[HN Gopher] Modern smartphone lenses are crazy
___________________________________________________________________
Modern smartphone lenses are crazy
Author : luu
Score : 549 points
Date : 2022-03-04 17:22 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| amelius wrote:
| The comment of Daniel Darabos points to an interesting resource,
| explaining how these lenses are designed:
|
| https://www.pencilofrays.com/lens-design-forms/#mobile
| andai wrote:
| >The name "Anastigmat" literally means "non-astigmatic" lens,
| since it corrects astigmatism and its cousin the field
| curvature. Which is funny, because astigmatism means "non-
| stigmatic"), where stigmatism is "an image-formation property
| of an optical system which focuses a single point source in
| object space into a single point in image space".
|
| >I love the word Anastigmat. That means that "Anastigmat" can
| be translated as a "non-non-stigmatic". I guess "Stigmat"
| didn't really have a good ring to it. Nowadays, almost all
| lenses have the basic aberrations corrected, so we don't have
| the need to call them Anastigmats anymore. Sad.
| roughly wrote:
| Boy, that page is Comprehensive on lens design - that's an
| awesome resource.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Interesting. He doesn't really explain how they're designed
| though. Must be just automatic global optimisation at this
| point though. No way a human manually optimised all the ray
| paths.
| fsh wrote:
| Usually some form of gradient descent is combined with a
| global optimization routine that tries to explore the
| parameter space. This is nothing new, optics has been
| designed this way since the early 60s.
| wenc wrote:
| Are you sure?
|
| Optics equations are nonlinear (and generally nonconvex).
| Global optimization for nonconvex functions has not existed
| since the 60s. Even fast function eval (for brute force
| solutions) has not existed since the 60s.
| LolWolf wrote:
| Definitely not global (probably NP hard) but it's likely
| optimized in some basic sense would be my guess.
| (Probably still using very specific parametrizations of
| the lenses and such.)
|
| At some point we'll just use metaoptics for lenses that
| are fully optimized using some general heuristics, but so
| far I am not sure they (both lenses and heuristics) are
| ready for prime time :)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Radially symmetrical lenses are extremely simple to calculate
| for and discontinuities are rare, so any gradient descent
| algorithm could find this pretty easily. A 3 lens system can
| probably be optimized with less computation than a single
| frame of a modern AAA game.
|
| How they _manufacture_ these is what I 'd like to know.
| joshvm wrote:
| There's some interesting info from Zemax on manufacture.
|
| https://www.zemax.com/blogs/news/future-of-cell-phone-
| camera...
|
| Coarse manufacture is fairly simple - you can just press
| out plastic blanks. The tricks are fine shaping and
| polishing. You can also use resin:
|
| https://jp.mitsuichemicals.com/en/techno/feature/feature06.
| h...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Considering 3-lens systems were being used in telescopes
| over 200 years ago, id bet it takes far less computation
| than a single pixel in a modern game.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlow_lens
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achromatic_lens
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Doing it with spherical lenses is high school math. We
| were talking about highly aspheric lenses
| donkarma wrote:
| Yeah, but we could also recognise trees 200 years ago
| oblio wrote:
| Is there something like this for Samsung?
| GoToRO wrote:
| And yet you can't take a picture of the stars or street lights on
| an iphone...
| mmaunder wrote:
| Physics is still the law. As long as your aperture is small, so
| is the usable amount of light you're collecting at the top of
| that lens funnel.
| GoToRO wrote:
| The problem is that the tiny light from a star or from a
| street lamp post is multiplied (in software) multiple times
| to a comic effect...
| mattlondon wrote:
| Is this just a software problem? Android has had various night
| sight modes for several years that make dark views work pretty
| well?
| GoToRO wrote:
| There is something with the hardware as well, there is some
| green glare even on easy shots, but the fake lights problem I
| think is software, the software tries to "pretty" the image
| and introduces these fake lights.
| TooKool4This wrote:
| Well thats definitely not true
|
| Stars: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/10/amazing-night-sky-
| photo...
|
| Street light: https://cdn.vox-
| cdn.com/thumbor/R51UlZi7g1UPq7b9Be05nWfOP_o=...
| GoToRO wrote:
| https://twitter.com/zoneoftech/status/1236746998805680128
| GoToRO wrote:
| C'mon. From your link: "The images were shot using Apple's
| ProRAW format and then edited using the mobile version of
| Lightroom on the iPhone itself"
|
| I have the 12 and it multiplies any tiny source of light in
| dozens of fake lights.
|
| The street light I;m referring too is much darker than this:
| a dark street with a string of lights. All the lights will
| get multiplied as fake lights.
| caconym_ wrote:
| > The images were shot using Apple's ProRAW format and then
| edited using the mobile version of Lightroom on the iPhone
| itself
|
| In other words, they were shot on an iPhone. And processed
| there too, incidentally. What's to "c'mon" about?
| eredengrin wrote:
| > What's to "c'mon" about?
|
| Maybe the fact that there are many artificial stars in
| that photo due to software adding new light sources which
| didn't really exist in postprocessing? I have no idea if
| this happens but it is the claim they were making, and
| would certainly be worthy of a "c'mon" if true.
| caconym_ wrote:
| I see zero evidence of an effect like that in the linked
| photos. I assumed they were talking about artifacting
| they saw in their own attempt to take photos at night
| with an iPhone.
|
| Either way, given the content of those links, I don't
| think their comment makes much sense.
| OGWhales wrote:
| > Maybe the fact that there are many artificial stars in
| that photo due to software adding new light sources which
| didn't really exist
|
| Huh??
|
| How exactly did you come to the conclusion they just
| added a bunch of fake stars? Am I missing something? Post
| processing is a normal part of astrophotography, even
| with a DSLR.
| eredengrin wrote:
| That sounds like a question for them, not me, I made no
| such claims. In fact I'd be quite interested in any
| evidence as well, although I wouldn't be surprised if
| they were using some kind of ML model in postprocessing
| which ended up adding some extra stars here and there
| (more charitably, you could think of it as converting
| noise into stars, when it was really just noise all
| along). But I'm certainly no expert on how smartphones
| process their photos.
|
| > Post processing is a normal part of astrophotography,
| even with a DSLR.
|
| Yes as someone interested in low light photography I'm
| well aware of this and it's why I'd be quite curious to
| see any evidence (assuming it exists) of smartphones
| doing weird things to their low light photos.
| OGWhales wrote:
| > C'mon. From your link: "The images were shot using
| Apple's ProRAW format and then edited using the mobile
| version of Lightroom on the iPhone itself"
|
| Uh, yeah, that's standard process for astrophotography. Not
| at all a "c'mon" moment.
|
| It's still extremely impressive that a smartphone camera
| can do this. I say this as someone that does a good bit of
| astrophotography as a hobby.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Of course you can.
|
| Stars example: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/10/amazing-
| night-sky-photo...
|
| Street light example:
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/iphone-13-pro-vs-12-pro-max...
| GoToRO wrote:
| C'mon. From your link: "The images were shot using Apple's
| ProRAW format and then edited using the mobile version of
| Lightroom on the iPhone itself"
|
| I have the 12 and it multiplies any tiny source of light in
| dozens of fake lights.
|
| The street light I;m referring too is much darker than this:
| a dark street with a string of lights. All the lights will
| get multiplied as fake lights.
| spython wrote:
| Do you have an example for that? Would be interesting to
| see. Edit: Or do you mean lens flaring like here?
