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The Acer CloudMobile S500 sports an 8 megapixel primary camera, putting it on a par with the similarly priced HTC One S and even the higher end Samsung Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5. But of course, megapixel count isn't everything.
You can change the scene mode, though the options are rather limited, with just panorama, HDR, low light and continuous shooting on offer.
You can also change the white balance, brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness and turn the flash on or off. There aren't any options for manually adjusting the ISO, though.
Beyond that there are a variety of effects to play with, such as Watercolour, Cartoon and Sepia. Some of them have fun results, but in general they won't be very useful for taking proper pictures.
When taking a picture you can either tap to focus or have the camera automatically focus, and there's a slider to zoom in on a subject.
What really struck us when using it was just how fast it is - standard pictures are taken almost instantly, enabling you to fire off loads in quick succession.
This is great when you want to catch something time sensitive or just want to take a lot of photos.
Even in panorama or HDR mode it's generally pretty speedy, taking no more than a few seconds before it's ready to shoot again.
You can also take pictures while filming, which is a feature that has started to filter into high-end phones but still isn't commonplace.
It can be really useful, though, if you want to capture both photos and video of something.
Picture quality on the Acer CloudMobile S500 is generally pretty good.
It's not up to the standards of the iPhone 5 or the 12 megapixel Sony Xperia S, but it beats the similarly priced Samsung Galaxy Nexus and seems fairly comparable to the HTC One S.
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Landscapes are quite detailed, with neither the foreground nor background suffering too much.
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Colours can sometimes appear a little muted.
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The camera can focus quite well even during close-ups, avoiding much blurring.
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Fast moving objects can become a little blurred, but considering there's no sport or action mode, the Acer CloudMobile S500 doesn't do too bad.
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Using the software zoom is as underwhelming as you might expect.
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The camera struggles in the dark and the resulting images are noisy, but not a total write off.
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Images really pop out of the screen when shot with HDR mode on.
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Panoramas are handled well and are quick and easy to take.
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Bright artificial light gives the image an unpleasant yellow tinge.
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Without flash, dark rooms come out noisy and blurred.
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Flash considerably improves dark images, but noise is still present.
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Watercolour mode
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Cartoon mode. These effects are fun, but of limited usefulness.
