“As smartphone cameras have evolved over the years, they may have changed the way we take pictures, but there is a limit to what a phone camera can achieve,” Zeiss Group President and CEO Dr. Michael Kaschke said categorically. This person understands what he is talking about, because his company is one of the leading players in the optical systems segment and produces products for completely different areas from cameras and smartphones to medical equipment and eyeglass lenses. He recently arrived in India to open an area dedicated to Zeiss lenses at the Museo Camera and gave an interview to The Indian Express.
While smartphone camera capabilities will continue to be limited, computational photography (we suggest reading about it) ) can change the rules of the game. “More and more emphasis is placed on software and less and less on hardware systems, and we are also developing software for computational photography. However, there always remains an important limitation in the form of a relatively small thickness of the smartphone,” said Mr. Kaschke.
Companies like Google, Apple and Samsung are aware of the ergonomic and technical challenges and are trying to use software and computer processing to improve the quality of final images on smartphones. For example, Google has achieved great results with its Pixel 3 series of smartphones thanks to computational photography.
Increasing the number of smartphone camera lenses is another way to improve image quality. includes four cameras on the back, - three cameras, and offers five. , Apple will release the next iPhone smartphones with three rear cameras.
According to Dr. Kaschke, the idea behind having multiple cameras on a device is to use data from multiple sensors to enhance photos, bringing them closer to a DSLR. However, the fact remains that since the thickness of the smartphone is small, the sensor size is difficult to increase, so in poor lighting there will always be problems along with insufficient telescopic capabilities. “Thus, while mass photography will develop in the field of smartphones, professionals will continue to use professional and semi-professional cameras,” the head said.
Despite the popularity of smartphones as cameras, Zeiss believes there will always be room for better, more artistic and professional photography, which Zeiss will focus on in the future. However, it's not that Zeiss doesn't want to work with smartphone companies and improve cameras on mobile devices. The company actively cooperates with the Finnish HMD Global, which produces smartphones under the Nokia brand. Zeiss and Nokia have introduced quite a few interesting camera phones like the Nokia N95, 808 PureView and 1020 PureView.
Device from HMD Global, which was released at MWC 2019 in Barcelona, uses a five-camera system on the back, which is built using Zeiss optics. Initially, when the smartphone was announced, it attracted a lot of attention, but the unusual device received mixed reviews from the press.
Asked about issues with the Nokia 9 PureView, Dr. Kaschke said: “The optical quality of the Nokia 9 PureView is probably one of the best you can find. But, as I said, optics, smartphone and software should work great together. It is worth saying that computational photography is still at a fairly early stage, and multi-focus photography on smartphones is only at the development stage, and I still believe that this is the future.”
The head of Zeiss noted that the smartphone market has stopped growing, so companies have no choice but to differentiate their devices with ever newer and more sophisticated camera technologies: years ago, became a hallmark of mobile phone technology. Revenues in the smartphone market have stopped growing. I don't think any innovative app or other software feature will allow growth to return. But the fundamentally new possibilities of photography are able to revive the smartphone market again.
I am convinced that we will find other promising solutions. I don’t know which ones, but it’s best to make the most of computational photography technologies using information from an array of sensors at once, and not just from one sensor, because one sensor will never be able to fully compete with a good camera. ”
For a long time, the megapixel race, both in the field of smartphones and in the field of cameras, stopped. But now, thanks to the emergence of new Quad Bayer sensors, it looks like the megapixel war is back, with some smartphone makers about to introduce phones with a 64MP camera. And traditional camera makers like Sony are not far behind: the Japanese company recently announced the 7R IV, the world's first full-frame 61MP camera.
But Dr. Kaschke is unimpressed: “More pixels do not mean better. For what? If you're left with a full frame sensor and it's just dividing into more and more pixels, then the light sensitive elements just get smaller and smaller, and then we run into a noise problem. I think that for most tasks, even serious professional areas, 40 megapixels is already more than enough. People always say bigger is better, but I think there are limits in terms of processing power and processing speed and signal to noise ratio. You always need to consider what you get more from. And I think we've already reached the limit."
Source: 3dnews.ru