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252037681
| [deleted]
| globular-toast wrote:
| I've always been fascinated by Fresnel lenses[0]. Is this a
| similar concept of squeezing a much bigger lens down into a
| smaller space, or is it achieving something that would not be
| possible with a single lens?
|
| It would be really cool to seen an animation of this showing a
| sweep of the approach angle from one side of the sensor to the
| other.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lens
| kazinator wrote:
| It looks way less crazy when you "focus" on just the payload
| areas of the optic pipeline, trimming out the "lunettic fringes".
|
| Here is what I mean:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/ktbWf0X.png
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think they're still pretty aspherical, right?
| H8crilA wrote:
| Why are the lenses so complex outside of the area that matters?
| Structural integrity / resistance to dropping?
| fsh wrote:
| The picture in the tweet only shows rays originating from an
| object that is close to the center of the field of view. The
| article mentioned in another comment has better schematics:
| https://www.pencilofrays.com/lens-design-forms/#mobile
|
| Smartphone cameras usually have a pretty wide field of view.
| The complex shapes are required in order to compensate for
| the aberrations caused by the large angles between the
| optical rays and the lens surfaces.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| So the lenses take in incoming white light and split it by
| color? And there's one sensor for each color or something?
| fsh wrote:
| No, the colors in that schematic are only a visual aid
| for distinguishing the rays. Each set of colored ray
| bundles comes from a single object point. The task of the
| lens is to map them into a single point in the image
| plane. At the same time, the lens is designed _not_ to
| split the light by colors, since this would cause
| chromatic aberrations. This is not shown in this
| particular schematic.
| rapjr9 wrote:
| What ever happened to holographic lenses? I thought they were
| supposed to revolutionize lens design. Create a complex lens,
| take a hologram of it, and you can cheaply print infinite copies
| of it. I understand there was some light loss, is that why they
| never took over lens manufacture?
| mrfusion wrote:
| Perhaps this technology could be useful for breakthrough
| starshot: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
| culi wrote:
| The browser scores given for Interop2022 (Chrome: 71%, Firefox:
| 74%, and Safari: 73%) are heavily weighed down because of the
| "Investigation" part of the score which of course they all score
| 0 on because it's just begun. Without that, their scores on the
| mentioned focus areas would look more like:
|
| - Chrome: 79% - Firefox: 82% - Safari: 81%
|
| I feel like this gives a better insight into the current state of
| things
| agluszak wrote:
| https://nitter.net/yiningkarlli/status/1498069538264399872
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Thank you!
| ykl wrote:
| Hello! Original author (original tweeter?) here.
|
| This particular design is from the iPhone 7 (or, more precisely,
| my guess is that it's from the iPhone 7 due to both the date of
| the patent [1] and due to the elements matching up with marketing
| images of the iPhone 7), which is 6 years old now, but I think
| it's broadly still representative of modern smartphone lenses. In
| the past 5 years or so, advancements in phone cameras have come
| mostly in better sensors, far better image processing, and adding
| more cameras, but the basic principles of the compact ultra-
| aspherical lens design seem to still be in place.
|
| As an example, here [2] is an exploded view of the iPhone 6's
| lens setup, and here [3] is an exploded view of the more recent
| iPhone 12's lens setup. The iPhone 12 gained an extra element,
| but they both use similarly weird ripply elements and you can see
| the clear lineage between the two phones.
|
| Also, as mentioned in the tweet thread and elsewhere in the
| comments here, Kats Ikeda has an excellent, incredibly detailed
| and thorough explainer on mobile phone lens design [4]. I don't
| actually know a whole lot about the optics field; I'm just
| dabbling as a hobbyist from a computer graphics perspective. Kats
| Ikeda's site is a much better resource than my Twitter posts for
| learning about this stuff.
|
| [1]
| https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/7e/4e/3f/4e88d65...
| [2]
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMyGm6IVkAY77eY?format=jpg&name=...
| [3]
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMyIbszVQAQhMQ_?format=jpg&name=...
| [4] https://www.pencilofrays.com/lens-design-forms/#mobile
| ketzo wrote:
| Thank you for the links. How did you originally find yourself
| falling down this rabbit hole?
| ykl wrote:
| I was working on a CG art project [1] where I wanted to
| render the final image using a real-world lens with lots of
| "swirly" bokeh [2], but the renderer I was using didn't have
| the ability to simulate real-world lenses. So, to finish the
| project, I had to write my own plugin to achieve this effect.
| Afterwards, I found the topic interesting, so I started going
| further down the rabbit hole!
|
| [1] https://pixar-community-production.s3.us-
| west-1.amazonaws.co...
|
| [2] https://petapixel.com/2020/10/22/this-cheap-projector-
| lens-c...
| nlh wrote:
| Just want to say your project is awesome! And you nailed
| the swirly bokeh :)
| 1-6 wrote:
| "You might have seen the lensmaker's equation early as high
| school, and this is the essence of the performance of the
| lens."
|
| We're either doing high school wrong or this person has seen
| their fair share of top schools in their lifetime.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| High schoolers probably learned the thin lens equation.
| isaacimagine wrote:
| I think the lensmaker's equation is pretty par for the course
| for most advanced physics classes in high school, no?
| [deleted]
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Over here in The Netherlands it was also definitely part of
| our physics course, I believe taught around the age of 14
| or 15.
| blululu wrote:
| Interesting. This is on the young side internationally.
| FWIW the Dutch have also been global leaders in optics
| for most history (the field really only starts when the
| Dutch invented the telescope and the microscope).
| beowulfey wrote:
| I think its the former, if you are in the US. I also did not
| learn this formula in high school. My physics class barely
| went beyond momentum, and I remember the slightest hint of
| electricity being discussed.
| chronogram wrote:
| In high school it's introduced when they close the blinds and
| turn off the lights and you play with the glass blocks and 3
| lines of light, if that jogs your memory.
| sheikheddy wrote:
| I saw it in A level physics, and it was part of the standard
| curriculum, so not that rare.
| lisper wrote:
| What I have been wondering for years is why this technology
| hasn't found its way back into regular cameras. AFAICT, regular
| cameras with vastly bigger apertures, which should be able to
| take better photos, in fact are generally much worse until you
| get into huge bulky DSLRs. Why?
