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> If you still needed a reason to spend money on a compact camera, it would have been for zoom reach, as even the best smartphone cameras could not provide usab
by cs702 7y ago
> If you still needed a reason to spend money on a compact camera, it would have been for zoom reach, as even the best smartphone cameras could not provide usable zoom image quality beyond a 5x factor. This has now changed with the Huawei P30 Pro and its innovative zoom system that uses folded optics and a super-resolution algorithm, which finally makes usable 10x zoom on smartphones a reality. The zoom on its own will make the new Huawei an extremely tempting option for many mobile photographers, but the camera performs very well in almost all other areas as well.
To enable up to 10x usable (!) zoom, this phone has three lenses, the longest of which is positioned vertically along the body of the phone, with a mirror reflecting light to a sensor that is positioned perpendicular to the screen, at the bottom of the phone:
___
/ \
| / |
| /<----- light
| /| |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | | ^
| | | |
| | | lens focal length
| | | |
| | | v
| | |
| | |
| | |
| v |
|=====| sensor
\___/
The advantages of this phone's camera are rooted in physics, not software.
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EDITS: (1) adjusted the diagram to make it a bit nicer-looking; (2) replaced the word "optical" with "usable" in the second paragraph (in my mind, the two words have been interchangeable for describing zoom lenses, until very recently).
- MasterScrat 7y agoWow, I had no idea about this technology! A better look at how it's made: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/14/18181853/oppo-phone-10x-optical-zoom-rumor-release-event-date https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/14/18181853/oppo-phone-10x-o...
- mrec 7y agoIgnorant question: at what point does the limiting factor for useful zoom become stabilization rather than optics? I looked briefly into ridiculous-zoom-level compacts a while back and consensus seemed to be that while the tech specs look good on paper you're just going to get a blurry mess unless you put it on a tripod, at which point you've lost the main advantage of a compact.
- baybal2 7y agoif done properly, software stabilisation can genuinely rival hardware
- hellisothers 7y agoI find as believable as software zoom can rival optical zoom, do you have some example?
- jacobolus 7y agoFor what angle of view? If you are e.g. hand-holding a camera with a super-telephoto 1° angle of view, there’s nothing software stabilization is going to be able to do when your small wiggles make what you were looking at before violently jump out of the frame.
- baybal2 7y agoYes, you got it. It's not a problem for narrow field, but at some point you the sacrifice of frame area gets too big
- rickdeckard 7y agoThe Tele-Lens in the device actually has 3x zoom only. 10x Zoom is achieved by using software algorithms combining data from a cropped main-camera image and the zoom camera. Such periscope camera-modules are quite popular among chinese device-vendors these days, you can find the same on a few devices from there this year (i.e. Oppo Reno, Vivo).
- cs702 7y agoMr. Deckard, you're right. I edited my comment. For what it's worth, I hope that one day we will have super-resolution photo zoom as good as the one you use every day as a Blade Runner.
- koffiezet 7y agoSony also used this technique in their credit-card sized compact camera's.
- llaappqq 7y agoYa, a camera I bought 15 years ago was using this technique too. IIRC the model is Sony T1