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Whenever I read something like this, I think how despite the rise of the smartphone camera that's good for 99.9% of people, it still seems like there's still a
by jdhn 6y ago
Whenever I read something like this, I think how despite the rise of the smartphone camera that's good for 99.9% of people, it still seems like there's still a lot of opportunity to improve traditional point and shoot digital cameras. It almost makes you wish that some of these companies (Canon, Sony, etc) put some more research into some sort of skunkworks that could completely reimagine the form of the camera in a way that would greatly benefit the user.
- Balgair 6y agoIn the end, it comes down to the optics. The (incredible) tiny sensors in smartphones aren't big enough to get past a certain fidelity. Combined with very small working ranges on the lenses and the limits are pretty hard. Hence the three lens set-ups now on the newer models. Granted, the optics here are just the coolest things. 'Digital' lenses are some very slick stuff and the engineering is the best you can get. But in the end, you just need longer working distances and bigger lenses. The optical physics are just the laws you have to deal with, same as Newton had to. No amount of engineering can get past them. One thing they could do is to put a 'periscope'-like mount on the side, have the sensors slide up and down inside, and slot in a few lenses based on the optics. But the mechanics and likely slow speed of such a device would wear-out very fast and would be very susceptible to drops and dings.
- barrkel 6y agoEh. Modern phone cameras produce a kind of synthesized picture composed by machine learning, based on what you point at. That seems to be the direction of travel. E.g. super-resolution based on multiple samples over time and integrated backwards to eliminate blur.
- rabuse 6y agoI honestly want the large camera manufacturers to start tapping into the computational photography realm. That tech, with their amazing sensors and glass, would produce some amazing results.
- jdhn 6y agoThere was a post here on HN a few months ago where someone went into how the camera manufacturers are going to be challenged by phone manufacturers coming up with better and better algorithms to enhance the quality of pictures that are bumping up against physical limits such as lens size and pixel density. Edit: Here's [0] the link to the article. [0] https://photographylife.com/smartphone-vs-camera-industry https://photographylife.com/smartphone-vs-camera-industry
- nradov 6y agoIt doesn't have to be in the camera. You can do that in post with the raw files.
- crazygringo 6y agoGenerally no, because a RAW file records only the total amount of exposure per "pixel". Full computational photography requires exposure per pixel over time (so something like a "stacked RAW" needs to be invented) combined with synced data from accelerometer/gyroscope/etc. for deconvolution.
- dingaling 6y agoI honestly don't. I wish they'd spend less time developing increasingly bloated and buggy camera software features and more time on simple improvements ( like exposure bracketing using ISO instead of just shutter speed )
- Balgair 6y agoIt's still a '99% of people' solution. For the remaining people that really do want/need that last 1%, ML doesn't work. You can't infer data that does not exist no matter how many samples you take. The resolution of every object is set by the optical resolution: a function of the wavelength and the NA of the lens [0]. Aside: super-resolution refers to nanoscopes that break the Abbe' diffraction limit of light [1]. The various set-ups do this in a few very clever ways so the specifics change exactly how well they resolve objects. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_resolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_resolution [1] https://www.microscopyu.com/techniques/super-resolution/the-diffraction-barrier-in-optical-microscopy https://www.microscopyu.com/techniques/super-resolution/the-... (a good intro to these nanoscopes)
- jdhn 6y agoI can't see any major phone manufacturer doing that, although it sounds really cool. Too much room for error in both the manufacturing and user stages.
- Balgair 6y agoAgreed. Positioning optical devices takes very tight mechanical control and a good optical feedback mechanism. I don't think they will be out on the consumer market any time soon. But then again, I thought the same about these tiny sensors and the digital lenses, so who knows.
- ghaff 6y agoThe problem I have with all the lens add-on stuff for phones is that you still have the tiny sensor and now you've complicated the camera that you just have with you all the time. When I want something more than a smartphone, I have an APS-C mirrorless camera that fits in my pocket (with a 40mm equiv. lens). And is pretty compact otherwise for mid zoom ranges.