Earlier this week I read a competitor was having problems with its 13 MP camera lenses. Apple might have seen there were too many issues with manufacturing quality 13 MP camera lenses in the quantity it needs then decided to skip 13 MP while improving the capabilities of the 8 MP camera. All improvements for the 8 MP camera could put Apple ahead of its competitors.
Manufacturers playing the spec game don't care if the optics are the limiting factor because they can still advertise the sensor's pixel count for the win. Unless you test the optics with a resolution chart like they do over at dpreview.com, consumers won't know they're not getting the advertised megapixels.
It is my opinion that Apple would care if the optics are not up to par with the sensor, and I expect the tech press would cry scandal and doom if it were not.
oversampling sounds like a cool marketing term, certainly better than what is really happening which is "downsampling". I'd like to know which social network they are talking about that lets you store 5MP images? 5MP is enough to print an 8x10 photo at full resolution. Even Retina iPad screen is only 3MP.
Are you seriously suggesting that you can't upload even a 5MP photo to Facebook? I guess my photographer friends really don't have DSLRs.
download their photos and check the size. last time I checked it was 960 pixels wide maximum. If you have standard 3:2 aspect ratio camera this would give you 0.6 MP photo shot in landscape orientation.
Manufacturers playing the spec game don't care if the optics are the limiting factor because they can still advertise the sensor's pixel count for the win. Unless you test the optics with a resolution chart like they do over at dpreview.com, consumers won't know they're not getting the advertised megapixels.
It is my opinion that Apple would care if the optics are not up to par with the sensor, and I expect the tech press would cry scandal and doom if it were not.
Indeed, Apple is held to a much critical standard than its competitors
I have taken quite a few great daytime pictures with my iPhone 5S. I am looking forward to taking better nighttime pictures in the future.
Apple is doing the right thing here. Nobody really pays attention to the megapixels anymore - all people want is a good picture. Apple should have no trouble convincing the average consumer that less megapixels means better pictures.
They've been doing that since day one, when entering a market full of 5 and 8 megapixel camera phones with 2 megapixels.
In spite of ignoring the megapixel race Apple rapidly climbed to become the most popular camera on numerous upload sites.
The review I saw of the Sony Mirrorless line recommended the model with the smaller sensor for most photogs for most use cases.... ...regardless of the fact that the 24MP model is hundreds of $'s cheaper....
if you are talking about the A7 (24MP) vs A7R (36MP) Full frame cameras, the sensor is the same size. It is the pixel density which is lower on the 24MP model. Only reasons to recommend a smaller sensors is if you want a cheaper and more compact camera or you want to shoot macro all the time. Which is not the same thing as recommending the same sized sensor with less MP (aka less pixel density). Which is what we are talking about here.
I think the article means the last recent increase from the iPhone 4 to 4s, which saw the camera improve from 5 mp to 8 mp.
I don't mind the next iPhone sticking with 8mp, but can apple also improve the iPad's camera to 8 mp as well? The iPad's current 5 mp camera seems like an artificial limitation just to ensure the iPhone retains the better camera quality between the two.
Seems right now iPhone 8mp and IPad/iPod 5mp I doubt apple will increase just 1.
IMHO, Apple is sticking with 8M so that their photo won't occupy 90% of your phone capacities considering that Apple is the only top tier smartphone without external memory! They can sacrifice everything for the look.....which may not be a bad thing!
The problem is the number of photosites in the sensor. When they are densely packed, which they are in all small sensor phones (and point-and-shoots), they generate heat. Heat makes for noise. All other things being equal, a 16MP sensor will have far better high-ISO (low light) performance than a 32MB sensor.
So if you increase the MP count without increasing the size of the sensor, you decrease quality. A Nikon D1 camera from 1999 with 2.74 effective MP will still provide far better images than those from any of today's cellphone cameras and in some cases better quality than much larger cameras with higher MP counts.
Unfortunately, most consumers are idiots and buy into the myth that more megapixels = better quality. Even those who buy full-frame DSLRs fall into this trap. It's because it's a simple concept to understand ("oh..a higher number...that must be better").
