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MacBook Pro iSights See 1.3 MP Upgrade

Not so sure this is a good thing.

Unless Apple is borrowing technology from Fujifilm or created their own advancement that no other camera maker has done yet, I'm not so sure that I like this. More pixels squeezed on tiny sensor = each pixel on the sensor has to be physically smaller = more camera noise, especially in low lighting. There is less surface area on each pixel to overcome the level of noise.

This is why today's 10 MP compact cameras generally get poorer image quality under low lighting when compared to yesterday's 4 MP cameras under the same conditions, and why digital SLR cameras (with huge sensors, hence much larger size of each pixel) have such incredible low light performance. And this is also why camera phones, which are even smaller, have such poor image quality when the lighting isn't adequate.

In truth, this is probably not an issue for most people since they'll probably be in a well lit room. But the iSight on my 1st gen MacBook is a already bit noisy in the ambient evening lighting in my living room, imagine how how much more noise with a 1.3 MP on a tiny camera like that. It's a webcam, I don't need super high resolution, so I think I prefer the lower noise from the lower resolution to better adapt to the different lighting conditions around my house.

Alex R.
 
1.3 Megapixels?

The screen resolution of the 15" MBP is 1400x900, i.e. 1.26 Megapixels. How cool would it be to have a widescreen iSight? I don't like seeing my chat partners streched to look fat or having letterboxing on the side when in full screen.

I use photobooth a lot to make pictures of hand written notes to have ot on my computer. On small handwriting, the resolution can be quite a pain. It sure would be great to be able to record 720p movies with the iSight.
 
PLEASE Bring Back the Standalone iSight!!!

I hope that Apple read some of these posts. Everyone that buys or owns a Mac doesn't want a built-in camera in their monitors or iMacs. You can't take the built-in cameras and show someone something in your office or home (what are they going to do, grab their iMacs and tote it around to show something cool in their space??). What if the iSight needs some repair? You got to take the whole damn thing (computer or Cinema display) in to get it fixed. Not a good way to go.

What about MacPro Desktop users? These are people that spend thousands of dollars on these devices and unless they opt for an Apple Cinema Display, they're out of luck. I personally have a G5 Dual 2.0 machine and thank God still have my trusty standolane iSight camera (still one of the best Webcams that's out there).

Apple, please, please give us the flexibility and variety we have come to love about you and bring back the standalones.
 
gerbilbox said:
Unless Apple is borrowing technology from Fujifilm or created their own advancement that no other camera maker has done yet, I'm not so sure that I like this. More pixels squeezed on tiny sensor = each pixel on the sensor has to be physically smaller = more camera noise, especially in low lighting. There is less surface area on each pixel to overcome the level of noise.

This is why today's 10 MP compact cameras generally get poorer image quality under low lighting when compared to yesterday's 4 MP cameras under the same conditions, and why digital SLR cameras (with huge sensors, hence much larger size of each pixel) have such incredible low light performance. And this is also why camera phones, which are even smaller, have such poor image quality when the lighting isn't adequate.
Click to expand...

I think that the trend to smaller pixels doesn't necessarily equate with higher noise. The limitations in compact cameras have much more to do with the optics than the sensor. There are very high-end cameras that use pixels down in the 2 micron dimension, and as long as they are paired with the appropriate optics they give excellent performance. Digital SLR cameras tend to be using much nicer optics than that of your MBP.
 
Bring on June 30th! (or maybe later to let more hype subside)

~Shard~ said:
For those of us not in the States it's a bit of overkill
Click to expand...

It is overkill for some of us in the States. I am ready for tomorrow to come and go!

Back on topic...Have recently made MB (non-Pro) been checked for recent changes like this? It doesn't seem like it would be a 'pro vs regular' type of upgrade, but just the result of what is available to be used as cameras.

--HG
 
Corrosive vinyl said:
very true... how can they physically do that... go from .3 from the OG iSight (thanks for the knowledge) to 1.3 on a smaller device?
Click to expand...