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assume the market is extremely bimodal. Either you are
| satisfied with a phone camera, or you want to go all out and
| have all the benefits of a DSLR. There are very, very few
| people who want a stand-alone camera that offers less than a
| DSLR.
| Closi wrote:
| It's worth saying that there are great quality prosumer
| compact cameras, but the price point is much higher for this
| (>$600) than the old school cheap $100 point and shoot used
| to be.
|
| It's the bottom end of the market that's been completely made
| obsolete, and as the quality gap shrinks there are also less
| people that want to carry / spend money on two devices.
| kube-system wrote:
| Point-and-shoot cameras are a dying segment. The target market
| for this segment is taking casual photos of friends and family.
| These buyers prioritize convenience and price over performance.
| Smartphones meet these requirements as good or better than
| their dedicated counterparts.
| jbay808 wrote:
| > AFAICT, regular cameras with vastly bigger apertures, which
| should be able to take better photos, in fact are generally
| much worse until you get into huge bulky DSLRs. Why?
|
| Are you sure about this?
|
| The last point-and-shoot camera I owned I bought around 2010,
| and other than zoom, my smartphone gives much better results.
| But then I met someone with a new hobby-level Panasonic point-
| and-shoot camera and I was flabbergasted at the quality of the
| photos she gets out of it. I tried taking some pictures with it
| and compared to my smartphone they all looked they belonged in
| a magazine. Smartphones have a ton of processing power and
| sensor quality packed into a small package, but I think it's
| still hard to outperform a half-decent lens and good quality
| sensor that are much, much larger, and it seems like point-and-
| shoot cameras have gotten really good.
| lisper wrote:
| Do you remember what model your friend's camera was? I have a
| DMC-ZX60 which I would rate as OK-but-not-great. It seems to
| me that it should be possible to pack a truly awesome camera
| into that form factor, considering that smart phone cameras
| are literally orders of magnitude smaller.
| jbay808 wrote:
| It's a Lumix DC-GF9.
| lisper wrote:
| Thanks.
| doomlaser wrote:
| Sony makes the lenses sensors on modern iPhones and, if rumors
| are to be believed, also the micro OLED displays on a forthcoming
| new product category.
|
| It's funny. The 1970s Sony Trinitron CRT TVs are what inspired
| Steve Jobs to make the Apple II case, and here they are working
| together, at the highest end of technology, many decades later.
| systemBuilder wrote:
| Sony also made the AppleColor 640x480 monitor in 1987 with the
| release of the Mac II. This was quite likely the most fantastic
| monitor available in this size in this year. It was rumored to
| be a regular Sony Computer monitor without an anti-reflective
| coating so it could be brighter and clearer.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| I think Sony make the sensors only.
| [deleted]
| olliej wrote:
| Sony only make the sensor, it looks like a bunch of companies
| manufacture the lenses (sharp, lg infotech, and another company
| I forgot from my googling 10 seconds ago).
|
| But as the linked thread says, apple _designed_ the lens itself
| (as it has a patent on it, which is apparently common?)
|
| I am curious what the Samsung lens system looks like given it
| has real optical zoom
| Miraste wrote:
| Samsung doesn't have real optical zoom. Their system works by
| using a separate 1x, 3x, and 10x zoom camera and software
| interpolation for in-between levels. The 10x zoom camera has
| the most interesting optics because its lens stack is too
| long to fit in the phone, so instead it's a "periscope"
| camera in which the lenses are sideways and light hits them
| through a prism, then goes through another prism to hit the
| sensor. Here's a diagram of Apple's (shorter focal length and
| hitherto unimplemented) version:
|
| https://www.dpreview.com/files/p/articles/8346943838/iPhone_.
| ..
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| The periscope lens has variable optical zoom, doesn't it?
| turing_complete wrote:
| "You think anyone would be doing this kind of utterly insane
| stuff if it wasn't absolutely necessary?"
|
| - Not a software developer. Obviously.
| olliej wrote:
| The problem is an artifact of size constraints and plastic lens
| having far less variation in optical density, that means a lot
| more work to correctly direct light to avoid various types of
| distortion.
|
| https://www.pencilofrays.com/lens-design-forms/#mobile has a
| much more in depth discussion on the how and why if the lens
| system design (someone referenced this in a reply to the linked
| thread)
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| Plastic lenses are actually more expensive to make than glass.
| You need extreme precision, more than with lapped glass lenses.
|
| A Taiwanese factory northwest of Dhaka
| https://www.youngoptics.com/ makes the lion share of molds for
| plastic lenses worldwide.
|
| YoungOptics used to make them for Sony too. I don't know if it's
| still the case today.
| CliffStoll wrote:
| Long gone are my high-school days of grinding and polishing a
| 20cm mirror in the cellar, carefully using Foucault knife tests
| to parabolize it. As an undergrad, using Gaussian formulae when
| matching lenses in eyepieces. In grad school, writing ray-
| tracing codes to design multi-element lenses. Then, as a
| postdoc, using Zernike polynomials to estimate optical errors
| in the hexagonal mirror segments of the Keck 10 meter
| telescope.
|
| Today's iPhone optics astonish and impress me: A lens built
| with over a half-dozen aspherical elements. Coordinated imaging
| with multiple cameras. Wow!
