Input devices based on direct touch have replaced traditional ones and become the mainstream interactive technology for handheld devices. Although direct touch interaction proves to be easy to use, its problems, e.g. the occlusion problem and the fat finger problem, lower user experience. Camera-based mobile interaction is one of the solutions to overcome the problems. There are two typical interaction styles to generate camera-based pointing interaction for handheld devices: move the device or move an object before the camera. In the first interaction style, there are two approaches to move a cursor's position across the handheld display: move it towards the same direction or the opposite direction which the device moves to. In this paper, the results of a comparison research, which compared the pointing performances of three camera-based pointing techniques, are presented. All pointing techniques utilized input from the rear-facing camera. The results indicate that the interaction style of moving a finger before the camera outperforms the other one in efficiency, accuracy, and throughput. The results also indicate that within the interaction style of moving the device, the cursor positioning style of moving the cursor to the opposite direction is slightly better than the other one in efficiency and throughput. Based on the findings, we suggest giving priority to the interaction style of moving a finger when deploying camera-based pointing techniques on handheld devices. Given that the interaction style of moving the device supports one-handed manipulation, it also worth deploying when one-handed interaction is needed. According to the results, the cursor positioning style of moving the cursor towards the opposite direction which the device moves to may be a better choice.