zion or Monument Valley really failed. Mary’s camera, with a 200 zoom, was obviously the clear winner there.

But mine also weighed practically zilch, and her’s is quite heavy (I hauled the water so it worked out even).

Seeing the photos I captured on the phone, I’m very happy with the quality. It’s functionally as good as the point and shoot camera I used a few years ago, with the benefits of being pocket-sized and able to play music too.