Why do smartphones have triple-quadruple cameras when “dedicated” cameras have just one? What makes it better and why do we not see the 3-camera setup on actual cameras then?
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A “regular” camera with a fixed lens has a bigger lens which can move.
The movement of the lens is to create wider or more zoomed in images.
Regular camera’s also can change the lenses inside to create a macro effect.
Interchangable lens camera’s can fit any lens they want to create the image the photographer wants.
The tiny thin lenses on the phone can’t make these movements so the 3 camera’s are usually wide angle, standard angle and macro.
The zoom part of the phone is just digital zoom.
It doesn’t make it better, it just provides different options of photography in your phone which it can’t do when you only have 1 camera on it.
All are equally bad compared to camera’s with bigger lenses and sensors.
Incorrect assumption. Dedicated Cameras have removable lenses for different tasks.
A phone has them all installed at once.
On an actual camera, you can change the lens. This means you only need one camera. On a phone, you can’t. The upshot is that to have different lenses (which you need depending on the kind of shot you’re trying to get), you need multiple cameras.
I know everyone keeps saying it’s because the lens needs space to zoom, and while that’s logical, there are quiete a few phones that use an optical zoom, so that’s not entirely still valid.
The deeper reason is that lenses come in two variants, prime (doesn’t adjust focal length) and zoom (does adjust). There is also of course cost differences, consumers don’t necessarily want to pay for a lens that zooms.
Prime lenses are **always** shaprer than a zoom lens, and privde better color/optics. So putting a wide angle, “normal view (35/50mm equiv), and a lens for zooming are overall better quality than 1 that “kinda” does it all. Speculation says prime lenses handle the day-to-day abuse a phone sees better, as well!
Random, but I use a recent Samsung phone and the difference in low light quality and over color between the 0.5 and 1x lens are astounding.
The real ELI5:
A dedicated camera will use different lenses depending on the type of shot you want
A smartphone will mount those dedicated cameras to the phone itself
~~You don’t have triple or quadruple cameras, you have triple or quadruple *lenses*.~~ The lens is the part of the camera that focuses light.
Lenses are what allows a camera to zoom in, for example.
Traditional cameras have the ability to swap lenses, but it isn’t practical to swap lenses on a phone. Instead, phone manufacturers put multiple lenses on permanents for different purposes.
This is why your phone is able to take photos at different levels of zoom or wideness.
when you don’t have access to one large satellite dish, you use many smaller ones to increase your listening capabilities.
Because the lenses on a smartphone are fixed, versus swappable on a DSLR/Mirrorless/etc camera.
In my camera bag, I could have a portrait lens and a fisheye lens, and I can swap between them by attaching/detaching them to the camera body.
Its not about the sensor “the camera”, its about lenses. On a dslr or mirrorless camera, you can change out lenses and adjust a lens because you have the depth to move the optics around. Photographers only have 1 “camera” but many different types of lens which bends light in different ways to create different properties like zoom and warping. Sometimes you want a wide lens which captures a wide area, other times you want a narrow lens that focuses on something closely. You can change this by moving a lens closer or further from the camera, or by switching to a different shape of lens. In a phone this isnt really an option due to thinness so there are several sensors with different types of lens properties to accomodate different styles of photography.
I have a a dSLR camera. Last count I have 5 lenses.
Phones aren’t any different than my dSLR. All lenses, including your phone have a focal range. You can have a lens that is ok for most things, but not good at certain things. In cameras, lens with one focal point are called “Prime”. They have a limited filed of view, they are good in certain light situations, but maybe they distort your face up close or don’t show enough background. Zoom lens are just the opposite. They have very large focal ranges, but don’t necessarily let a lot of light in.
So you have a few lenses to cover the gamut of things you want to take pictures of.
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