EXACTLY! And with a lens that mesures 3mm (diameter), don't even think about taking good pictures...
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iPhone Video Recording Interface, Digital Compass, Voice Control and Auto-Focus Camera
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EXACTLY! And with a lens that mesures 3mm (diameter), don't even think about taking good pictures...
To all the ppl yawning about cameras only catching up with the competition 2 years after release.
Apple only had around 35 engineers on the first iPhone, i'll bet anyone not a single one of those was a camera engineer.
Prior to the iPhone the closest Apple got to photography was iSight VGA & 1.3MP fixed focus webcams embedded in their computers.
The obviously felt they needed to include a camera but they could only deliver what they could with the resources they had.
If you are going to build a competent competitor to a compact digital you need the following.[/LIST]
- Better Megapixels (Not necessarily more just a more sensitive/bigger sensor)
- Vastly superior optics (The iphone is practically a box brownie in this regard)
- Autofocus (That targets an area of the image or is smart an autofocuses on things like faces
)
- Anti-judder/Anti-shake/Anti-vibration/Anti-Jiggle (Whatever you wanna call it
- Zoom (Practically impossible to optically in a phone as skinny as the iPhone, so will probably digital)
- Flash & Red eye reduction (Flash, even an LED one will severely thrash the iPhones battery, so i'll be interested to see what they do here)
- Better white balance/Colour control.
Note the 2 i'm
Fact is shortly after iPhone was released there were a number of job openings for camera engineers. They just didn't have the smarts to do it first time around and i'm certain the engineers they hired weren't around long enough to have an effect on iPhone 3G. So this is the earliest opportunity to see what Apple can really do in the camera dept.
M.
thats all good points but since the first iphone camera wasn't very good...what stopped them from a bad video camera. You made valid points to why they didn't put in a great camera. But is a video camera on a phone EXCITING? NO. Video editing yes. Auto-focus yes. But they hopped into a market where this stuff is old news, so to me it still feels like old news. But I'm glad they are getting around to it.
What is that Button i see?
What is that button i see in the lower left?? Effects?
that would be cool...
What is that button i see in the lower left?? Effects
?that would be cool...
That wouldn't happen or at least would be less likely to happen.
Think about a fork in the road, if i'm pointing at the left fork and i'm supposed to be heading towards the right. A magnetometer will know this, GPS will not.
Rather having a relatively static graphic of the road ahead and waiting until the fork widens enough for GPS to know whether you've taken the correct route. Wouldn't it be better for the device to know what direction your pointing in and on that graphic redraw the arrow to direct you into the right lane.
Granted you should know left from right, but sometimes on city streets it's difficult to see the fork until it's too late.
M.
To all the ppl yawning about cameras only catching up with the competition 2 years after release.
Apple only had around 35 engineers on the first iPhone, i'll bet anyone not a single one of those was a camera engineer.
Prior to the iPhone the closest Apple got to photography was iSight VGA & 1.3MP fixed focus webcams embedded in their computers.
The obviously felt they needed to include a camera but they could only deliver what they could with the resources they had.
If you are going to build a competent competitor to a compact digital you need the following.[/LIST]
- Better Megapixels (Not necessarily more just a more sensitive/bigger sensor)
- Vastly superior optics (The iphone is practically a box brownie in this regard)
- Autofocus (That targets an area of the image or is smart an autofocuses on things like faces
- Anti-judder/Anti-shake/Anti-vibration/Anti-Jiggle (Whatever you wanna call it
- Zoom (Practically impossible to optically in a phone as skinny as the iPhone, so will probably digital)
- Flash & Red eye reduction (Flash, even an LED one will severely thrash the iPhones battery, so i'll be interested to see what they do here)
- Better white balance/Colour control.
Note the 2 i'm
Fact is shortly after iPhone was released there were a number of job openings for camera engineers. They just didn't have the smarts to do it first time around and i'm certain the engineers they hired weren't around long enough to have an effect on iPhone 3G. So this is the earliest opportunity to see what Apple can really do in the camera dept.
M.
I think this is probably going to mean decent video quality for once. Hopefully because of the accelerometers they can do anti-shake.
I agree. The camera works great. http://mikerucci.blogspot.com/
I went on a 4 month bike ride with no camera but the iphone and did this blog live with photos. I was very happy with the camera.
...Of course 'better' is always better.
thats all good points but since the first iphone camera wasn't very good...what stopped them from a bad video camera. You made valid points to why they didn't put in a great camera. But is a video camera on a phone EXCITING? NO. Video editing yes. Auto-focus yes. But they hopped into a market where this stuff is old news, so to me it still feels like old news. But I'm glad they are getting around to it.
Most likely because the bandwidth between the camera and ram and flash is too slow. Notice how the screen tears if you move the iphone too quickly.
