GOOD. They've needed to update the front facing for a long time. And its not a selfie when you have someone with you in the picture. I use the front more than the back because of FaceTime and I don't want to ask someone to oblige themselves to take a picture of me and my SO.
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Sony Likely to Provide Front-Facing Camera Sensors for Future iPhone
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Sony has been building sensors which Nikon used for years. Right now two of the best cameras from Nikon (and on the market in general) use Sony sensors - the D800(E) and the D600(610).
Other cameras that used Sony sensors were for example the beloved D90 and the D7000
Sony doesn't provide all the sensors - some are designed by Nikon and build by other companies, like the one for the D3200 or D4.
Sorry, but this is complete BS.
1, the NEX series, while not having the best lens lineup (compared to that of micro 4/3, Canon or Nikon), have the best IQ, mostly thanks to their sensors. No wonder even Olympus, who previously licensed Pana sensors, have silently switched to the much superior Sony ones on the OM-D in 2012. And Nikon have always used Sony in their DSLR's. No wonder they (Nikon) have the best DSRL's out there, consistently outperforming Canon. The latter, as I've pointed out above, still stick with their inferior sensor tech - this is why they just can't deliver as good DR as cameras based on Sony's sensor tech.
2, their old, true DSLR's, particularly the fullframe A900/A920, were class leading too, IQ-wise. They were in no way worse than comparable Nikon / Canon fullframe offerings of the time.
3, they have some excellent P&S cameras like the RX 100 (Mk II), which is only (somewhat) let down by the lens softness when wide open and at 28 mm equiv.
4, it's only their
a, SLT series that have somewhat more noise than the best of the competition but that's understandable beacuse of the mirror. (No wonder SLT cameras are being phased out by Sony.)
b, high-megapixel compacts like the entire HX series that REALLY suck. But the latter has always been known and no sensible people would have ever gone for a HX-series Sony camera with much better-quality, albeit less featureful, offerings available.
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Yes, I've explicitly emphasized in anotehr post I wouldn't want to see Sony's 20 Mpixel sensor in an iPhone for exactly the same reason: it'll slow it down.
The 5s has class-leading burst shooting rate. No wonder both the 20 Mpixel Sony Z1 and the even-higher megapixel Nokia offerings (1020, 808) can't come close to it. With the current tech, high megapixel means slow operation.
Nokia has low sales not because of their camera's problems but because of their OS. A 808, a 1020 or a 1520 running Android would have sold tens of millions.
But this is so bad! I will only buy the next iPhone if Apple make all the components. All. The. Components.for life!
If you really meant this, just a quick remark: it seems Sony can't be beaten in the sensor business. At least not now. No matter how hard Canon, Panasonic, Aptiva/Toshiba try, they just can't come up with a sensor at least as good as those of Sony. (Assuming the same pixel area.)
It's highly unlikely Apple could engineer a decent sensor themselves. They could only license the tech from Sony if they wanted to manufacture the sensors in-house. But not develop their own sensor - it'd be pretty much fruitless, at least in the first few years.
You are certainly speculating on sales, but we will know shortly as Nokia is back in this market with Android versions targeted at photographers.
Unfortunately, that won't happen in the next 2+ years. The for MWC-rumoured phone deliberately lacks "full" Android to be able to use a, this way, absolutely free OS. And there won't be a "full", high-end Android handset from Nokia while the MS deal lasts.
The reasons for Nokia's low-end Android phone are simple:
- Series 40 (the current OS running on low-end Nokia phones) is very weak and outdated
- Nokia / MS don't want to offer WP-based Asha phones in that price / size category
- they don't need to pay anything to Google if they don't use their add-on services (GMaps, playStore etc.) - the OS itself, w/o Google's add-on services, is free
- Android is mature and runs just fine on a phone and, again, is much-much more up to date than the aging S40
All in all, it's understandable MS has nothing against running Android on a low-end, cheap but, as it's Nokia, durable and quality handset. Again, they aren't supporting Google, their competitor, at all. This, however, doesn't mean there will be high-end Android MS / Nokia handsets. Regrettably.
There surely won't be full Android devices by MS / Nokia in the next 2 years. MS won't support their main competitor. This also means there won't be camera-specific flagships either.
As a photographer, I've been really impressed with the ever improving quality of the iPhone camera. So much so that I've been leaving my SLR at home when travelling.
