[ad_1]
It's no secret that the world's most popular camera is now the phone. At the same time, sales of autonomous cameras have dropped. In particular, the point-and-shoot market implodes, with only a few niches like action cameras, large-sensor photo-sensor models and superzooms.
Until now, there remains a relatively stable market for interchangeable lens cameras, even though it is rapidly shifting from DSLR dominated dominance to almost all mirrorless models. There is good reason to believe that it is only a matter of time before this market starts to collapse in the same way as the point-and-shoot market. Apple's focus on the impressive new printing features of its latest iPhones has highlighted the question of whether the phone truly has the versatile camera market. To get the answer, let's take a look at how far the phones have arrived and what obstacles they still have to overcome.
But wait, everyone told me that the phones had terrible lenses
There is a fairly common line of analysis on the internet that says that phone cameras can never be very good because they have these tiny plastic lenses. This argument is not without merit but is a little lazy. Plastic lenses have unique properties, so that, combined with the processing power of a modern phone, the resulting images can be excellent. On the other hand, telephony lenses have a lot of distortion, but most are types that can be corrected with software (for example, vignetting and barrel distortion).
Will purists complain that this is not the same as an optically perfect image of the sensor? Sure. Will the market care about the difference? Not really. Unlike, unlike glass, it is easy to mold plastic to any shape. This means that the aspherical elements are easy to manufacture. Even top-of-the-line DSLR lenses typically only have one or two aspherical elements, but phones can use them as needed. This allows the phone cameras to innovate in the optics, despite their small form factor.
Overall, this means that when the light is sufficient to give a chance to their small sensors, modern phones can capture really excellent images (once they have been converted from their RAW format , in the phone or later). In addition, whether photo enthusiasts like it or not, 95% of all phone images are viewed on other phones, not in the form of large prints.
Portraits and creation of this magic Bokeh
Larger sensors facilitate the deliberate control of focus depth in an image, giving the photographer creative control over the overall look. Smart hardware and software help clear the gap between phones and larger cameras. First, the depth estimation technology has become the standard for the main camera on high end phones. Whether with a dual camera (as with many models of Apple, Huawei, Samsung and others) or with double pixel technology (like Google), it can simulate a variety of openings with the synthetic blur images .
Modern phones use a variety of techniques to estimate depth and create portrait effects
Bokeh first appeared in different "Portrait" modes, which blur the objects in the background (and to a lesser extent the foreground) in addition to other settings designed to make people more attractive. Early versions have suffered from severe artifacts, and also tend to be conservative with respect to the foreground. Now, Apple has stolen the spotlight with a more flexible form of depth-of-focus control with its recent ad and Aperture slider. However, it should be noted that Huawei has been doing the same trick for some time. The quality of the final result depends largely on the accuracy of estimating the depth and quality of post-processing. Apple, Google, Samsung, Huawei and others all have specialized and powerful "AI" chips to help you in this task.
The phones have even surpassed the traditional cameras
in this field with enhancement capabilities powered by AI. Although aimed mainly at selfies taken with the front camera, the techniques can be applied more widely. This is another example of how the powerful computer in phones, coupled with massive R & D investments, can give them capabilities much faster than traditional camera vendors can find out how to provide them. Here too, purists may cry out. But most users are content with a certain amount of help from their cameras to improve the quality of their photos.
Panoramas and HDR
You can say, of course, that I understand the lenses and the Portrait function, but that my large sensor camera has a much better dynamic range and the RAW files in parentheses are great. Yes I understand. I love to photograph the scenes in parentheses with my Nikon D850 in RAW and carefully post-process the images. No, no phone can match that – at least not so far. But with different types of enhanced HDR, recent phones can be pretty close to almost everyone. The first HDR phone call was a simple parenthesis of two or three images, mixed with the aid of a relatively simple tone mapping algorithm. But now, Google, Apple and others have gone beyond this stage. They use a larger number of images exposed in a similar way to form the basis of a final merged image. They leverage the phone's processing power and their own software expertise to intelligently isolate and track moving objects, so even HDR images of high-motion scenes can be achieved.
