[HN Gopher] Autofocus on a Pi - ArduCam's new 16MP camera
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Autofocus on a Pi - ArduCam's new 16MP camera
Author : geerlingguy
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-01-12 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| canbus wrote:
| Quite easy to read the MCU text with the autofocus camera, with
| the others not so much.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| One of the few times a resolution increase _does_ dramatically
| increase the clarity--probably due to the camera module also
| having a much nicer lens to match the higher-resolution sensor.
|
| It also helps that the sensor is slightly larger (though still
| a bit smaller than the one on the HQ camera.
| canbus wrote:
| I think that opens up a discussion about sensor size not
| being the biggest factor in image quality and whether it's
| worth it or not in practical terms to have a large sensor.
| Personally I have found that my full-frame DSLR gets a lot
| less use than my phone with a sensor size that is a fraction
| of the DSLRs! Yes, artsy bokeh shots/low light photos
| (although this is subjective due to recent developments with
| smartphones) are easier to take with a larger sensor, but I
| almost feel like they're going obselete now at least for
| every-day use.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I still use my old Nikon D700 for some things, like as a
| timelapse camera or for simple product shots.
|
| The 12 megapixel sensor in the 35mm format is still much
| better at gathering light (without any fancy AI
| manipulation) than any modern small sensor camera, and the
| few Nikon lenses I still have around--one manufactured in
| the 70s--are extremely sharp and still great for many
| situations (though lens coatings, even on tiny sensors and
| smartphones, are vastly improved nowadays).
| canbus wrote:
| I agree - I have a D600 myself and still use mine
| occasionally, Nikon's backwards compatibility is great! I
| am equally impressed by the AI manipulation by modern
| smartphones and their ability to take handheld shots that
| say a 10 year old APSC camera (with a huge sensor
| comparitively) might produce a blurry mess with. That
| being said I don't really know what modern APSC cameras
| can do nowadays!
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Your phone camera's images look 'great' because they're
| been very heavily processed (now with all sorts of "AI"
| nonsense that is leading to us not being able to trust
| photos from cell phones) and are taken with a wide angle,
| small aperture lens that yields very wide depth of field.
|
| Compare images side by side, especially at indoor lighting
| levels, and you'll see just how much more detail even a 10
| year old micro four thirds or digital SLR captures compared
| to the cell phone camera. Capture some images around 6400
| ISO, too, and you'll really see what a mess cell phone
| cameras are.
|
| There's no getting around physics - the larger the sensor
| well, the more light it can collect and convert to
| electrical impulses. Top end cameras from Canon, Nikon, and
| Sony have been bumping up against the limits of physics for
| a while now - efficiency, noise, etc.
|
| My m4/3 camera which is now 10 years old still takes better
| pictures than any current cell phone camera on the market.
| michaelt wrote:
| I've done some work on barcode scanning, so I've spent
| quite a bit of time taking images of reference patterns
| and comparing them in minute detail.
|
| In my experience, the current iPhone SE produces _very
| slightly_ more detail than a m4 /3 Lumix DMC-GX80. Which
| is crazy, because the iPhone's lens and sensor are tiny
| compared to the m4/3 camera.
| arbitrage wrote:
| There's an old photographer's adage, one my of my teachers
| shared with me a long time ago. "The best camera is the one
| you have on you."
| foo_barrio wrote:
| We still have some ways to go in low light. My room is lit
| by 2 40W incandescent light bulbs. This is more light than
| a typical urban sidewalk or restaurant at night. This is
| low enough light that the difference in video quality of my
| iphone 13 pro (2021) and nikon D750 (2014) full frame
| camera is night and day.
|
| However I agree that there are times now where I can
| confidently use my phone where 10 years ago I would have
| had a dedicated camera. Phones are only going to keep
| getting better!
| [deleted]
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| This is great. I don't care at all about the 16 megapixels (to
| misquote Bill Gates, 6.4 megapixels should be enough for anyone),
| but AF and reasonable close focusing have been available in cheap
| smart phones but missing from the Pi til now. There hasn't even
| been a usable way to read a QR code with a Pi until now. The $25
| price is great too.
