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Apple Taps UK Engineer for New Optical Image Stabilization System for iOS Device Cameras
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Could you please tell me what passive and active AF are?
Me also!
Also IS does nothing for subject blur. And large lens doesn't equal large aperture.
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And the Nokia Lumia 920 had OIS already in 2012.
I think the significant difference to all the previous OIS phone camera modules in this patent is how it combines AF (auto focus) and OIS using the same actuators. At least the Nokia OIS did move the lens and sensor together, and probably used separate voice coils for AF.
I guess combining the features could make Apple's camera module more compact. Nokia phones with OIS are thicker overall or do at least have a "hump" around the camera lens.
It doesn't matter, since you don't use smartphones to shoot motion/action shots.
People only use smartphone cameras for party pictures. No one uses smartphones for anything else. No one important anyways.
Bring in Image stabilization (an additional 4-5 stops for low-light shooting), and they can throw away their dSLRs.
I think he used the bold to indicate that he was making a bad joke on purpose, you know, in a kind of "nudge nudge' ironic way. No need to be, what's that phrase Americans use, "douches"?
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Even in party pictures the subjects often move more than you'd expect, leading to motion blur. The problem is made worse when the OIS kicks in because the camera will choose a longer exposure time instead of increasing the ISO but that does not do anything to stop the subject, again, leading to a blurred photo.
There's no denying the OIS can be a life saver especially for telephotos but with the wide angle lens on the phones, I'm a bit skeptical of its utility. On the other hand for the indoor shots of truly static subjects, it can really be a revelation. Which means we'll have less blurred shots of dishes.
They changed the behavior? That sucks. I still have iOS 6 on my phone so I hadn't run into this.
Yep, good pints.
Moreover, in 2013 we already saw a few phones with OIS:
Nokia's Lumia 920
Google Nexus 5
LG G2
HTC One
Nokia 1020, with both OIS and a 41megapixel sensor.
There may be others, but I am not aware of them.
Don't mean to beat up on Apple for fun, but it really needs to do something innovative (the fingerprint sensor is a start). Nokia has really upped the photo quality ante with the Lumia 1020 and I really don't want to see an Apple "patent" for downsampling large sensor images, to be implemented in the 2017 iPhone.
Not quite, but the Lenovo K900 Android has a 13 Megapixel f/1.8 lens....
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Regarding OIS, one not often mentioned factor is manufacturing. There were reports Samsung gave up on OIS for the Galaxy Note 3 because they couldn't get enough cameras made for it if they want OIS. Since the new iPhone will probably sell a lot more than the Note, at this point we're not sure if guys like LG who manufacture the cameras for the iPhones have the capacity to make millions and millions of OIS-equipped cameras. So I don't know if that'll be feasible for the iPhone 6 or not.
As a geek I'd love it if Apple did something like the Lumia 1020 or the Pureview 808 but that's very unlikely to happen. Those Nokias are niche market products with huge sensors that made them thick and heavy. On the other hand I really do appreciate Nokia took a chance with those phones and did something different.
My guess is Apple will stick to a similar sensor to the iPhone 5S because they already upgraded it with the iPhone 5s by enlarging the sensor size to 1/3" from 1/3.2" of the iPhone 5. Thus based on the past history, I'd expect Apple to stay with that sensor size for one more year and not really add all that much new features other than the possible OIS assuming they can get enough supply of OIS cameras. If they improve the speed of AF, that'll be great though.
(here begins a long and rather useless stream of thoughts on iPhone cameras)
What Apple does have to do, and so far has done extremely well, is to have a phone that gets out of the way and reliably takes pictures that are well exposed with pleasing colors.
The one underrated aspect of the iPhone 4S was that I felt it was the first iPhone that I felt was usable enough to replace low end compacts and did a better job of taking constantly decent picture. There were other phones with very good cameras such as the Nokia N8 and the Galaxy S3 on the market too but I thought the iPhone 4S stood out by offering a great combination of image quality, reliable exposure, white balance, and very pleasing but still subtle enough JPG processing all backed by good speed performance.
Will the OIS help achieve that goal? I have my concerns for the reasons mentioned earlier but again it's really a killer feature for food pictures and we know how popular food pictures are, for better or for worse. I'm guessing is the most logical way to do it is more so than the OIS, to go up slightly in the sensor size to 1/2.7" or even 1/2.3" like Sony did with the Xperia Z1 and keep the same pixel count. That way we'll have really noticeable improvement in image quality.