They probably couldn't buffer enough in ram to make it worthwhile and to flush that data to flash is quite slow.
iPhone V3.0 will either have some dedicated buffering ram in place or just an overall increase in throughput from both a PA SEMI chip and more memory will likely do the job. Note if they do 720p it'll most likely be the former.
M.
that would be helpful. it would be more of a subtle increase in performance in GPS navigation. Even in your situation, you'd have to be pointed left way ahead of time and I can't see that happening. But I like the idea and I'm sure there is a way to make it awesome.
You don't need accelerometers to do anti-shake and in fact they'd probably be too slow and not sensitive enough for what is a very slight vertical movement.
Anti-shake typically works either by adjusting the optics/sensor in real time or as Apple's iMovie does it, by picking the area within the full frame that stays there through the course of the video capture.
I could of course be wrong about the cpu requirements of this versus what iPhone 3.0 delivers hardware wise in which case, Apple's pov might be just import it into iMovie once you get home.
M.
How come 
just doesn't enable these things by default?
Hopefully you'll be able to record videos on the current iPhone's, even though the quality wouldn't be any better than what Cycorder can do (or maybe it will?).
just doesn't enable these things by default?Hopefully you'll be able to record videos on the current iPhone's, even though the quality wouldn't be any better than what Cycorder can do (or maybe it will?).
How come
Hopefully you'll be able to record videos on the current iPhone's, even though the quality wouldn't be any better than what Cycorder can do (or maybe it will?).
Cos modern day
doesn't do crappy implementations of things. They may leave stuff out that geeks cry is insanity, but the stuff they do implement is top notch and easy to boot.It never fails to amaze me the ppl that rhyme off feature lists as if that automatically makes something better than it's competitor.
i've owned in my time, Sony Ericcson p800 & p900 & p910i, a black and white BlackBerry, can't remember the exact model, a 7500 & 8800, a Nokia 9000 communicator & a N95.
Of all these 'smartphones' which had features out the ying yang, not a single one was useable to the full extent of it's feature list.
iPhone is.
M.
You mean this kind of stuff in real-time?
It's cool, but I don't think it's very handy to be walking with your iPhone in front of you all the time. This is great in HUD-sunglasses, I wonder when that'll be available.
By the way, I don't think the iPhone will have the power to do this kind of stuff in real-time.
Check out Tonchidot http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/conference/presenter.php?presenter=71
Cos modern day
It never fails to amaze me the ppl that rhyme off feature lists as if that automatically makes something better than it's competitor.
Of all these 'smartphones' which had features out the ying yang, not a single one was useable to the full extent of it's feature list.
iPhone is.
M.
But it seems where they failed was the OS. And the iPhone (ipod touch) OS was better than those from launch. And I wouldn't call that camera on the iPhone right now top notch... but Apple locked down why there product was great first, and then got around 2 years later to the standard features found on smartphones.
All of those were taken with the iPhone? You have some nice pictures in there..... Looked like it would of been a blast!
The reason Apple picked the camera they did for the first two iPhone models was just cost and packaging. Yes, there were phones with better cameras, video, etc, but Apple couldn't just add every hardware feature under the sun and hit their price/profit targets. They chose to spend instead on a big touchscreen, nice case, CPU/GPU enough to run OS X, and lots of software R&D. Clearly, lots of people accepted these tradeoffs and bought iPhones instead of other high-feature smartphones.
It's possible that now that the iPhone is a success (instead of a risky new venture), they can target larger production runs and plus savings from using revved components, make things like better cameras possible at similar price points. Video and autofocus would definitely be enough to get me to upgrade my 1st gen phone and make paying the monthly "3G tax" worthwhile.
It's possible that now that the iPhone is a success (instead of a risky new venture), they can target larger production runs and plus savings from using revved components, make things like better cameras possible at similar price points. Video and autofocus would definitely be enough to get me to upgrade my 1st gen phone and make paying the monthly "3G tax" worthwhile.
The iPhone "4G" sounds totally badass. Each new feature discovered is convincing me more and more that it'd be worth it to drop my current carrier and sign a contract with AT&T.
One little suggestion: If Apple are indeed planning to add a flash, it should be the Apple logo on the back as one huge LED. Then maybe have it much dimmer during non-camera use so it emits a soft glow like the logos on the MBs/MBPs. A little pretentious, but totally awesome.
One little suggestion: If Apple are indeed planning to add a flash, it should be the Apple logo on the back as one huge LED. Then maybe have it much dimmer during non-camera use so it emits a soft glow like the logos on the MBs/MBPs. A little pretentious, but totally awesome.
Yes all photos were taken with the 1st Gen Iphone. The trip was a blast. not only was the iphone my only camera. Also maps with google search was amazingly helpful. Plus I was able to update the blog by sending emails.