This won't stop at 2 cameras. It will go to 3 then 4 then 8 then 16. The resolution will be unbelievable and you will be able to adjust the focus after the fact. I'm telling you, this is just the beginning.
Actually I first came across this idea with a "scanner" app that I have on my iPhone. It has you take a picture of the piece of paper 3 times. It then combines them to make an incredibly sharp image that when printed out is as clear as the original. And that is how I know that multiple cameras are coming! BTW the scanner app is called TurboScan.
Same (good) reason earth bound (and other) astronomical telescopes have gone multi-mirror, and now multi-multi mirror. Similarly in radio astronomy, banks of scopes, sometimes separated by thousands of miles form a single effective instrument....
The term "Optical Zoom" is the most misused in all of mobile photography. OPTICAL zoom changes the angle of view and the perspective/visual relationship between foreground and background objects as you move in or out. Digital zooming, no matter how you cut it, is simply in-camera cropping, NOT true optical zoom. It may have been in some phone or other, but even so, virtually non-existent on cell cams - although external clip-on lenses CAN change the perspective (at the cost of some optical degredation).
So what's implied here - and it's not nothing, just not OZ - is that with the extra info gathered by multiple lenses, the resulting sharpness allows more digital zooming without unsatisfactory loss of detail.
The LG G5 two lens array combines a "normal" cell perspective lens and a super-wide angle lens, and doesn't blend the images at all - it's just cams with different focal lengths (and different sensors, one 16MP and one 8MP), so gives you an "optical JUMP" between the two - each of which can be digitally zoomed, so not a smooth zoom across many focal lengths. It gives the illusion of OZ by digitally zooming as much as one lens can and then jumping into using the other.
And re the quote below, the Huawei P9 dual lens module works on a different principle, which resembles the LAB color space in PhotoShop - and which sounds more like what Apple seems to be up to. Both lenses are the same focal length, but one is used to gather only color (chrominance) information while the other is B/W and gathers only light levels information (luminance) - so a very sharp, colorless rendering, and then the chroma and luminance data are combined into a much sharper picture.
And as noted in the article there are also a variety of interesting possibilities for recording and utilizing the stereoscopic (3D) data generated by the two lenses slightly different view of the image - and beyond a 3D effect - which likely wouldn't be a primary result if the two lenses are gathering two different classes of data..
Looks like the second camera sensor has no color filter, so it can capture more light and detail in black & white. Then processing is applied to combine the color and b&w images.
Two cameras have to be oriented in a certain way. Will this make a different between taking portrait and landscape photos?
If they're using it as I conjecture above, shouldn't make much difference IMO.
I will give them credit for higher resolution....but to me it's useless if they can't get low light capability...that iphone's og flash style is not something I want. Is this going to be another purple halo camera phone?
Inherently, gathering twice the light in the same time should result in much improved low light shots. Tho' I can't speak about purple halos...
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Maybe I'm the only one here.. But I personally think two cameras would look so clunky and ghetto. And would take away from the pristine look of an iPhone.
Another status conscious poster more into what a gadget does for his self-image than what it does functionally....
I'll take the better camera(s), thanks.
Nuff said.
I always thought that ghetto referred to a run-down part of town... dilapidated buildings, etc. A quick dictionary search however says that it refers to a part of town inhabited predominantly by an ethnic or minority group. Hmm.. learn something new every day.
The word originated in Europe and referred to "the quarter where the Jews live" in various Euro cities without ever being fully integrated (foreshadowing the terrible events of WWII), and only more recently developing the connotation above, primarily in America referring to poor, black neighborhoods.