Sometimes it takes a tragedy to recognize a cultural shift.

Much like Abraham Zapruder's highly-scrutinized home movie footage of President John F. Kennedy's assassination ushered in an age of TV media dominance in 1963, camera phone photos of on-the-spot happenings after the London terrorism incidents this July highlighted the increasing ubiquity of camera phones

Media organizations from the BBC to Time Warner's CNN have started asking the public for photos of breaking news. And Scoopt, a Scotland-based, privately owned startup, is prepared to help these amateur photographers see a profit.

"We saw that news organizations were soliciting [photographs] from the public, but not paying," said Kyle MacRae, co-founder and managing director of Scoopt. "That's simply wrong. If it's worth publishing, they should be paid."

The company offers brokering services between so-called "citizen photojournalists" and desk editors in media companies' newsrooms. MacRae, a former journalist, takes the safety of Scoopt's members seriously and is careful to provide ethical advice and legal guidelines on the Web site.

Scoopt members must sign an initial member contract, as well as a separate disclosure form for each submission indicating the photo is authentic, and that they did not break laws or put themselves in danger in the pursuit of the picture. The contract guarantees photographers their share of the money within 30 days after Scoopt receives payment from the news organization.

MacRae said 1,400 people have signed contracts, and more than 650 pictures have been submitted. He estimated that 75per cent of the images are taken with camera phones. The company can't make profit projections, but Scoopt will earn 50per cent of whatever the sale price of the photo.

"This is a whole new territory," MacRae said. "No one knows how much a picture will be worth."

Scoopt actively discourages paparazzi-type photos, preferring breaking news of the right-time, right-place variety. The database launched shortly before the bombings but hasn't sold any images yet.

Professional photojournalists are taking note of the citizen-journalist phenomenon but don't fear obsolescence. Alex Jones, staff photographer of McAllen, Texas newspaper The Monitor, acknowledged that some of the photos of the London bombings were effective, but said training and experience are what separate the professional from the amateur.

"I use the analogy of working with [traditional] film cameras in school: I might use a digital camera now, but all my hours in the darkroom taught me a lot about composition and development," Jones said.

"More power to them. But they are not a threat."

What could become obsolete are low-end digital cameras.

In a study released last week by ABI Research, analyst Kenneth Hyers predicted that within two years camera phones will surpass the market share of lower-end digital cameras. Hyers' report also indicated that 1.3-megapixel camera phones will become the standard, overtaking more common VGA (vector graphic array-- with image resolution of up to 640-by-480 pixels) phones by early 2006.

"These days when there's some sort of event, numerous people's first thought is to pull out their camera phones," Hyers said. "The transition to megapixel cameras will make [these pictures] far more than just blogging. They can make extremely acceptable 4-inch-by-6-inch printable images."

Last year, Mitsubishi, Sharp and Samsung began producing three and four megapixel camera phones for the Japanese and South Korean market. Presently, none are available in Europe or the U.S., but Nokia's highly anticipated N90, a two-megapixel multimedia phone, should be available in the U.S. this month. Nokia anticipates the N90 will retail for about $700, though Internet retailers price it around $950. With most mobile providers charging about $300 for their upper-tier phones, will Americans be willing to shell out the bucks for the N90?

What is clear is the strength of camera phone sales. Research firm Strategy Analytics says 257 million camera phones, or 38 per cent of total mobile phone sales, were sold worldwide in 2004, compared with 84 million, or 16 per cent of total sales, in 2003.

InfoTrends, a research and analysis company, estimates that, by 2008, global camera phone sales will top 650 million. Markets in Asia account for more than half of these sales projections. In the U.S., consumers typically replace their mobile phones every two years.

Cell phone service providers are less convinced that camera phones are preparing to take over the market. Some said that without true wireless interoperability in the US, camera phones' popularity will always be limited. Unlike those in Europe and Asia, wireless networks in the U.S. are not integrated, and many carriers can't accept images or text from one another.

Verizon Wireless has been fairly aggressive in pursuing interoperability with other carriers, but even so, spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said the wireless infrastructure isn't equipped to deal with large-scale megapixel data transmission.

He said there is an upper-tier market interested in better-quality megapixel camera phones, but Verizon will continue to carry both VGA camera phones and non-camera phones.

ABI's Hyers agreed that non-camera phones will always hold a place in the market: People (especially in developing nations) who only use their phones to make calls and people working in sensitive sectors where embedded cameras might breach security will continue to need this option. Still, he remains confident that megapixel camera phones will prevail.

"We will probably reach a ceiling where 80per cent of all cell phones will have embedded cameras," he said.