Although it's very cramped inside the phone, I would definitely like to see Apple provide a larger sensor and a larger lens in future generations of the iPhone, especially if they increase the screen size in future models. In fact, what would be great is if Apple made it so the lens was removable and one could screw in different lenses (instead of putting an accessory lens on top of the built-in lens). But Apple will never do that because they don't like "seams" in the surface of their products.
Of late, Apple seems to be making incremental improvements to their products. I'd like to see them once again be far more aggressive coming up with new concepts and ideas.
2004
My nephew wondered why his cheap 6 megapixel camera took worse photo's than the 4 megapixel camera I was using at the time.
Sensors and lenses is what makes the difference and then there's also the role that processing the images plays, this is where Apple and iOS excel and always have.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a doubling of capacity, H.265 and 4K video this year.
I would be VERY surprised if we see ANY of those things. Apple only seems to hurry when the technology they're introducing is exclusive. They take forever to roll out "mainstream" stuff. Remember how long it took them to include USB3 on their computers? They still haven't for peripherals like the Time Capsule and AirPort or any of the iDevices. AC wireless also waited a generation longer than it needed to. So, as much as I hope Apple will be quick to support H.265, history suggests I maybe shouldn't hold my breath.
They may move more quickly to support 4K, but only because so many FCPX editors use an iPhone for principal photography!
As for capacity, I have my doubts because the Apple vision is cloud storage. I suppose they may still double it, but my sphincter tightens at the thought of how much Apple will charge for it.
The fact that Apple is concentrating on quality over specsmanship when it comes to cameras is great news though! Like others have said, I'd much rather have 5-8 million good looking pixels than 13 million poor ones.
I would be VERY surprised if we see ANY of those things. Apple only seems to hurry when the technology they're introducing is exclusive. They take forever to roll out "mainstream" stuff. Remember how long it took them to include USB3 on their computers? They still haven't for peripherals like the Time Capsule and AirPort or any of the iDevices. AC wireless also waited a generation longer than it needed to. So, as much as I hope Apple will be quick to support H.265, history suggests I maybe shouldn't hold my breath.
They may move more quickly to support 4K, but only because so many FCPX editors use an iPhone for principal photography!
As for capacity, I have my doubts because the Apple vision is cloud storage. I suppose they may still double it, but my sphincter tightens at the thought of how much Apple will charge for it.
The fact that Apple is concentrating on quality over specsmanship when it comes to cameras is great news though! Like others have said, I'd much rather have 5-8 million good looking pixels than 13 million poor ones.
IMHO, Apple is sticking with 8M so that their photo won't occupy 90% of your phone capacities considering that Apple is the only top tier smartphone without external memory! They can sacrifice everything for the look.....which may not be a bad thing!
IMHO, Apple is sticking with 8M so that their photo won't occupy 90% of your phone capacities considering that Apple is the only top tier smartphone without external memory! They can sacrifice everything for the look.....which may not be a bad thing!
So Nexus aren't top tier and the HTC One?
I was thinking that a 64GB iPhone 5S looks about the same as the 16GB iPhone 5S to me from the outside.
I would be VERY surprised if we see ANY of those things. Apple only seems to hurry when the technology they're introducing is exclusive. They take forever to roll out "mainstream" stuff. Remember how long it took them to include USB3 on their computers? They still haven't for peripherals like the Time Capsule and AirPort or any of the iDevices. AC wireless also waited a generation longer than it needed to. So, as much as I hope Apple will be quick to support H.265, history suggests I maybe shouldn't hold my breath.
They may move more quickly to support 4K, but only because so many FCPX editors use an iPhone for principal photography!
As for capacity, I have my doubts because the Apple vision is cloud storage. I suppose they may still double it, but my sphincter tightens at the thought of how much Apple will charge for it.
The fact that Apple is concentrating on quality over specsmanship when it comes to cameras is great news though! Like others have said, I'd much rather have 5-8 million good looking pixels than 13 million poor ones.
Yeah, they were so slow at releasing 64bit.