The miniturization of the iSight is due to advances in cell-phone CMOS imaging sensors. By scaling the individual pixel smaller, you can fit more of them into a smaller area. This is combined with smaller optics, and you get the new iSights.
 
gauchogolfer said:
I think that the trend to smaller pixels doesn't necessarily equate with higher noise. The limitations in compact cameras have much more to do with the optics than the sensor. There are very high-end cameras that use pixels down in the 2 micron dimension, and as long as they are paired with the appropriate optics they give excellent performance. Digital SLR cameras tend to be using much nicer optics than that of your MBP.
Click to expand...

It's actually easier to design and manufacturer high quality optics for smaller cameras, but optics aren't a significant factor in image noise. Even a cheapy lens on a dSLR (and there are plenty of crappy dSLR lenses) will still produce beautifully low noise images in difficult lighting. There are plenty of compact digital cameras with superb lenses, but still have poor low lighting performance.

You're right, there are other factors involved, but with current technology the physical pixel size is very strongly correlated to image noise when the sensor is trying to capture lower amounts of light. Digital Photography Review has a good article explaining this phenomenon:

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glossary/Digital_Imaging/Noise_01.htm

Fujifilm's patented SuperCCD technology works around this problem with more space efficient pixel arrangement, but besides some news of some lab showing a prototype sensor, I don't think there has been much commercial advance to this issue.

But like I said, if you're in a well lit room, noise won't be an issue.

Alex R.
 
I'm not surprised, the iMac has been 1.3mp for a while now and no one made a fuss about it. No one made a fuss when apple doubled the max resolution on the MBP's

Referring to an old thread, when the intel mac's came out.

http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-49888.html

In regards to that, I can't find anywhere anymore that it says double the resolution for the notebooks, but if you go to the isight section for the iMac it says 4x the resolution of the original isight.
 
notjustjay said:
Good news.

Especially with all the recent hubbub about YouTube videos -- playable on iPhone, playable on Apple TV, encoding to h.264 -- flooding the market with high quality webcams instead of the $15 Wal-Mart trash is a Very Good Thing.
Click to expand...

I totally agree. I'm tired of low quality web cam porn!
 
Macrumors said:
While it appears as though Apple's built-in applications such as iChat still force the resolution to VGA quality, any application could theoretically take advantage of the increased resolution as of the Mac OS 10.4.10 update according to the developers.
Click to expand...

Bah. I knew that 10.4.10 must have changed something regarding iSight. It gleefully broke isightcapture for me, which I'd been using to capture time-lapse movies of my dogs when I'm away from home. Now isightcapture only works if you run it directly from your login/gui session. If you run it from outside that (from an ssh login, or from the web script, as I was doing), it fails to initialize the camera. :mad: :mad:

I even scoured the web and actually found enough example code to hack together my own little version of isightcapture. My version fails in exactly the same way. At least it's consistent, and I'll have a concrete example of the bug to show Apple. Now I have to go file a bug report, but what are the chances that Apple will fix it and release a 10.4.11? Pretty slim, I'd guess. :(
 
opticalserenity said:
Kinda neat, but how come they didn't put it on the specs to help sell the new mbp?
Click to expand...

because the Photobooth doesn't implement it. It's kind of hard to market a feature that you can't use natively on the system (especially since native use is macs thing). Once they get the apps updated they'll advertise it.
 
TitoC said:
Apple, please, please give us the flexibility and variety we have come to love about you and bring back the standalones.
Click to expand...

drumforfun19 said:
I totally agree. I'm tired of low quality web cam porn!
Click to expand...

TitoC said:
Yeah, that's right. Only GOOD quality web porn. Nothing less . . .
Click to expand...

Yeah I have to agree with you... whilst I do love the new 1.3MP built-in iSight on my MBP it was a lot easier to just hold the external iSight connected to my old PowerBook in various positions :eek: :D
 
So the original was VGA which is 480 x 640 which was 0.3 megapixels.

The new internal iSight is apparently 1.3 megapixels.

Can someone confirm what XXX x XXX this is, and is this XGA or whatever?
 
iSight External Should Be Wireless

What would be really cool from Apple would be a Bluetooth or even a Airport-based iSight. If you really want to 'walk around the house and show people things, etc.,' do you really want your camera on something like a USB cord? How long would THAT have to be? But if it could send the video back via wireless.... Well, that would be pretty sweet, IMO.

