is there a limit on how big a cell phones camera sensor can be without having a huge lens? (camera bump being less than 14mm in total depth)
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Yes. But it’s not necessarily the lens that’s the problem. Ultimately the size of the sensor is governed by the phones physical geometry in addition to the lens being used.
The sensors ability to capture an image is heavily dependent on how much light it can capture. The larger the sensor, the more light it can capture for a set ISO, Aperture and shutter speed. This can be offset to a degree with smaller sensors by using a longer exposure, but you risk introducing blur which reduces image quality. DLSR Camera sensors are several times larger than what you find in a phone and produce better images than phones with sensors with more pixels.
No…?
The quality and features are what would really limit it’s practicality.
The real question is, what would stop YOU from buying?
Take the iPhone 14 Pro Max. It’s got a big camera bump that holds a 48MP sensor.. The phones thickness is just barely over 12mm including the bump.
You have to also consider the structure of the camera. The actual sensor isn’t all that big compared to the shutter that sits on top of it and the lens that sits on top of that too.
Yes. A bigger sensor means the light has to leave the lens at a steeper angle for the same distance away. This is a harder lens design problem. Going through the edges of steeply curved lenses causes the light to not line up quite as well, and these “aberrations” make blurry pictures.
You can make it better by making the combination of lenses longer, but that makes the bump bigger. The combination of that with not being able to move the sensor farther back than the other side of the phone is the single biggest challenge in phone camera design.
Additionally, you want to make the lens bigger to let more light in, to take better pictures especially in the dark. But making the lenses bigger causes a similar problem to the above, which is why it’s been so hard to get good low-light performance. It’s gotten a lot better recently, but it’s the same core challenge.
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