Every time I see people lining up for a group shot via a point-and-shoot digital camera I feel like I have to tell them what they’re doing wrong or what could be better.

And it makes it worse that almost every time pictures are taken the results are reviewed immediately after, and in most cases verbalized. It’s about all I can take to listen to people review an image and complain about lighting or glare issues and not want to speak out to lend them a hand.

So when I went out on a cell phone purchasing mission last week I naturally had a hard time listening patiently to the salesman, who really didn’t know what he was selling in terms of the camera beyond the number of megapixels it possesses, as he tried to talk up his product.

I was somewhat impressed to find most new smart phones come equipped with 8 megapixel cameras.

Just years ago you were doing well to have a 3 megapixel camera on your phone. Those new cameras produce images with more pixels than my sports-shooting work camera — a Nikon D1H.

But I wasn’t quick to get too excited about the camera phones’ capability. For years now, non-cellular point-and-shoot cameras have boasted far more pixels than many elder professional cameras, but most don’t offer the manual manipulation a really expensive camera offers.

Like some of the lower-end, point-and-shoot digitals, cell phone cameras typically have simple settings — or so I thought. That was until I started reading up on my phone and discovered there is a manual options for ISO — one of the three main things alongside aperture and shutter speed that, simply put, control light levels, depth of field and the shooter’s ability to stop moving objects when manipulated in concert.

So when I found out the phone I purchased didn’t have the 8 megapixel camera, but had a 5 megapixel camera instead, I was not depressed.

My work camera maxes out at 6 megapixels. To be able to say I’m shooting anywhere close to that and that I can manually control some of the aspects of the camera on my cell phone is incredible.

Of course, I know the camera on my phone isn’t remotely close to as good as the real thing. It won’t do as well as camera-only cameras in low-light situations, the area all but the absolute most expensive professional cameras struggle the most. And while it has manual settings, it certainly doesn’t have as wide a range of settings as the big bad Nikon.

I still plan to play with my new toy to find out exactly how much it can handle. You never know — it might come in handy one day when the Nikon’s battery, which was invented some time before Christ, decides not to cooperate.

If you see me on a sideline flashing a cell phone around, it might not be because I’m searching for reception. I may be in the middle of executing plan B.