I wonder if such things are available already... hrrmmm ... Well, I see Bluetooth ones are at least under development so I'm not the first person to think of it. And lo and behold, there are a LOT of wireless network based ones available!

Yes indeedy, if Apple is going to release stand-alone iSights and wants to be 'with it', they'd better offer some wireless options. The new 802n format would be great for it.
 
gerbilbox said:
You're right, there are other factors involved, but with current technology the physical pixel size is very strongly correlated to image noise when the sensor is trying to capture lower amounts of light. Digital Photography Review has a good article explaining this phenomenon:
Click to expand...

From a purely physics point-of-view, photon noise increases with the square root of the detector area. That's all I'm saying. If you have two detectors with all of the same properties, but one of them has smaller pixels, the one with smaller pixels will have less noise. It's just fundamental.

The ability of commercial DSLR manufacturers to make better, more responsive, larger arrays compared to those used in cell phone cameras is largely a function of their better processing technology (and not using plastic lenses), not the dimensions they've chosen for array geometry.

And now, back on topic. :)
 
Baby Books?

Does anyone know if the 1.3MP upgrade was included with the recent update to the (i)MacBooks as well?

Also, has anyone with the camera upgrade tried shooting 1.3MP video with iMovie? I wonder if it works there...

jp

Can I get an AMEN for a story not related to the iPhone?
 
MrCrowbar said:
1.3 Megapixels?

The screen resolution of the 15" MBP is 1400x900, i.e. 1.26 Megapixels. How cool would it be to have a widescreen iSight? I don't like seeing my chat partners streched to look fat or having letterboxing on the side when in full screen.

I use photobooth a lot to make pictures of hand written notes to have ot on my computer. On small handwriting, the resolution can be quite a pain. It sure would be great to be able to record 720p movies with the iSight.
Click to expand...

It seems to me that my iMac native resolution is 1440 x 900, which would be 1.296 MP - essentially 1.3MP. I suspect the MBP is the same. iMac does not feature widescreen iSight (that I'm aware of).
 
sbbruiser said:
Does anyone know if the 1.3MP upgrade was included with the recent update to the (i)MacBooks as well?

Also, has anyone with the camera upgrade tried shooting 1.3MP video with iMovie? I wonder if it works there...

jp

Can I get an AMEN for a story not related to the iPhone?
Click to expand...

I feel you, brother. AMEN!
 
And don't forget that iSights have always had an infrared total darkness night-vision mode and other interesting features. Like this new higher res, they can be accessed by 3rd-party software, and there's an app that can enable some of them (including night vision) in iChat. Created, I believe, by the same company:

http://www.ecamm.com/mac/iglasses

nightvision.jpg


VERY useful for video conferences during blackouts!

(Re the iPhone. WHY are there so many iPhone stories THIS week? I don't get it! It's crazy! And adding insult to injury, I can't figure out how to tell which stories are iPhone-related so I can avoid reading them! :( )
 
I hope they do add 1.3MP support to PhotoBooth--but I tend to doubt it (for the time being) because it could make other Macs look bad.

Killyp said:
I wonder if it's more to do with backdrops in PhotoBooth. Somebody I talk to online (who is also a member of these forums) has downloaded and uses Leopard, and it looks like either Backdrops are VERY unfinished or iSights are not outputting a consistent enough image for it to work. Certain parts of the background just seem to re-appear, and I could understand why when you look at the noise produced by the iSight. I guess this new higher resolution one is less 'noisy'.
Click to expand...

You mean iChat, not PB, right? In some situations the effects will work better than others.
Without a true greenscreen or the like, that kind of background effect will always be "just for fun." Don't expect perfect quality. Even in the demos there's a fringe around the person.
Some things that may help:

1. Use a backdrop with similar lighting and tones to your actual environment.

2. Set the lighting up so that you are not casting moving shadows the camera can see.

3. Wear colors that are different from the environment. Although a black shirt with black behind you could make a nice floating head to use with that hologram effect :)
 
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