The phone's panoramas are not perfect – you can see alignment issues in this one captured with a 2-pixel – but they do awesome work in harsh conditions and only take a few seconds to capture and process .
Similarly, the panoramas required a specialized tripod plate, a clever technique, and expensive post-processing software. Now you can create a version "good enough for the Web" by simply holding your phone in place and moving it according to the instructions on the screen. This is not surprising to anyone except for high-end camera manufacturers who seem to have completely neglected to pair their excellent sensors with any kind of automation or user-friendly interface to create these images. Oh yes, and as I constantly remind them, virtually no stand-alone camera integrates GPS, forcing users across obstacles to take advantage of one of the most powerful ways to manage and find images. Phone shooters get it for free.
Zoom: The last frontier
The designers of telephone cameras agree that zoom, or more precisely telephoto, is the most difficult of the imaging problems they face. Multiple camera designs and intelligent interpolation can mimic the zoom between the zoom ranges provided, but you should still have telephoto lenses. Everyone wants to sell thin phones, but they do not provide enough thickness for a long-focus lens associated with a decent size sensor. Thus, even with two- and three-camera models, telephoto lenses have been limited to a relatively mediocre focal length set, all less than 100 mm (35 mm equivalent).
When I captured this image using a Nikon digital SLR, no phone could focus and stop the action in time. Now they can. But the 280mm focal length used is still out of reach of the phone cameras.
This problem is important enough that this is a main reason why the Light.co startup has been received with as much enthusiasm (and funding). By placing a number of telephoto lenses laterally in the body and using mirrors (yes, this is done with mirrors), Light has been able to reach a telephoto range of up to 140mm so far. Nothing to write compared to the standards of superzoom and ILC, but certainly well above the phone market. However, the current Light model is still too thick to be sold as a flagship phone because folded optics require placing the sensor on its side so that the phone is thicker than the size of the sensor. (In addition, the current Light L16 is only a camera, so it is fully equipped with camera electronics, leaving no room for a phone.) The company will release some type of camera phone module, with fewer cameras than the L16 it will be interesting to see how it will work and what type of telephoto it will – and at what price in a larger phone size. There are also upcoming hybrid camera models, such as the RED Hydrogen One, that will blur the boundaries between phone photography and stand-alone camera.
In the meantime, computer imaging also plays a role in helping phones to overcome their lack of telephoto and zoom capabilities. First, by allowing intelligent fusion of images from different focal lengths to synthesize intermediate lengths. Huawei and others are also making an AI-driven super-resolution that uses multiple burst images to create a single, high-resolution image. This is another technique made possible by the ability of modern phones to sample and process images at 15-30fps.
It's just a matter of time
Given the massive investment in phones, it's only a matter of time before they replace all segments of the camera market for which they are physically capable. They are not the ideal solution for drones, robots or even cars, for example. In many cases, the action cameras do not have sufficient display to justify a form factor of the phone. Of course, there will always be a need and a market for larger cameras, as there is today for the cinema, but more and more, it will be only by preference and not by necessity.
For several years, I attended a panel at the Electronic Imaging Technical Conference about what it would take for the phone to be the only camera needed. My presentation was simply a set of photos that I could not have taken without my standalone high-end camera. Each year, the presentation has fewer slides.
In my case, I find that the ergonomics of my Nikon digital SLR makes me much more productive than shooting with a phone. Even if my phone produced the same images, it's harder to control an extended shoot session. Given the form factor, there are only a few phone manufacturers that can solve this problem. Of course, my phone is always in my pocket, so I find myself using it more and more each time it gets better. And for people for whom the phone was their first camera, it will be more intuitive to use the controls of a traditional camera. So, yes, we will always have "real" cameras, in the same way that we have medium format cameras and movie cameras, but they will be more and more rare.
Now read: Light.co aims to put a digital SLR in your pocket, mobile photography workflow and better camera apps from 2018.
[ad_2]
Source link
