Carrier planes not good enough for aerial reconnaissance?

[Richard Aigner]

"Battling the Elements", Harold A. Winters, p. 221:
"Of immediate importance to American planners was that only larger land based planes, and not carrier-based aircraft, could provide the stable platform needed for quality air-photo reconnaissance." (In the chapter dealing with the attack on Tarawa in 1943.)
If single-engined planes were not good enough for aerial reconnaissance, what of all those P-51s, Spitfires, Bf109s etc. laboriously converted to that role? Or were carrier based planes a different game entirely?
Richard