Well, one thing is the requirement to have multiple lenses in order to get depth of field. And the way the computational photography is done to make up for that, it turns out to be a poor approximation of what a real lens with a variable aperture provides. There is outlining on the near object, and that object is entirely in focus, when it should be gradated from the point of focus. I have no idea what a real lens would cost to replace the 3 the Max has, but I'd pay for it to get better picture quality. What the heck, I already paid a grand for the phone, why not pay a few more shekels and get a real lens in it? My point in saying it's ridiculous is that Apple has been trying to sell us on the idea that the camera is so special when it's a kludgy setup. And they have to add more lenses to approximate what an actual camera can do, and that jacks the price up. The next thing you know, you'll have a honeycomb of lenses on the back of the phone, just to get a few more minor capabilities which still aren't what a decent lens can provide. Hence, ridiculous.
Do tell how one can "put all the cameras into one".
What do you mean by "real lens?"
One with a variable aperture. That would eliminate the need to have multiple lens with fixed apertures. My understanding is that such a real lens would be thicker and heavier than the current lenses, but who knows what magic the Apple engineers can pull out of their camera hats?
The multiple lenses is not for different apertures, but for different focal lengths. Variable apertures won’t replace different focal lengths. Besides, variable aperture on a sensor this small is almost insignificant. You’ll want the largest aperture anyway to allow as much light into the tiny sensor.
Actually, the different lenses are for different depths of view. The context of my post was depth of field, which is controlled by aperture size, not focal length.
In addition to focal length. So using variable aperture won’t replace the multiple focal lens purpose of the multiple lenses. OTOH, going with multiple lens, you get both multiple focal lengths and depth sensing. Thus going multiple lenses is the right way, instead of going with variable aperture that won’t even do much difference in depth of field considering the sensor size.
But... smaller sensors can have better depth of field capabilities than larger ones. "As sensor size increases, the depth of field will decrease for a given aperture (when filling the frame with a subject of the same size and distance). This is because larger sensors require one to get closer to their subject, or to use a longer focal length in order to fill the frame with that subject. This means that one has to use progressively smaller aperture sizes in order to maintain the same depth of field on larger sensors."