I think Lorin was referring to standards. I am not sure we can always say Apple is behind in adapting new standards or getting rid of them as appropriate. Lets see.
Adopting stuff:
- USB 1.0 for keyboard and mice. I think they lead here compared to rest of the industry.
- 802.11b wireless networking. I think they lead here compared to rest of the industry. 802.11ac came on both their Access Points, Time Capsule and MBA. Not sure we need it yet for iPhone However.
- PDF. I think they lead here compared to rest of the industry.
- Thunderbolt.
- 1394 Firewire
- Bluetooth keyboard and mice. I think they lead here compared to rest of the industry.
- Wired Ethernet
- SCSI
- DVD Burners
- H264 HW Video playback and encoding
- Java
Killing stuff off:
Floppies
Optical Drives
Bluray
Flash
Retail software packages mostly full of empty space
(Re: original news post) As well they should. Unless you're making enlargements, more pixels make marginal improvements, and can even hurt image quality with interference once the pixel density on the image sensor gets too high. Bigger sensors, better optics, and better software are all more important (and all of which Apple went out of their way to improve with the iPhone 5S).
The camera market is starting to wise up too, with better lenses and somewhat larger sensors on point-and-shoots, and a beginning trend towards full-frame sensors on DSLRs (which more commonly use sensors sized like APS film). That Sony Alpha 7 looks amazing... If only I didn't have all these Canon lenses.
One thing this article leaves out is the photo compression factor of the cameras in these phones. How much data is lost to this compression to allow more than a few photos to reside on the phones internal memory? We all know the Samsung phones don't have very much memory left for photos with all the garbage that's loaded on them so just how many 38MP photos will fit on the Lumina? What happens with video? What happens with a panoramic photo? How long does it take these photos to transfer to your computer or the cloud?
btw: my Canon 60D's 18MP sensor is 22.30×14.90 mm or 9X the size of the Lumina and has a pixel size of 18.5 microns; way more than any mobile phone would ever be capable of using.
uh, photos/videos always stored in 32GB or 64GB mSD cards. you can bring a bunch when travelling.
For me, i try to upload to clouds to free space on my iphone, but cost a lot of my monthly bandwidth allowance... I always have to bring my "other" camera on trips to take thousands of photos.
Apple doesn't want to upgrade the camera pixels I think it's because of the storage problem.
Comments
Why 4K ? 99% of the population can't afford 4K anything.
Manufacturers playing the spec game don't care if the optics are the limiting factor because they can still advertise the sensor's pixel count for the win. Unless you test the optics with a resolution chart like they do over at dpreview.com, consumers won't know they're not getting the advertised megapixels.
It is my opinion that Apple would care if the optics are not up to par with the sensor, and I expect the tech press would cry scandal and doom if it were not.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a doubling of capacity, H.265 and 4K video this year.
The Note 3 is already capable of taking 4k video, I expect the S5 will be too.
oversampling sounds like a cool marketing term, certainly better than what is really happening which is "downsampling". I'd like to know which social network they are talking about that lets you store 5MP images? 5MP is enough to print an 8x10 photo at full resolution. Even Retina iPad screen is only 3MP.
Are you seriously suggesting that you can't upload even a 5MP photo to Facebook? I guess my photographer friends really don't have DSLRs.
download their photos and check the size. last time I checked it was 960 pixels wide maximum. If you have standard 3:2 aspect ratio camera this would give you 0.6 MP photo shot in landscape orientation.
Indeed, Apple is held to a much critical standard than its competitors
I have taken quite a few great daytime pictures with my iPhone 5S. I am looking forward to taking better nighttime pictures in the future.
Apple is doing the right thing here. Nobody really pays attention to the megapixels anymore - all people want is a good picture. Apple should have no trouble convincing the average consumer that less megapixels means better pictures.
They've been doing that since day one, when entering a market full of 5 and 8 megapixel camera phones with 2 megapixels.
In spite of ignoring the megapixel race Apple rapidly climbed to become the most popular camera on numerous upload sites.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a doubling of capacity, H.265 and 4K video this year.
The Note 3 is already capable of taking 4k video, I expect the S5 will be too.
tells you a lot about what Samsung thinks about their customers.