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > Today's iPhone optics astonish and impress me: A lens built
| with over a half-dozen aspherical elements. Coordinated
| imaging with multiple cameras. Wow!
|
| Yep. And the same is true of modern "prime" lenses, which
| appear more like incredibly optimised non-zooming-zooms than
| the traditional prime recipes we are familiar with from
| textbooks.
|
| A side note: thank you thank you thank you for _The Cuckoo 's
| Egg_.
|
| As a Brit I would ordinarily say that the reason I am a tech
| guy is the ZX Spectrum or the BBC Micro, but I am not sure my
| life would be the same in a much bigger way without your
| book.
|
| At 15 or 16 in early 1990 I was sure I wasn't going to
| university; I was sure I didn't belong there. A friend of my
| mother's suggested your book to her as something I should
| read, and I received it as a birthday present.
|
| Over time I have come to understand that this recommendation
| was _extraordinarily_ shrewd. Not just about the tech aspect,
| or the internet community aspect, or the thrill of the chase
| aspect, but because it helped me understand that I was
| _exactly_ the sort of person who should go to university.
|
| When I am asked to recommend books it's yours I recommend,
| twinned with John Naughton's _A Brief History Of The Future_
| ; they are like companion volumes for a particular kind of
| way to think and feel about technology. Douglas Hofstadter
| should be so lucky.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Actually, I'm much more amazed by what lens designs for cameras
| look like. Sure I can appreciate how they fit these designs in a
| tiny amount of space, but they are also not constrained in shape
| by the same constrains as glass lenses.
|
| Even more amazing is how they designed very complex lenses in the
| 50's and 60's essentially by hand. And those designs have stood
| the test of time and have barely changed. Compared to what modern
| lens designers have available to them, I just find it mindblowing
| how the designers then could come up with these things.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| From reading some of the comments it sounds like the elements for
| these lenses are plastic?
|
| Is there a downside to using plastic lens elements compared to
| glass, in terms of image quality?
|
| If there isn't a downside, could lenses for SLRs/mirrorless
| cameras also use such elements?
|
| Edit: It sounds like aspheric lens elements might be made from
| plastic in SLR lenses. But also I found that plastic might not be
| used for outer lens elements as it scratches easily
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think the main reason to use plastic would be the potentially
| higher refractive index and better strength properties, which
| are also why plastic lenses are used in spectacles (some
| glasses can have higher refractive indexes but still require
| heavier thicker lenses to avoid the risk of shattering). I
| would assume that glass lenses would be more likely to shatter
| if the phone were dropped. But it may really be that the
| plastic lenses can be manufactured to a higher quality for a
| reasonable cost.
| baybal2 wrote:
| wyager wrote:
| Plastic typically has much worse reflection and losses than AR
| coated glass (at least for narrowband lenses - I'm
| extrapolating to photo lenses).
| post_break wrote:
| My S21 with "scumbag zoom" or creeper zoom. The amount of zoom,
| in something as thin as it is, is mind blowing. To zoom 10x, and
| be able to take great pictures, hand held with almost no shake.
| Then you have the top GoPros shooting 5k with gimbal like
| stabilization. Cameras are getting crazy.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| If I remember right, newer Samsungs have their stack of
| telephoto optics pointing toward the top of the phone, parallel
| to the display. Then use a periscope style prism to look out
| and forward. That way you aren't limited by the device
| thickness (although I guess now the diameter of the lenses is
| constrained)
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Yeah -- this is typically called "folded optics".
|
| There have been experiments with this over the years. Minolta
| coined the phrase for a 3x zoom in the DiMAGE X series,
| starting twenty years ago, and as I recall they were the
| first to use this technology in a consumer camera:
|
| https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/minoltadimagex
| contingencies wrote:
| This weekend by chance I met the lead engineer for the factory
| producing these. I showed him this article. He humbly requested
| to extend his own thanks to all engineers working in the
| industry. Genuine yoda.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| If you listen close, you can hear them (stabilising?) constantly!
| (iPhone 6)
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| This is from iPhone 7, released 6 years ago. I would like to see
| an actually modern lens design. Smartphone cameras got so much
| better in the last 6 years.
| etu wrote:
| Correction: It was released 2016, that's 6 years ago.
|
| The point still stands though. But 6 instead of 8 years.
| tadfisher wrote:
| And mine just got updated to iOS 15.
|
| Meanwhile my Pixel 3 XL is three years old and is no longer
| receiving updates.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| That's what I tell people when they ask why I use iPhones.
| And then they claim that it is not so.
| [deleted]
| simonh wrote:
| I suspect that's mostly down to sensor design (big pixels,
| reflective layers behind the sensor so the light goes through
| twice, etc) and software.
| jbay808 wrote:
| > reflective layers behind the sensor
|
| Reminds me of this surprising little tidbit from E. T.
| Jaynes' 1991 paper "Theory of Radar Target Discrimination"
| (https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/craddis.pdf)
|
| _One might then think naively that we should take equal care
| to match the receiver to its transmission line so that all
| the energy captured by the receiving antenna is actually
| delivered to the receiver. However, this is not the case for
| a good receiver._
|
| [...]
|
| _Quite generally, in order to deliver the maximum signal
| /noise ratio at its output, an ideal receiver must reflect
| all the energy incident up on it. It is only in the limit of
| an_ infinitely bad _receiver, in which all the output noise
| is generated internally, that matched input impedance becomes
| the condition for maximum signal /noise ratio at the output.
| Actual receivers are somewhere between ideal and infinitely
| bad, and so they perform best when partially matched, so that
| a part of the incident energy is reflected and radiated back
| out the receiver antenna. In fact, an ideal receiver does not
| run on energy at all, but reflects back all the energy
| incident on it!_
|
| [...]
|
| _This fact surprises many people on first hearing; but we
| note that it is so general that it remains true in quantum
| theory, at optical frequencies where hf >> kT and the Nyquist
| noise formula no longer holds. For initiation of a photo
| chemical reaction it is not necessary that the light energy
| be absorbed. For example, it might be thought that the eyes
| of animals adapted to seeing in the dark would have pupils
| that act as perfect black bodies, absorbing all the incident
| light energy. On the contrary, it is a familiar fact that the
| animals with best night vision have eyes that reflect the
| incident light strongly, looking like search-lights in the
| dark._
| londons_explore wrote:
| I don't think there are any really big changes to the lens
| design recently... All the effort has gone into multi-camera
| setups, and different types of lens for macro, wide angle,
| telephoto, etc.
|
| To my understanding, there is still only a single set of moving
| lenses in an iPhone 13 lens.
| ghaff wrote:
| The iPhone 12 Pro is insanely better than the iPhone X--
| especially in low light. I have a bunch of fairly high-end
| camera equipment that I rarely use outside of some fairly
| specific circumstances at this point
| emmelaich wrote:
| Low light performance is more about the sensor than lenses
| tho isn't it.
|
| Sensors these days are phenomenal.
|
| Last time I lugged a DSLR around all it did was give me a
| sore neck.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Lenses can have a big impact on low light sensitivity. No
| material is 100% transparent, and camera lenses have many
| elements for light to pass through before it reaches the
| sensor. The more lens you have between the subject and
| sensor, the less light is being captured.
|
| That's why, if you're super concerned with low light
| sensitivity, you go with fixed-focal length prime lenses.
| Not having to support zoom means far fewer lens elements
| through which to pass light.
