I think most of us use a digital camera, but this is still an interesting read:
Smaller and better smartphone cameras are on the way
Smaller and better smartphone cameras are on the way
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Smaller and better smartphone cameras are on the way
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It will be interesting to see if/when any of that lens technology eventually makes it into the ILC market. I wouldn't mind carrying something that is much smaller and lighter while not sacrificing any of what an ILC can do. I also suspect that this will induce more people to move away from all of the traditional camera formats to the phone camera format. In any case, it looks like very cool technology that willl likely have impact in every sector that use lenses. Perhaps the developers are even looking at the phone market partially as a very profitable proof of concept before licensing it to other markets.
I hope this doesn't become yet another debate over what is the "best" camera format
I hope this doesn't become yet another debate over what is the "best" camera format
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You can’t fight physics. There is a limit to how small you can go and maintain quality.
I know and agree with this and I’ll never give up a real camera. But most people don’t care.
That’s true, but it doesn’t mean there’s an upper bound on smartphone cameras, just that bigger cameras will always be better. In the same way CF/CFexpress are always going to be a step ahead of SD cards, but SD cards are still “good enough” for most uses.
Right now I have my smartphone, my P&S, and my mirrorless. I’d love for my camera choice to be based on ergonomics alone, and not image quality. I don’t think we’ll be seeing smartphone cameras that are easy to use with heavy gloves or mittens on any time soon, but I do think we’ll see them with the zoom, image quality, low light, etc. that match today’s mirrorless (even if by then mirrorless are even better). Even today’s smartphones can outperform my first DSLR (Canon T2i) in most situations including at night and astrophotography.
And of course, as @deep diver said, this technology will only trickle its way through to all photography. Especially in the P&S realm, the lens size is I think the limiting factor right now. If we could get 18-55 that would fit in a P&S, I think we’ll start seeing more APS-C P&S cameras which would be awesome. Or pancake zoom lenses for mirrorless!
What will drive the industry is stacked sensors. Can they get those into a smart phone.
interesting technology, and smartphone camera quality will continue to improve ... but there are just some things you cannot do with a smartphone however advanced the technology will be, eg 400mm optical length, sensors get smarter, just don't see a way you can ever get that in a smartphone form factor, but time will tell and if I'm wrong ...
I'm using my iPhone quite a bit nowadays, it's always with me and even when I have my camera gear I do take photos with the phone. I look at it as a companion, not a competitor ...
I'm using my iPhone quite a bit nowadays, it's always with me and even when I have my camera gear I do take photos with the phone. I look at it as a companion, not a competitor ...
Yup! Smartphone sensors have been stacked for several years now, going back to the iPhone XS (and I would assume similar time frame for Android). That’s how they can do HDR so well even with moving subjects, because of the fast sensor readout. They’ve also had dual pixel AF for years. The only things holding back smartphone cameras are high ISO capability, and optics. And those are the two things fundamentally limited by physics that any improvement to smartphones will mean the same improvement to bigger cameras. At least in theory, market demands of course mean that smartphones get innovations sooner, just because there’s so much bigger of a market for them. These new lens technologies for example would never exist without smartphone cameras, but hopefully now they’ll make their way into bigger lenses as well.
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Bigger does not make any camera better. Cellphone cameras can only get smaller and better. Just compare the IQ of the cameras used on the first iPhones, to the ones on the iPhones of today. Sensor technology evolves, and the result is greater compactness and performance.
Bigger sensors are always better. More light means better images.
Better bigger sensors are always better. I'll take a 2021 1/2.5" sensor over a 2001 35mm or even MF sensor. And that's just comparing $1000 phones to $7000 cameras! While I'd rather my R6 over an iPhone 12, I'd rather the iPhone 12 over my old (2010) T2i in low light. But smartphone vs 35mm is a debate for another thread.
On the topic at hand, I'm excited to see where this technology can take us! Smartphones aside, I'm sure we'll eventually see these being at least one element in high-end mirrorless lenses. Certainly promises significantly faster/quieter autofocus and IS, with no moving parts. Though I'm more a stills person, I could see that being a huge benefit to video. And compact zoom lenses that don't need to extend (I know there are internally zooming lenses, but they're way less portable) will promise better weather/dust protection. If it's possible, I'd love a pancake zoom lens even if it came with a manageable compromise to image quality.
We've already got smartphones to thank for the wonders of modern mirrorless autofocus. On-sensor phase detect autofocus possible (or at least accelerated) due to the R&D budget of smartphones, and then quickly made its way to the rest of the camera market. And it looks like the years to come will only increase that trend, hopefully advancing the entire camera market in ways that Canon/Nikon would otherwise be too risk adverse for.
I would argue that cell phone cameras are more about the software than the hardware. Most of what the iPhone is doing is in the software to make the quality better. Sure the sensor has to be more advanced but it's working in conjunction with the software.
Yes, but capturing as much as possible will give a better result than the interpolation the software has to do regardless of the platform. As I said above, however, the article is about this new lens technology and not the platform.
There's also ergonomics. Just the other day, my 12 mini took a faceplant to the concrete as I was trying to take a picture at an awkward angle. The phone survived just fine, fortunately, but I would have never dropped my dedicated camera in the same situation. I've run into this issue often, actually, where the angle of my photo makes it very hard to both frame the shot while depressing a virtual shutter on a touchscreen. I either don't get a photo, or get the shot while missing the framing. They've made "camera grips" for smartphones (My Lumia 1020 had one), but once you go there, you're nearing the point of just bringing a dedicated camera with you!
Look at the standard family daily shooting camera in the 90s and compare that to the cheapest smartphone cameras. You can’t fight physics but you can make it work better for you.
I would say that the daily film shooter of the 90s was a lot better then the early digital cameras.
That reminds me of a combo camera, I believe from Minolta. Digital and Film. Used film but had a digital sensor to view what was taken on film. Then a person could choose to have the lab print the film shot, or mark it for the lab not to make a print.
Some small lenses have benefits over bigger ones, as explained in the article. I remember Leica arguing that the best lenses they produced were the small ones for industrial and cell phone use. Traveling through a lot of glass vs less glass has disadvantages. Not to mention there are liquid lenses and others without some of the problems of glass itself; they focus MUCH faster and last longer and are in wide use in medical and industrial stuff. Be interesting to see if these will make it into cameras.
But I suspect it's the sensor that will still be the issue, not the lenses. And the light gathering. As any astro shooter knows, stacking or long shutter times can remedy that but it doesn't work where the subject is fast moving. Solve that and we'd all benefit considerably.
But I suspect it's the sensor that will still be the issue, not the lenses. And the light gathering. As any astro shooter knows, stacking or long shutter times can remedy that but it doesn't work where the subject is fast moving. Solve that and we'd all benefit considerably.
There is only so much an iPhone can do. Sure it's great for quick run and gun shots but not when you want control over your image.
Yes, that is correct. But cellphone camera sensors aren't very large, and as cellphone camera sensor technology evolves, compactness increases. The sensors will be batter in the future than what they are now, regardless of size.
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There are certain things that aren't possible to achieve with the use of a DSLR camera. The same thing can be said about a cellphone/camera, or even a pinhole camera. Photography is not limited to one specific camera; all are cameras. The rest is left to the person behind the camera. In fact a good photographer can still take a better photo with what one would consider "a bad camera," than a bad photographer with a "good" camera.
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It's all relative. The sensor, regardless of kind and where it is used, depends on software or firmware. One has more manual control on a SLR than on the cellphone camera, but that's about it. However, newer cellphones are incorporating more camera manual controls than in the past. For example, one can now edit cellphone RAW images, time-lapse, etc., among a few other things.