As the title suggests, I don’t understand how this works.
In: 41
When you zoom in with your phone and take a picture, your phone just crops the image. If you want to properly zoom in without compromising the quality of the image, you’ll need to either move the lens or use a more powerful one. Using multiple cameras is easier than a telescoping lens on a mobile phone.
If you have multiple cameras on your phone, you can cover one with your finger to see which one is being accessed, then zoom in. At a certain point, your phone will switch to a different camera.
Unlike a big bulky camera that would be used for professional photography, there isn’t that much room for large lenses on a smartphone, nor much room for those lenses to move around to focus. Having multiple cameras allows:
* Different focal lengths i.e. wide and zoom
* Smart image filters. By taking the same photo from two slightly different angles, we can calculate a lot of information about depth, focus, and allow us to get a sharper image.
* Different spectrum sensors such as color and infrared. Used with the already mentioned smart image filters these can give even more data that allows to do more cool processing on the image.
It allows for multiple focal lengths in a small package.
Zoom lenses are a very convenient feature for cameras, allowing users to frame their photos more easily – they allow you to take a photo of a big panoramic scene, zoom in on a detail up high and then turn around and take a selfie without moving all.
The problem with zoom lenses is that they need lots of moving parts which make them bulky and delicate – this is fine with a dedicated camera, but very inconvenient on something like a phone that needs to be both small and rugged enough to deal with being carried in a pocket or bag daily.
So if we can’t use a zoom lens, this leaves is with a couple of obvious options.
The simplest is to just to use one wide angle camera, and then digitally zoom in/crop the images. This is very easy to implement, but the more that you zoom in, the more the image quality will degrade.
So the current popular alternative is to use multiple camera units, each with a different lense of a different magnification.
Multiple cameras mean each unit can be made nice and thin (which is the critical dimension for most phone designs), and while they occupy more surface area on the rear of the phone, this is space that is much more freely available to the designers. It does add cost, but it also adds a big headline feature so that is a pretty fair compromise too.
With multiple camera units, you can switch between them to take a photo at the ~3 different focal lengths all at full quality, with the option to include an additional digital zoom to fill in the gaps between those three settings (and because they are only digitally coming a limited amount, this shouldn’t cause too much image degradation).
It allows for multiple focal lengths in a small package.
Zoom lenses are a very convenient feature for cameras, allowing users to frame their photos more easily – they allow you to take a photo of a big panoramic scene, zoom in on a detail up high and then turn around and take a selfie without moving all.
The problem with zoom lenses is that they need lots of moving parts which make them bulky and delicate – this is fine with a dedicated camera, but very inconvenient on something like a phone that needs to be both small and rugged enough to deal with being carried in a pocket or bag daily.
So if we can’t use a zoom lens, this leaves is with a couple of obvious options.
The simplest is to just to use one wide angle camera, and then digitally zoom in/crop the images. This is very easy to implement, but the more that you zoom in, the more the image quality will degrade.
So the current popular alternative is to use multiple camera units, each with a different lense of a different magnification.
Multiple cameras mean each unit can be made nice and thin (which is the critical dimension for most phone designs), and while they occupy more surface area on the rear of the phone, this is space that is much more freely available to the designers. It does add cost, but it also adds a big headline feature so that is a pretty fair compromise too.
With multiple camera units, you can switch between them to take a photo at the ~3 different focal lengths all at full quality, with the option to include an additional digital zoom to fill in the gaps between those three settings (and because they are only digitally coming a limited amount, this shouldn’t cause too much image degradation).
It allows for multiple focal lengths in a small package.
Zoom lenses are a very convenient feature for cameras, allowing users to frame their photos more easily – they allow you to take a photo of a big panoramic scene, zoom in on a detail up high and then turn around and take a selfie without moving all.
The problem with zoom lenses is that they need lots of moving parts which make them bulky and delicate – this is fine with a dedicated camera, but very inconvenient on something like a phone that needs to be both small and rugged enough to deal with being carried in a pocket or bag daily.
So if we can’t use a zoom lens, this leaves is with a couple of obvious options.
The simplest is to just to use one wide angle camera, and then digitally zoom in/crop the images. This is very easy to implement, but the more that you zoom in, the more the image quality will degrade.
So the current popular alternative is to use multiple camera units, each with a different lense of a different magnification.
Multiple cameras mean each unit can be made nice and thin (which is the critical dimension for most phone designs), and while they occupy more surface area on the rear of the phone, this is space that is much more freely available to the designers. It does add cost, but it also adds a big headline feature so that is a pretty fair compromise too.
With multiple camera units, you can switch between them to take a photo at the ~3 different focal lengths all at full quality, with the option to include an additional digital zoom to fill in the gaps between those three settings (and because they are only digitally coming a limited amount, this shouldn’t cause too much image degradation).
As others have said, they use multiple cameras and then use all the results to come up with an image. Cameras in high end phones these days can do TRILLIONS of operations for each photo taken.
ie identifying faces, eyes are open, smiles, skin tones of each person, movement, depth of field, contrast levels, sky, snow, camera movement etc etc etc. They may even take a number of photos per lens, and then use bits of each photo depending on what is required. And as others have said, use the results of different lenses to come up with the end photo.
No wonder DSLRs and point and shoot cameras are now only used by enthusiasts, they haven’t got a mini super computer and soft wear inside them. I have one of each and 95% of my photos are with an iPhone 12(not even a high end phone or camera)
As others have said, they use multiple cameras and then use all the results to come up with an image. Cameras in high end phones these days can do TRILLIONS of operations for each photo taken.
ie identifying faces, eyes are open, smiles, skin tones of each person, movement, depth of field, contrast levels, sky, snow, camera movement etc etc etc. They may even take a number of photos per lens, and then use bits of each photo depending on what is required. And as others have said, use the results of different lenses to come up with the end photo.
No wonder DSLRs and point and shoot cameras are now only used by enthusiasts, they haven’t got a mini super computer and soft wear inside them. I have one of each and 95% of my photos are with an iPhone 12(not even a high end phone or camera)
As others have said, they use multiple cameras and then use all the results to come up with an image. Cameras in high end phones these days can do TRILLIONS of operations for each photo taken.
ie identifying faces, eyes are open, smiles, skin tones of each person, movement, depth of field, contrast levels, sky, snow, camera movement etc etc etc. They may even take a number of photos per lens, and then use bits of each photo depending on what is required. And as others have said, use the results of different lenses to come up with the end photo.
No wonder DSLRs and point and shoot cameras are now only used by enthusiasts, they haven’t got a mini super computer and soft wear inside them. I have one of each and 95% of my photos are with an iPhone 12(not even a high end phone or camera)
Typical camera lenses have a certain range of adjustment which increases or decreases their size. On phones, space is very limited, so even if you have a tiny moving lens, it still has a very small range. It’s therefore much easier to have multiple fixed lenses to cover a range of uses rather than trying to have an adjustable lens.
Typical camera lenses have a certain range of adjustment which increases or decreases their size. On phones, space is very limited, so even if you have a tiny moving lens, it still has a very small range. It’s therefore much easier to have multiple fixed lenses to cover a range of uses rather than trying to have an adjustable lens.
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