The megapixel war is over and Apple understands that. The direction that research is headed will allow for larger sensors with flatter lenses. That means a larger lens on the back of your iPhone without compromising thin design but dramatically improved light capture which will lead to iPhone photography of the quality of crop sensors on prosumer SLRs of today. Think a Canon Rebel or a Nikon D7100.
The consumer cameras of the future are smartphones.
The megapixel war is over and Apple understands that. The direction that research is headed will allow for larger sensors with flatter lenses. That means a larger lens on the back of your iPhone without compromising thin design but dramatically improved light capture which will lead to iPhone photography of the quality of crop sensors on prosumer SLRs of today. Think a Canon Rebel or a Nikon D7100.
The consumer cameras of the future are smartphones.
Your SLR or DSLR? If the latter, and it's less than, say, five years old and you use it with at least a semi-decent lens and it's not a Pana / Oly m4/3 or 4/3 camera from the earli(er) years, then, I don't think you wouldn't have drastically better dynamic range with it than with any iPhones (or any other small-sensor cameras). In that, larger-sensor cameras will always be much better than iPhones. (And I haven't even talked about DoF, the ability to swap lens and, if you have bright ones, thus increase low-light performance; optical zoom etc.)
You're overly optimistic. This is, with the currently (and in the near future) available tech, physically impossible even if we do assume Apple do everything to make their camera as good as possible. And I'm pretty pessimistic in the latter regard too - for example, RAW support or manual models may have been comparatively easy for Apple to implement but they haven't bothered. I'm pretty sure they don't consider camera quality / usability very important.
So, even if Apple put major emphasis on camera tech, it'd be impossible to put, say, an 1" sensor in a, say, 8mm thick device. Why? If you've shot both digital and film, you already know the answer: the angles i which light reach the sensor. With film, this wasn't that big a problem. With digital, it is the biggest problem requiring microlenses. If you don't use any kind of correction, everything will be dreadfully out of focus and marred by CA, except the center, where the light hits the sensor at 90 degrees. And microlenses can't decrease the lens vs. sensor distance too much either - otherwise, Sony would have come up with a super-mini camera already.
All in all, in the near future, there will NOT be large-sensor iPhones. We'll be lucky if we even get a 1/2.3" sensor (the 5s only has a significantly smaller 1/3" one). A larger one? 1/1.7", like in many enthusiast cameras? 2/3", like in the 808 or some Fuji enthusiast P&S cameras? Or 1", like in the Nikon 1" or the Sony RX100 (MkII)? No way. It's physically impossible in such a thin device. (Remember: Nokia had to go with a, IIRC, 18mm thick "bump" for their 2/3" sensor in the 808 and around 12mm for the significantly smaller 1/1.4" in the 1020. The former is almost three times thicker than the iPhone 5/5s.) And 1" still delivers considerably lower IQ (higher noise / lower DR) than an APS-C sensor (assuming the same tech), let alone smaller ones.
In the near future (the next 2-3 years at least, unless there'll be a breakthrough in microlense / sensor tech), you won't see large-sensor but still think phones.
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A better front facing camera is nice, but I hope they pack a huge sensor in the rear facing camera, leave it around 8 MP, and actually go with the f/1.2 aperture.
See my previous comment - it's physically impossible. You can't just put a huge sensor in a very thin device - the current sensor & lens tech just doesn't allow for it.
The Deal Breaker
Apple isn't losing sleep over my decision not to get the 5s, but my main reason for sticking with my 5 is that the front camera did not support slo mo. I was hoping to use that for my golf swing. Hopefully the 6 will have front facing slo mo, but even if not I'm sure I'll bite.
Apple isn't losing sleep over my decision not to get the 5s, but my main reason for sticking with my 5 is that the front camera did not support slo mo. I was hoping to use that for my golf swing. Hopefully the 6 will have front facing slo mo, but even if not I'm sure I'll bite.
Highly unlikely it'll have. Slo-mo requires high-speed sensor readout, which, in general, makes the hardware more expensive. As very few people want slo-mo recording with the front camera, Apple surely won't go this way.
However, if 30 fps isn't a problem and you "only" need slo-mo mode for the in-iPhone slow-down editor, there's a solution already (and also working on the iPhone 5): jailbreak, get the free "Slo-mo Mod" and enable "Force slo-mo for all videos" in Settings. Then, any video, incl. ones shot with the front camera, you record in the standard Video mode of the stock Camera app will have an associated slo-mo editor timeline. Just remember NOT to switch to the deicated "Slo-mo" mode in the Camera app - just stick with the standard "Video" mode so that you can use the front camera for recording.