|
| The Pi foundation should have shipped something like this long
| ago. Maybe they can work out something with Arducam to make it a
| standard Pi product.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| You forget: "And also if the chain supply problems will make
| them available enough".
|
| Currently there is a shortage of RPi's, they take long to ship,
| costs more and somehow also have a lower quality compared to
| the older RPi's I have.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Nice!
|
| In an ideal world getting a random android phone camera component
| and getting the appropriate linux driver should be easy but I
| guess not enough people are interested in doing that.
| mips_avatar wrote:
| I think this will unlock a lot of University robotics/computer
| vision projects. The existing options for doing embedded computer
| vision were pretty terrible.
| forgotmyoldacc wrote:
| I believe most modern smartphones have more powerful cameras
| than ArduCam. They're more expensive, but broken / older
| smartphones can be had for cheap.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I highly doubt any smartphone cam worth a damn and actually
| interface properly with the CSI bus lanes on a RasPi.
| tadbit wrote:
| I believe the grandparent is suggesting using a smartphone
| in place of using a raspberry pi, not trying to extract the
| camera and connect it to the pi.
| dekhn wrote:
| I;m not sure but I'd expect autofocus doesn't work well with
| computer vision. Most of the lenses and sensors I've worked
| with in raspi land have various image aberations (spherical,
| color). They are very different from the computer vision
| cameras I have.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I also wanted to highlight a discussion about this camera from
| two weeks ago, from user lemariva:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29727231 (has some other
| interesting details).
| johndough wrote:
| Are there any affordable development platforms for those cameras
| right now? Paying 100 EUR for a second hand Raspberry Pi and
| another 25 EUR for the Camera seems like a bad idea when I could
| get a USB GPIO adapter and a smartphone with a better camera and
| touchscreen for less.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Raspberry Pis (at least Pi 4 model B) can be found new at list
| price in a few places, but you have to be patient.
|
| Of the 8 or so Pis I currently test on, the average time from
| when I placed the order to when I got the Pi was about 3 months
| (the CM4s I bought took about 8 months).
|
| But I did get them all at list price, plus a small shipping
| fee.
| maicro wrote:
| Do you have any specific links of suppliers you recommend
| checking? All of my common ones, including my local
| MicroCenter, are almost perpetually out...
| geerlingguy wrote:
| PiHut, Micro Center, and Pishop.us are the three I most
| often go to.
|
| Micro Center always had some model in stock until last
| September, now they only seem to have Pi 400s available.
| maicro wrote:
| Thanks - I've been keeping track of Pishop and Micro
| Center (always forget the space...), forgot about PiHut
| as I usually don't need to check stores for other
| countries (though they've got Pi Zero 2 boards in stock,
| so may be placing an order...).
| olyjohn wrote:
| I bought mine from Vilros. Got it in a couple of days. No
| drama or delays. I didn't even realize people were waiting
| so long to get them.
| boromi wrote:
| What does a usb gpio adapter do with a smartphone?
| danbr wrote:
| Always wondered why you upload yt videos in the morning (in US).
| From my limited experience it appears the "algorithm" seems to
| favor videos released in the (early) evenings.
|
| There are probably some stats out there on release
| time/viewership, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is an
| optimal release time ("its 5'oclock somewhere...")
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Every channel's a little different--I might get more initial
| views if released later in the day, but it seems like YouTube's
| algorithm is biased more towards how the clickthrough rate and
| watch percentage go, then it gives another pass at a new
| audience on day two and sees if it changes--if it does, you can
| get a significant boost on the 2nd day (or I've seen up to a
| few days later, for a good video).
|
| The basic answer is more, "it's complicated"--but for me it's
| more convenient to release in the morning so I can check in on
| comments early on (sometimes I get some new ideas or re-test
| based on early comments for things I missed!).
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| While it _is_ non-intuitive that the camera doesn 't focus on a
| center point, the good news here is that it should be possible to
| control the AF motor in a more fine grained manner. I'm guessing
| it would take some firmware hacking, but I don't see any
| technical reason why it wouldn't work.
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