Hero camera and tips

I am a fairly recent upgrade from the original Samsung Instinct.  I am happy with the phone overall, but the camera has some big differences.  I am not sure what causes them though.  I know the Hero is a 5MP versus the Instinct had a 2MP I believe.  I assume everyone knows that you can go to Sprint's website and set up your Sprint Picture Mail account.  The Instinct had an option listed as "Upload" that would upload the picture you took directly to your Picture Mail Account.  The Hero will not do that.  But, you can bring up your Menu, choose Share and then Messages and send the picture to your OWN phone number and it will upload it to the Sprint Picture Mail Account that way.  When you go to your account to look at the photos, they are smaller images than the Instinct took.  Does anyone have any explanation for that?  I haven't seen anyone mention uploading to the Sprint Picture Mail Account on here and don't know if anyone uses it, but I do.  You can also take pictures from your computer and put them on the Sprint Picture Mail Account site and then send them to your phone to use as wallpapers or just have in your album.  I really like the Picture Mail Account they have for our use.