I have a friend who says unless you plan to print jumbo size photos a 30 megapixel camera is useless. 8 seems to be a sweet spot for normal use.
Why 4K ? 99% of the population can't afford 4K anything.
heck.. many movie theaters can't even do 4k
The review I saw of the Sony Mirrorless line recommended the model with the smaller sensor for most photogs for most use cases.... ...regardless of the fact that the 24MP model is hundreds of $'s cheaper....
if you are talking about the A7 (24MP) vs A7R (36MP) Full frame cameras, the sensor is the same size. It is the pixel density which is lower on the 24MP model. Only reasons to recommend a smaller sensors is if you want a cheaper and more compact camera or you want to shoot macro all the time. Which is not the same thing as recommending the same sized sensor with less MP (aka less pixel density). Which is what we are talking about here.
The problem is the number of photosites in the sensor. When they are densely packed, which they are in all small sensor phones (and point-and-shoots), they generate heat. Heat makes for noise. All other things being equal, a 16MP sensor will have far better high-ISO (low light) performance than a 32MB sensor.
So if you increase the MP count without increasing the size of the sensor, you decrease quality. A Nikon D1 camera from 1999 with 2.74 effective MP will still provide far better images than those from any of today's cellphone cameras and in some cases better quality than much larger cameras with higher MP counts.
Unfortunately, most consumers are idiots and buy into the myth that more megapixels = better quality. Even those who buy full-frame DSLRs fall into this trap. It's because it's a simple concept to understand ("oh..a higher number...that must be better").
Although it's very cramped inside the phone, I would definitely like to see Apple provide a larger sensor and a larger lens in future generations of the iPhone, especially if they increase the screen size in future models. In fact, what would be great is if Apple made it so the lens was removable and one could screw in different lenses (instead of putting an accessory lens on top of the built-in lens). But Apple will never do that because they don't like "seams" in the surface of their products.
Of late, Apple seems to be making incremental improvements to their products. I'd like to see them once again be far more aggressive coming up with new concepts and ideas.
2004
My nephew wondered why his cheap 6 megapixel camera took worse photo's than the 4 megapixel camera I was using at the time.
Sensors and lenses is what makes the difference and then there's also the role that processing the images plays, this is where Apple and iOS excel and always have.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a doubling of capacity, H.265 and 4K video this year.
I would be VERY surprised if we see ANY of those things. Apple only seems to hurry when the technology they're introducing is exclusive. They take forever to roll out "mainstream" stuff. Remember how long it took them to include USB3 on their computers? They still haven't for peripherals like the Time Capsule and AirPort or any of the iDevices. AC wireless also waited a generation longer than it needed to. So, as much as I hope Apple will be quick to support H.265, history suggests I maybe shouldn't hold my breath.
They may move more quickly to support 4K, but only because so many FCPX editors use an iPhone for principal photography!
As for capacity, I have my doubts because the Apple vision is cloud storage. I suppose they may still double it, but my sphincter tightens at the thought of how much Apple will charge for it.
The fact that Apple is concentrating on quality over specsmanship when it comes to cameras is great news though! Like others have said, I'd much rather have 5-8 million good looking pixels than 13 million poor ones.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a doubling of capacity, H.265 and 4K video this year.
I guess you've never seen the space requirements for 4k video. It ain't happening on the iPhone for at least 2 years.
I would be VERY surprised if we see ANY of those things. Apple only seems to hurry when the technology they're introducing is exclusive. They take forever to roll out "mainstream" stuff. Remember how long it took them to include USB3 on their computers? They still haven't for peripherals like the Time Capsule and AirPort or any of the iDevices. AC wireless also waited a generation longer than it needed to. So, as much as I hope Apple will be quick to support H.265, history suggests I maybe shouldn't hold my breath.
They may move more quickly to support 4K, but only because so many FCPX editors use an iPhone for principal photography!
As for capacity, I have my doubts because the Apple vision is cloud storage. I suppose they may still double it, but my sphincter tightens at the thought of how much Apple will charge for it.