| dboreham wrote:
| That's not the primary reason, which is that they don't
| make f1.2 zooms.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Think about why there are no f1.2 zooms
| jsjohnst wrote:
| Theoretically there could be a zoom that is an F/1.2, the
| issue would be the size and expense to manufacture ruins
| any possible commercial viability.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Yes, that is exactly why. There is a bit of an
| "unobtanium" problem in that materials science has been
| having in this problem for quite a long time. Barring a
| revolutionary new take on legs materials, this is about
| as good as it gets, cross what people are actually
| working to pay for
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Yeah, likewise.
|
| I have high end kit (and some semi-pro lighting) which I love
| to use, but I now use a secondhand iPhone X, an Apexel
| teleconverter lens and a cheap Ulanzi grip, and I really
| enjoy this combination for its immediacy.
|
| The higher end kit is now increasingly used in novel, DIY
| ways, because carrying a phone has taught me that gear should
| be used for its strengths.
| ghaff wrote:
| Cameraphones have gotten to the point where I should
| probably consider getting some external lens gear. It
| didn't really make sense to me when there were so many
| other compromises with respect to image quality but
| offering some additional options when traveling with just a
| phone is probably legit useful at this point.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Filmic pro was a total game changer re: compression
| options and image control. Definitely when I started
| using the video a ton.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was really quite interested in film at one point but
| the overhead in terms of big equipment and film
| processing cost was just more than I wanted to handle. A
| smartphone today with a bit of software would have been a
| game changer.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| The Apexel HD 2X lens has been useful for me. Cheap
| enough not to stress about, and just enough extra reach
| to be useful.
|
| I really enjoy the cheap little Ulanzi CapGrip thing,
| too.
|
| It's definitely not 100% like using a real camera (no
| half-press for focus, though I am a back-button-focus guy
| on DSLRs anyway!)
|
| But it adds just enough of a camera-like feel to allow
| relaxed one-handed grips and slightly more immediate
| shooting. And it weighs nothing so it's always in a bag
| or jacket pocket.
| ghaff wrote:
| Thanks. I'll probably wait until my next upgrade which
| will probably be a good couple of years. But I can
| absolutely see pulling the plug on upgrading my other
| cameras at that point. Which would make even going with a
| couple higher-end Moment lenses pretty thinkable.
|
| The always with you is a big thing.
| tomcam wrote:
| Good heavens. A 36X lens from Apexel is all of $64. I love
| the 21st century.
| polskibus wrote:
| Would you mind sharing which Apexels do you recommend?
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| I have just the one now. It's the Apexel HD 2X telephoto.
|
| I bought it because I wanted a slightly longer lens for
| portrait location scouting, and chose this one not
| because I am certain it is excellent but because I doubt
| there's enough of a quality gap between the Apexels and
| the Moment or Rhinoshield lenses to justify the much
| higher price.
|
| It is really fairly good though, until you get into the
| corners. But then I happily use vintage lenses on my A7II
| that are worse in the corners!
|
| What difference there is, is that the Moment lenses use a
| tiny bayonet, which I think I _would_ prefer to the 17mm
| thread Apexel, Ulanzi and others use. Screwing the lens
| on can be fiddly, especially with the semi-open, three-
| quarter circumference attachment threads you typically
| see on lens adapter phone cases.
|
| Don't use the clamp attachments. They are hard to align
| and I think that is a lot of why people find attachment
| lenses so disappointing.
|
| Get a phone case with a built-in 17mm thread (or bayonet
| if you pick a bayonet lens type). I think I'm using a
| Ulanzi case.
|
| The only frustration that remains is that the iPhone's
| built-in camera app does not let you force the choice of
| either of the lenses. It will choose for you if you pick
| 2x. So you might want an app. I really like the ProCamera
| app.
|
| I'm not sure whether accessory lenses are so useful on
| some of the three and four camera mobiles, but it works
| well enough for my iPhone X.
| prawn wrote:
| I've had a few clamp-style lens attachments for my iPhone
| and you have to keep them very clean or they can scratch
| the screen. Plus the alignment, as you said, is finicky.
| hughrr wrote:
| Yeah 13 Pro here. I sold my DSLR last year. I don't need it
| any more and I hated carrying it around everywhere.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > I hated carrying it around everywhere.
|
| It really boils down to this. A lot of people have enough
| pocket space to need no bag most of the time, so having one
| just for the camera is extra grating.
|
| What suprises me the most is that on the other side,
| smartphone photo UI hasn't progressed much from the early
| days. A lot of my shots that fail on smartphone are because
| of the controls. The cycle of zooming/framing then locking
| focus and/or exposure is still a pain, adjusting
| exposition, forcing an ISO setting that could result in a
| bad photo is out of the window. I ended up bringing an old
| DSLR on random walks when I might want to capture stray
| cats and don't care about the extra bulk.
|
| All of these are easier to do with third party apps, but
| those aren't available on quick access. And taking photos
| out of quick access is so slow. A DSLR is ready instantly
| from power down, we're happy if the phone instantly
| unlocks.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have a fairly large FF DSLR Canon system that I rarely
| use at this point--though not sure if it's worth selling.
| (I do use it now and then.) I use my Fujifilm mirrorless
| setup more but even that almost has to be a longer trip
| where I plan to take a lot of pictures. iPhone is fine for
| most purposes.
| hughrr wrote:
| Yeah I do a lot of walking and long trips. I had a mid
| range DSLR and it was horrible carrying it everywhere and
| juggling lenses and batteries. The iPhone works 90% of
| the cases perfectly and the last 10% of the cases, I am
| happy with the compromise.
|
| Edit: The thing that really killed the DSLR for me was
| lugging the whole kit up Scafell Pike in the pissing rain
| and cold in the UK. I got some good photos in the morning
| but carried a brick for the entire day after the battery
| dumped because of the cold. I had an iPhone XR back then
| and that kept me going all day fine. When I got back the
| whole damn camera despite being weather sealed had
| condensation in it.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| No manufacturer will actually guarantee their weather
| sealing. It surprised me when I went and researched it.
| YouTuber James Popsys[0] takes his cameras out in the
| cold and wet all the time, so whatever he uses is
| probably a good starting point if you decide to try
| interchangeable lens cameras again and want one that
| actually handles moist weather well.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9VAidHrnY8
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. But people are pretty locked into their systems.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| My recommendation is specific to someone who opted out of
| systems in favor of an iPhone.
| adament wrote:
| OM System (the camera division of Olympus sold off as a
| separate company) recently announced their OM-1 camera
| which together with a some of their expensive lenses got
| an IP53 rating. Which is still a less than many
| smartphones.
| mrfusion wrote:
| It's really that comparable??
| hughrr wrote:
| Absolutely for amateur and enthusiast level usage. 90% of
| a decent photograph isn't the camera but the photographer
| and the post processing.
| [deleted]
| starfleet_bop wrote:
| They say the best camera is the one you have on you ...
