Answering my own question: PhoneGap is awesome in many ways, so there are numerous arguments to defend it. Most notably, the whole UI needs to be coded only once and being Javascript and CSS there are many developers who don't need to learn another language. Don't underestimate the value of "easiness", if you need to code a relatively simple app, don't bother to go native. PhoneGap will just do fine.
In my case, the app I wanted to build revolves around taking photos. So I don't use the camera in some rare use cases to spice up the user experience, but it is rather the most important part of the app. In this scenario I guess the recommended approach is to go native. That's what I did in the end.
Another approach would have been using a PhoneGap Plugin called "Foreground Camera".
PROs: Seamless photo taking in the integration. The user actually takes the picture INSIDE your app.
CONs: By default you lose ALL of the camera's capabilities (zoom, front camera, flash, etc.), so you would need to make a serious coding effort to implement some of those features manually.