Sprint and HTC unleashed a bunch of journalists in the city of New Orleans to test out the HTC Evo's camera in the field. Like the HTC One series of phones, the Evo 4G LTE has HTC's ImageSense camera software and the HTC ImageChip, which supports a which supports an f2.0 aperture and a handful of different shooting modes, including High Dynamic Range (HDR), Macro, and Panorama. HTC also claims that One cameras have an almost no-lag shutter speed. In my hands-on tests, I found the no-lag claim to be pretty much true. My photos taken in automatic mode looked excellent, with good colors and crisp details. Most of the shooting modes worked quite well, too, especially the macro mode (see example photos).

HDR made my photos look a bit spooky--I prefer the HDR mode on the iPhone 4S's camera. You can also add Instagram-like filters to your photos, but I don't think they look very good. A better bet would be to add a third-party app like, well, Instagram or Pixlr, which has even more filters.

This Evo also has a very cool continuous shooting feature, which lets you take multiple pictures at a time. You can then use the camera app's Best Photo feature, which will automatically pick the cleanest photos out of the group. You can use continuous shooting with both the onscreen shutter button and the physical key. It is a little sensitive, however. When I was snapping photos from a tour bus in New Orleans, I accidentally took multiple pictures without meaning to.

The Evo has a dedicated camera shutter button, which is always a plus, as it helps stabilize the phone before you take your photo. Annoyingly, you can't press the button when the phone is locked to jump directly to the camera app.