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| They aren't _comparable_ , not really. In the same way
| that an 8x10" camera and a full-frame camera aren't.
|
| But they are _excellent_.
|
| Good phone cameras have a value proposition all of their
| own, and they are utterly changing what we expect from
| photography.
|
| My mobile has taught me that a lot of what I relied on or
| worked with in a DSLR or mirrorless is a crutch.
|
| Mobile phone cameras force you, for example, to really
| think about composition, because you can't simply blur
| out the bits you don't like (portrait mode still sucks).
| They force you to think of other ways to isolate
| subjects, other ways to make use of light and contrast.
|
| I've owned a lot of kit over 20 years or so, though I
| still own a lot of it -- I'm using a 14-year-old full
| frame DSLR and a seven year old full-frame mirrorless.
|
| In the last two years, when studio portrait photography
| has been complicated or impossible, I have used my phone
| a lot, when out walking by myself. What I thought was
| just a way to not-totally-give-up photography has turned
| into a work of its own.
|
| It will anger a lot of photographers who like to whine
| about how mobile phone cameras can't do X, Y and Z, but
| here's the truth: if you don't understand what a mobile
| phone camera can teach you as a photographer, you're
| probably not really trying.
| Wistar wrote:
| I shoot professionally (DSLR) and there are situations in
| my work (automotive) where my iPhone 12 mini just won't
| work BUT there are also lot of situations in my work
| where the iPhone could get a better shot--or, at least,
| get a good shot more easily.
|
| A solid color workflow, tilt-shift/specialized optics,
| high resolution, and lighting/strobe control all go to
| the DSLR system, whereas just about everything else goes
| to the iPhone.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Honestly it's just a different media. There's no need to
| think too hard about it. Might as well compare oil pastel
| to charcoal
|
| Personally I think almost all of the output of phone
| cameras (except what's in their glossy ads) is missing a
| certain je ne sais quoi that distinguishes Photography
| (note the capital P) from an ordinary photo. That and you
| can pry the amazing bokeh from a high-quality SLR lens
| from my cold dead hands.
| astrange wrote:
| A lot of people (including this comment) seem to think
| that DSLR="good camera" and all real photos are taken on
| 35mm format SLRs, but none of that is true.
|
| SLR is a specialized format designed for fast autofocus
| used by news/sports photographers and 35mm "full frame"
| is not the largest film size.
|
| Rangefinder and mirrorless formats actually have a much
| easier time with lens design and don't need such gigantic
| lenses, which might make them less impressive looking
| than an SLR, but I have a cheap Mamiya medium format
| rangefinder that takes better street photos than they do.
| And if you're doing product or landscape photography, you
| want a large format digital back like Phase One or a view
| camera, which really are the top of the line.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > SLR is a specialized format designed for fast autofocus
| used by news/sports photographers
|
| Designed for, no. Optimised for and evolved for, yes! :-)
|
| When the SLR emerged it was definitely slower than the
| cameras press photographers were using. Even the later
| instant-return-mirror models, probably. Press
| photographers didn't switch to SLRs until the Nikon F
| arrived fifteen years later, in the first few years of
| the Laos and Vietnam wars. Press shooters mostly hadn't
| been shooting 35mm for more than a decade before that.
|
| The rest: I'm not convinced at this point, and I think
| high-end mirrorless really blurs most of those boundaries
| pretty conclusively. We're definitely stepping towards a
| formatless world in the sense of distinct boundaries,
| with computational photography being a big part of it.
|
| Which is precisely why I'd urge really any digital
| photographer to spend as much time learning to get the
| best out of their mobile phone as possible. It is one
| point on the continuum; small sensors but a lot of
| computation.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > Honestly it's just a different media. There's no need
| to think too hard about it. Might as well compare oil
| pastel to charcoal
|
| You might, but even then you might also consider that
| learning from one medium can translate even to a very
| different medium.
|
| But in any case here we're not talking about quite
| different media. The images are processed and edited in
| fundamentally the same way. As a result, many
| photographers tend to perceive the one (mobile phone
| digital photography) as an inherently inferior subset of
| the range of the other (large digital sensor
| photography).
|
| This is because photographers -- particularly in the
| digital era -- do not ordinarily consider the creative
| advantages of self-imposed restrictions.
|
| And when deliberate creative restrictions are suggested,
| the immediate response is to dismiss them or to suggest
| that they are wasteful (you're losing information at
| capture), better achieved in post-processing (so you have
| more "flexibility").
|
| So there is a "precision maximalist" and "gear
| maximalist" default to most contemporary photography. Use
| the sharpest, fastest, least quirky lens you can get,
| shoot at the highest resolution, buy the latest if you
| can.
|
| All of these things are narrowly valuable in some area of
| photography, but they get glommed together to make a
| giant assumption.
|
| The mobile phone presents a convenient, nearly
| unavoidable way to question many of the impacts of that
| maximalist position.
|
| One of the things I often want to do is ask photographers
| "why are your DSLR photos better than your friend's
| mobile phone photos?" and then poke them in the ribs each
| time they mention the technical advantages of their kit.
| But it would generally get quite violent.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| > So there is a "precision maximalist" and "gear
| maximalist" default to most contemporary photography. Use
| the sharpest, fastest, least quirky lens you can get,
| shoot at the highest resolution, buy the latest if you
| can.
|
| I wouldn't conflate "buy the latest you can" with gear
| maximalism. My own journey with that started with
| dissatisfaction of the quality of the output that I had,
| and, as I became a better photographer, running up
| against the limits of my camera and lens. Then, after
| understanding what I was experiencing was indeed the
| hardware and not a limitation of my skill, I upgraded,
| and the hardware leapfrogged my abilities. Then I got
| better and I once again started hitting the limits of my
| hardware. Though I am now at a point where the hardware
| and my abilities are so good that I am content with the
| output as one can reasonably expect for a hardcore
| amateur. My point is that "gear maximalism" is not always
| just mere materialism.
|
| As for the phone, it's convenient. I can guss it up and
| if the output is sufficiently pig-like I can put lipstick
| on it til it looks good enough. With the right software I
| can even output RAW files and theoretically feed them
| into Lightroom like my normal workflow. But it will never
| be as good, and there are so many techniques that I
| simply can't do with it.
|
| "The best camera is the one in your hand" is true and
| all, but it's flooding the world with shit photos. Good
| is the enemy of great, after all.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > there are so many techniques that I simply can't do
| with it.