But the sensor size is only one factor. While the aforementioned Nokias do have very nice image quality, their performance isn't really all that great, both the AF speed and shot-to-shot speed could use some improvements. Also I am not crazy about of Nokia's JPEG image processing either even though it's a more subjective issue. It was particularly evident in the 920 which had great specs on paper but many felt the pictures didn't live up to the promise. I'm disappointed Apple doesn't take chances with the camera hardware like Nokia but at the same time I do think they made the right bet by concentrating on the image processing and the general usability of the camera.
Sure. Passive AF uses software to analyze the image and determines how far the subject is by changing focus until the image is sharp. It works okay in sunlight, but is prone to error and slow in low light.
Active AF utilizes the hardware and uses, for example, ultrasound to measure the distance.
Bigger screen and a camera with OIS. Awesome. 8 MP is absolutely fine, given the optical quality you find in a mass produced lens for a phone.
Can't wait to ditch my increasingly annoying Note with its spyware OS
Can't wait to ditch my increasingly annoying Note with its spyware OS
The first one that comes to mind is zoom. Since hardly any phones comes with optical zoom, if the photo resolution is much higher than you need it to be, you can crop the photo and still have enough megapixels for a detailed image.
And more and more people aren't carrying actual cameras around, print outs of photos are better with a higher resolution, especially when you print in larger format.
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There is no way a camera on a phone is going to match a DSLR. Especially with Apple and not allowing us to access things like shutter times and the like.
Blur
Another great move by Apple. It's too bad Apple never takes the time to educate the masses on the basic physics of photography. Every hand-held photo, no matter what the lighting conditions, will be blurred by camera movement. Adding more pixels to a blurred image will not make it any sharper. Reducing camera motion during exposure will improve sharpness. Creating methods of motion reduction will do far more for image sharpness than increasing the number of pixels.
Another great move by Apple. It's too bad Apple never takes the time to educate the masses on the basic physics of photography. Every hand-held photo, no matter what the lighting conditions, will be blurred by camera movement. Adding more pixels to a blurred image will not make it any sharper. Reducing camera motion during exposure will improve sharpness. Creating methods of motion reduction will do far more for image sharpness than increasing the number of pixels.
I see what you are doing here
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Depends on the angle you choose to take from a text but yeat, to a certain degree you are right. 6 years ago when I started here the conversation were a bit more sophisticated and relaxed. THese days its different so yeah, I recently I was more negative than positive but is that always bad?
)))Anyway, on topic. would be great if camera was improved more than just stabilisation in the next iPhone. I think that low light shooting would be something I would prefer and improvements in video too.
What about the IS mode in Camera+?
When I remember I try to take my snaps using Camera+, and this has a stabilisation feature. It refused to take a photo when my son was wobbling about with it, so some of it must be about measuring what's going on rather than compensating that much.
When I remember I try to take my snaps using Camera+, and this has a stabilisation feature. It refused to take a photo when my son was wobbling about with it, so some of it must be about measuring what's going on rather than compensating that much.
It's - as with ALL alleged IS implementations - just waits until the sensors (accelerometer / gyro) deliver a somewhat good (least-wobbling) result and shoots the image after that, assuming the phone will stay somewhat motionless for another 1/15s... 1/30s.
Of course, it's a prediction only and not true IS. You can NOT take decent photos with this kind of alleged IS with long shutter speeds either, not even with 1/15s - unlike with decent OIS implementations, which can, with the better implementations (Nokia) easily go as long as 1/4s.
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Exactly. The almost complete lack of manual settings, even on the iOS7 API level (I'm not talkin about the barebones, super-simple stock Camera app), is a real PITA, considering how much more advanced
- Nokia's API (and stock Pro Camera app) is
- and that even the stock Camera app in Android is far more capable.
You're better than me. My 'compact' camera has OIS in the body (Olympus ep3) and I still can't take anything sharp less than 1/100!
1, At what equivalent focal length? You may know the rule of reciprocity - noone should expect tack sharp results shot handheld at, say, 200mm equiv using 1/100s shutter speed.
2, the "old" Olympus m43 cameras are all known for not-very-effective BIS. It's much weaker than that of, say, the E-M5, some of the, stabilization-wise, better lens. This may also be the cause for your unsharp images.
Sorry, yes I should know better, 90mm effective (45mm lens). I don't really rely on it given I have two DSLRs and no lenses with IS/VR/OS...
90 mm equiv is bound to result in a significant number of blurred images when you shoot at 1/100s, even with the (sadly, not very effective) BIS enabled on the EP3. Try bumping up the shutter speed to 1/200s if the lighting is OK.