The fact that Apple is concentrating on quality over specsmanship when it comes to cameras is great news though! Like others have said, I'd much rather have 5-8 million good looking pixels than 13 million poor ones.
Yeah, they were so slow at releasing 64bit.
IMHO, Apple is sticking with 8M so that their photo won't occupy 90% of your phone capacities considering that Apple is the only top tier smartphone without external memory! They can sacrifice everything for the look.....which may not be a bad thing!
So Nexus aren't top tier and the HTC One?
IMHO, Apple is sticking with 8M so that their photo won't occupy 90% of your phone capacities considering that Apple is the only top tier smartphone without external memory! They can sacrifice everything for the look.....which may not be a bad thing!
So Nexus aren't top tier and the HTC One?
I was thinking that a 64GB iPhone 5S looks about the same as the 16GB iPhone 5S to me from the outside.
I would be VERY surprised if we see ANY of those things. Apple only seems to hurry when the technology they're introducing is exclusive. They take forever to roll out "mainstream" stuff. Remember how long it took them to include USB3 on their computers? They still haven't for peripherals like the Time Capsule and AirPort or any of the iDevices. AC wireless also waited a generation longer than it needed to. So, as much as I hope Apple will be quick to support H.265, history suggests I maybe shouldn't hold my breath.
They may move more quickly to support 4K, but only because so many FCPX editors use an iPhone for principal photography!
As for capacity, I have my doubts because the Apple vision is cloud storage. I suppose they may still double it, but my sphincter tightens at the thought of how much Apple will charge for it.
The fact that Apple is concentrating on quality over specsmanship when it comes to cameras is great news though! Like others have said, I'd much rather have 5-8 million good looking pixels than 13 million poor ones.
Yeah, they were so slow at releasing 64bit.
I think Lorin was referring to standards. I am not sure we can always say Apple is behind in adapting new standards or getting rid of them as appropriate. Lets see.
Adopting stuff:
- USB 1.0 for keyboard and mice. I think they lead here compared to rest of the industry.
- 802.11b wireless networking. I think they lead here compared to rest of the industry. 802.11ac came on both their Access Points, Time Capsule and MBA. Not sure we need it yet for iPhone However.
- PDF. I think they lead here compared to rest of the industry.
- Thunderbolt.
- 1394 Firewire
- Bluetooth keyboard and mice. I think they lead here compared to rest of the industry.
- Wired Ethernet
- SCSI
- DVD Burners
- H264 HW Video playback and encoding
- Java
Killing stuff off:
Floppies
Optical Drives
Bluray
Flash
Retail software packages mostly full of empty space
DRM
As well they should. Unless you're making enlargements, more pixels make marginal improvements, and can even hurt image quality with interference once the pixel density on the image sensor gets too high. Bigger sensors, better optics, and better software are all more important (and all of which Apple went out of their way to improve with the iPhone 5S).
The camera market is starting to wise up too, with better lenses and somewhat larger sensors on point-and-shoots, and a beginning trend towards full-frame sensors on DSLRs (which more commonly use sensors sized like APS film). That Sony Alpha 7 looks amazing... If only I didn't have all these Canon lenses.
...
One thing this article leaves out is the photo compression factor of the cameras in these phones. How much data is lost to this compression to allow more than a few photos to reside on the phones internal memory? We all know the Samsung phones don't have very much memory left for photos with all the garbage that's loaded on them so just how many 38MP photos will fit on the Lumina? What happens with video? What happens with a panoramic photo? How long does it take these photos to transfer to your computer or the cloud?
btw: my Canon 60D's 18MP sensor is 22.30×14.90 mm or 9X the size of the Lumina and has a pixel size of 18.5 microns; way more than any mobile phone would ever be capable of using.
uh, photos/videos always stored in 32GB or 64GB mSD cards. you can bring a bunch when travelling.
For me, i try to upload to clouds to free space on my iphone, but cost a lot of my monthly bandwidth allowance... I always have to bring my "other" camera on trips to take thousands of photos.
Apple doesn't want to upgrade the camera pixels I think it's because of the storage problem.