|
| But that's the point of what I'm getting at, concerning
| limitations and maximalism.
|
| We've got into a mindset where we seek to push the edges
| of the kit we have -- we are urged to shoot faster
| lenses, shallower depth of field, lower and lower light.
|
| But it doesn't get you a higher rate of good photos. A
| good photo is a good photo regardless of kit, and it's
| possible to flounder creatively when you have more scope.
|
| As a photographer I think we should be able to creatively
| progress with whatever photographic tool we have in our
| hands. See a creative angle, refine it, improve on it,
| etc. Finding a way to be creative within a set of
| limitations is all that matters, and therefore starting
| with a serious set of restrictions is good practice.
|
| FWIW I am a _fairly_ good portraitist, a long-standing
| small-venue gig photographer, and I 'm pretty
| technically-minded. But thinking back to the first DSLR I
| owned (a secondhand Fuji S2 Pro), I can think of
| precisely one photographic limitation I'd run into
| regularly even now: its high ISO performance was not that
| good. Otherwise I'd have that camera back to shoot with,
| even now, especially in the studio. Though I might rage
| at the maximum card capacity.
|
| I'm regularly surprised to hear people talking of hitting
| the photographic limits of the kit they use; it suggests
| to me very specific niches or unusually rubbish kit
| lenses (I've owned one of those, and even then I got some
| results I liked).
|
| Because I can't think of a popular DSLR made after about
| 2005 that is bad; certainly not after 2008. I can think
| of only a couple of entry-level DSLR or mirrorless
| cameras with limitations that would trouble me (the lack
| of a depth of field preview being the main one, aside
| from glasses-unfriendly viewfinders).
|
| I still shoot with digital kit I bought 13 years ago, and
| got some of my best results in the last few years with
| the oldest of those cameras that is now so cheap I'm
| better off _not_ selling it. I 've only bought
| secondhand, old-model equipment since 2011. I probably
| won't ever buy new again -- except maybe a Cambo Actus.
|
| The same is true of lenses. I'm currently doing a bit of
| work with an early 1980s Vivitar wide-to-standard zoom
| that cost me PS30. Crap in the corners, _gorgeous_
| otherwise. I don 't plan to buy a _new_ lens ever again.
|
| I'd always recommend going back to your former kit (buy
| it again, cheap on eBay) and testing those beliefs about
| limits in retrospect.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I still have that older equipment. (In fact, I even
| bought the updated model, and gave the original to a
| friend. She knows full well the kinds of pictures that
| setup has taken and it motivates her to improve) It's
| lighter, it's what I built my reputation on, and frankly
| the (later) investment in lenses and such for that
| platform wasn't cheap. In fact I'm very proud of how much
| attention I've gotten (which isn't _that_ much, by
| influencer standards) with just a Costco kit lens and
| body.
|
| > But it doesn't get you a higher rate of good photos.
|
| Beg to differ here, if one knows what they're doing.
|
| I do a lot of low-light, event photography, among other
| stuff, and the fancy expensive kit is just flat-out way
| better. I've shot thousands of these photos with both by
| now, and the extra technical flexibility is totally worth
| it. Hell, the extra sensor size and autofocus alone took
| me to a whole new level. Do you know how much it sucks
| trying to do low-light with manual focus at a DJ
| performance because your autofocus can't keep up? How
| much time do you want to spend twiddling noise reduction
| controls because the entry-level kit's ISO 1600 looks
| like crap? How much shadow detail are you willing to
| sacrifice? It's such a pain in the ass.
|
| And through all that I like to take a few shots with my
| phone for the instant social media gratification... and
| those shots are never anywhere near as good. The color is
| flatter, depth of field is blah, everything is
| just...meh. They look good on instagram, but that's about
| it.
|
| > I can think of precisely one photographic limitation
| I'd run into regularly even now: its high ISO performance
| was not that good. Otherwise I'd have that camera back to
| shoot with, even now, especially in the studio. Though I
| might rage at the maximum card capacity.
|
| Growing up I messed around with 35mm and even had a SLR
| camera for a short while. But I got serious with my first
| DSLR (a Nikon D3100). Maybe I was wrong in expecting
| something comparable to my old 35mm stuff but the dynamic
| range sucked, high ISO sucked (1600 is grainy AF),
| autofocus with like 12 points with only one cross-type
| sensor sucked, and no matter how good I focused the image
| (even on a nice 35mm prime) I couldn't get the razor
| sharpness I was after. There was something about how that
| sensor processed certain light transitions that had a
| really nice quality, and the camera took a lot of hits,
| but ultimately I felt like I was hitting a plateau.
|
| One example: I like to do long-exposure shots of
| firedancers doing their thing. Depending on the fuel type
| the dancer uses there could be a _lot_ of dynamic range
| to deal with, and most of the other photographers in this
| space seem to struggle in coping with it: either the
| dancer is exposed nicely but the flame is blown out, or
| the flame is exposed nicely but the dancer is super dark
| (losing a lot of color detail if you try and fix it in
| post). Or they just try to squash both together and the
| picture looks like a bad HDR merge. Here is another place
| where the sensor and lens matters a ton and both my phone
| and my DX kit struggle. Can I do and have I done these
| shots on that kit? Sure. But the nice camera, with its
| amazing sensor, and the amazing lenses I have for it, are
| able to capture way more detail, and as a result I get
| way better results straight-away and spend way less time
| in post trying to fix things.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > I do a lot of low-light, event photography, among other
| stuff, and the fancy expensive kit is just flat-out way
| better. I've shot thousands of these photos with both by
| now, and the extra technical flexibility is totally worth
| it.
|
| Mm, yep. I do gig photography in small, dark venues --
| I've shot probably 125 thousand photos at high ISOs, with
| six different cameras (Nikon DSLRs for the bulk of it,
| and Sony mirrorless experiments alongside in a parallel
| track).
|
| > Hell, the extra sensor size and autofocus alone took me
| to a whole new level.
|
| The difference in light gathering between an APS-C and
| full-frame camera of the same technological era is
| usually about one stop. If you make a several-year jump
| at the same time, that can be noticeable, I suppose.
|
| > Do you know how much it sucks trying to do low-light
| with manual focus at a DJ performance because your
| autofocus can't keep up?
|
| At gigs, I do quite a lot of manual focus (and single-
| point, back-button focus with manual adjustment). I have
| no particular issue with it and it helps solve problems
| autofocus simply cannot solve.
|
| Especially with a Nikon, because you get focus point
| confirmation even manually.
