IT WASN’T an intrusive, long-lens photo that embroiled Prince Harry in an international furore, but a seemingly innocent snapshot — proof that, these days, anyone with a camera phone can become an instant paparazzo.

How easy is it to snap a famous face? Armed with a camera phone and an invitation to a private viewing attended by celebrities, I tried my hand at it. And the answer is, it is not as easy as I expected.

For each picture I had to position myself at a not-so-discreet distance from the subject. And the phones tend to be a bit fidgety, taking four or five commands even to activate the picture function. Once I was able to do that, if the subject had not walked away after seeing me approach while fiddling with a phone, I could take the picture.

Since the picture quality from camera phones has yet to match that from dedicated cameras, most of my results were out of focus and a few were downright unrecognisable. Celebrities might be fairly safe from this generation of camera phones although, with the advance of technology, they probably won’t be for much longer.

But even now it should be possible to make money from such a hobby. Tabloid newspapers and celebrity magazines are bombarded by readers’ opportunist snaps of stars.

The News of the World and the Daily Mirror sometimes solicit entries from readers and some magazines, including Maxim, Loaded and Heat, have sections devoted to these pictures. Heat pays its amateur paparazzi £200 a snap.

With an estimated 7.5 million mobile camera phones bought in the UK and 80 million worldwide, they have surpassed DVD players as the fastestselling gadget ever, and analysts expect cameras to be standard in half of the mobiles on the market by 2008.

The backlash has already started and camera phones are banned from many large corporations, swimming pools and changing rooms around the world. In California, legislators have proposed a requirement that camera phones must emit an audible tone or flash a light when a picture is taken.

Celebrities are already camera-phone conscious. Britney Spears reportedly had all mobiles confiscated at a promotional party in New York, the singer Prince agreed to grace the Embassy nightclub in London with an appearance only after his minders had frisked guests and Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, banned camera phones from his team’s Christmas party last year so that his players could relax in safety.

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