I've published a lot more info on Slo-mo Mod at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1698879/
I know, but maybe if the sensor could improve the camera enough Apple would finally quit on with this race to be the thinnest phone out BS. Then we'd get a thicker battery, too. I would GLADLY take a thicker phone to have a better camera and bigger battery.
I'm happy to see my 2nd favorite company supply cameras to my 1st favorite company.
I'll second that, and I might add, if Apple ever does release an actual large screen Tv, I hope it includes Sony's
X-Reality Pro processors, along with their Triluminos Display Tech, and their Motionflow XR 960 chips.
The closest thing to perfection in television, and a perfect fit for Apple.
The limiting factor here is the thickness of the device. A bigger sensor needs glass with longer focal length.
Not ignoring the (hopefully) sarcasm in the original post, have you ever heard of "private equity"? Thats their business model. They do quite well from it.
I think you can also change the ISO which goes into the equation.
Also, while I dont know whether there are any aperture blades in the phone, isnt that part of the point of having M controls - to control exposure? Exposure doesnt need to be automatic - even if aperture and ISO are fixed, then changing the shutter speed will change your exposure, which may be precicely what the person wants.
But I do agree that having manual controls on a cellphone is total overkill, and just some kind of exposure compensation would be sufficient.
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Those Nikons, the best ones, have Sony sensors. As do many other camera brands. And their A series SLRs are world class.
Yes, the iPhone's exposure automatism uses the shutter speed and the ISO as the two variables. As all other phones, even the high-end cameraphones like the 808 and the 1020. Some, like the Nokia 808, have a switchable ND filter, in addition, to allow for slow shutter speed even when there's plenty of light; that is, to effectively decrease the base ISO from 50 to around 3 (four stops).
There aren't. Not even the, at the camera bump, almost three times thicker Nokia 808 has it. They'd require far too much space.
Disagreed. The iPhone sorely lacks both ISO or shutter speed control. Even one of the two would be a godsend. An excerpt from my previous comment here in this thread:
" 2. manual shutter control wold be a GODSEND, particularly because the iPhone has a tendency to go down to 1/15s shutter speed to keep the ISO as low as possible. Yes, even if you shoot action - there doesn't seem to be an "intelligent scene mode" algorithm in the iPhone quickly noticing you're shooting action and, to avoid motion blur, increasing the ISO to make the shutter speed much higher (over 1/100s)."
Exposure compensation in no way can emulate manually setting the ISO or the shutter speed, regrettably.
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Yup, Limboistik doesn't really know much about Sony's models. See my exhaustive, dedicated comment at https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18759712/
Thanks for your polite and useful responses to all of my posts. I do agree with you regarding motion blur (including especially subject motion blur), but I just think that the useful range for settings on a phone is so narrow, that adding the complexity of full control over ISO or shutter speed would be more trouble than its worth.
I know this is an argument against choice, but in this case I believe its sensible. I dont grab for my phone over a real camera because I like the image quality - I do it because I can almost instantly capture whats in front of me. That might be a moment which quickly passes. If I had left the phone in manual I could ruin the shot and the moment could be gone before I can change the settings. For many people, this is the type of situation that they use a phone in a camera.
I would prefer to just see the iphones exposure algorithm revised to give priority to shutter speed over ISO. An alternative to this would be a switchable option that does this - something like "limit noise" or "fast motion", which would switch priority between the two.
The iPhone 4S / 5 / 5c produce usable images even at ISO 800; the 5s even at ISO 1600. Of course it's marred by noise but, when you shoot action, more noise is preferable to subject blur. That's 4-5 stops over the base ISO (IIRC, 50), meaning you could safely shoot at 1/250s ISO800 instead of the 1/15s ISO50 (4 stops difference) the exposure meter almost inevitably sets to use.
Therefore, a quick switch between the two modes would be great, even if not possible in the stock Camera client to keep it simple, but via the API. (Currently, not any kind of direct, arbitrary(!) ISO / shutter speed setting is possible via the API.)
Anotehr way could be Apple making the exposure algorithm much more refined. After all, many dedicated camera manufacturers have been adding intelligent modes for their cameras for years (see for example rge iA mode of the Pana ZS / TZ series, working just great even in the 2009 - that is, five-year-old model), (more or less) properly detecting subject motion and, consequently, bumping up the ISO / using large apertures to allow for as fast shutter as possible, well beyond 1/100s. This is where iOS currently really lacks.
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