|
| You do a lot more thinking and observation about
| equivalent distance. For example if you cannot focus on
| someone's face because they are behind a brightly lit
| microphone that autofocus will always prefer: How far are
| they behind it? If you focus _further down_ the
| microphone stand or on a belt buckle, lock and recompose
| on their face, without changing your position, how much
| does that correct it? Or can you judge how far in inches
| and then literally move yourself or your camera forward?
|
| One good cross-type sensor is all you absolutely need
| (stay away from old-style Phase One autofocus kit if this
| bothers you!)
|
| Admittedly back button focus makes that more useful. And
| focus peaking on a mirrorless camera is the bee's knees.
|
| > How much time do you want to spend twiddling noise
| reduction controls because the entry-level kit's ISO 1600
| looks like crap? How much shadow detail are you willing
| to sacrifice? It's such a pain in the ass.
|
| I said above that the only thing that really forced me to
| upgrade from my S2 Pro was low light performance. But
| again, I think if I was to go back to using that camera,
| I would be getting results I wanted a whole stop, maybe a
| stop and a half faster than I did at the time, through
| better subject selection, better understanding of its
| limitations and fifteen years more understanding of
| exposure.
|
| If you're talking about the D3100, I'd shoot that up to
| ISO 3200, I reckon. Its low light ISO performance is a
| little better than the D300 which I used for years at
| gigs with enormous success. And its dynamic range is not
| all that noticeably worse. As long as you are careful
| with your exposure, that's a useful little camera.
|
| DxO Optics Pro/PhotoLab helps of course.
|
| Newer kit does a lot of stuff better, certainly, and it
| can save you time. And yeah, low light photography is
| about the only place people run up against the
| limitations of older kit. But IMO nothing since 2008 has
| any kind of problem with low light, and in many cases the
| newer kit is tripped up by the exact same difficult
| situations.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Idunno dude, ISO 3200 is nearly unusable on the D3100 for
| anything you want a large picture of, the noise was just
| too much for me, especially so when I didn't want to
| shoot fully stopped up. The noise has a look of its own
| and it compressed horribly and would lose a ton of color
| detail. Maybe with the right software but I like my
| workflow as is. The newer (relatively speaking) Nikon
| sensors contribute some additional DR as well, a
| comparison that I saw in a performance review a while
| back was closer to 2 or 3 stops between everything.
|
| Maybe it works for your style, but it was cramping mine.
| There is enough suffering in art, why add to it?
|
| > The difference in light gathering between an APS-C and
| full-frame camera of the same technological era is
| usually about one stop. If you make a several-year jump
| at the same time, that can be noticeable, I suppose.
|
| That's exactly what I am talking about, a sensor and
| format upgrade after several years. I have a DX body of
| the same generation and its sensor performance is very
| close to its FX brother, and they're both considerably
| better than the D3100.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Another way to put this, more pithily:
|
| At a first approximation every great photo -- even every
| great live music photo -- has been taken with equipment
| less capable than that D3100.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Even more pithily:
|
| Ansel Adams did his best work on equipment far less
| capable than a D3100.
|
| The point is...?
| cycomanic wrote:
| > My mobile has taught me that a lot of what I relied on
| or worked with in a DSLR or mirrorless is a crutch.
|
| > Mobile phone cameras force you, for example, to really
| think about composition, because you can't simply blur
| out the bits you don't like (portrait mode still sucks).
| They force you to think of other ways to isolate
| subjects, other ways to make use of light and contrast.
|
| I would argue that Bokeh is an incredibly important tool
| that is part of composition and saying it is just there
| to "blur out the bits you don't like" seems weird to me.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > I would argue that Bokeh is an incredibly important
| tool that is part of composition and saying it is just
| there to "blur out the bits you don't like" seems weird
| to me.
|
| And yet that is exactly how many photographers use depth
| of field. Especially amateur portraitists; the shallowest
| depth of field they can pull off, with the eyes sharp and
| the least "distracting" background.
|
| (Ever notice the fundamental difference between
| commercial editorial photography and amateur portrait
| photography? It is this. Amateur portraitists use blurry
| backgrounds as a tool to escape complexity.)
|
| FWIW, 25 years ago we would not have had this
| conversation (notwithstanding the non-existence of HN),
| because this idea of out-of-focus-rendering as an
| inherently important quality of a specific lens almost
| did not ever come up. (And we didn't have the word until
| Mike Johnston introduced it to the english language).
|
| Bokeh obsession (as distinct from what used to be called
| "choosing the right depth of field for your composition")
| is a very modern, super-fast-aperture, gear-maximalist
| thing. The mobile phone bursts this very contemporary
| bubble, if you'll excuse the pun.
| dsego wrote:
| As an amateur I like to use the depth of field to bring a
| 3d quality to my shots, sort of separate the layers a
| bit. Usually stopped down a bit, not wide open. And this
| is currently the biggest difference I can notice between
| photos produced with my X-T30 and a Xiaomi mid-tier
| phone, the pictures don't look flat, sometimes it even
| feels like looking through a window into the scene. The
| other two differences are field of view and the
| resolution, since my phone is equipped with a wide angle
| lens. TBH, when I shoot the wide end of my kit lens on
| the X-T30 and don't pixel peep, it's hard to tell apart
| the jpeg's from my camera and my phone.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > As an amateur I like to use the depth of field to bring
| a 3d quality to my shots, sort of separate the layers a
| bit. Usually stopped down a bit, not wide open.
|
| To be clear what I mean is that really the "shot at f/1.4
| wide open" portrait thing is an amateur phenomenon. It is
| just not a big part of commercial portraiture at all,
| outdoors or in.
|
| > TBH, when I shoot the wide end of my kit lens on the
| X-T30 and don't pixel peep, it's hard to tell apart the
| jpeg's from my camera and my phone.
|
| Right. This is what I find -- especially with black and
| white images (my iPhone seems to produce images that work
| well with, say, a Pan F thing).
|
| But this depth of field stuff what I mean about the way
| mobile phones force you to think about subject isolation,
| all of the time; even on the telephoto lens except with
| subjects less than a couple of feet away.
|
| My experience is that people who have never used a DSLR
| do not have as much trouble getting phone photos they
| like that are actually good.
|
| Partly because they haven't had either the scope or
| crutch it offers; they are used to seeing and
| instinctively composing without it.
|
| Also because DSLR users spend most of their time
| composing wide open, not at their target aperture, which
| ultimately warps our perception and steers us towards
| shooting images more like the full-time view we get from
| the viewfinder.
|
| There is an art to subject isolation in composition with
| constant front-to-back sharpness at all times, and a
| mobile phone will force you to think about it.
| tuyiown wrote:
| Besides telephoto and real macro, the results of the
| iPhone 12 made the idea of gear renewal almost absurd for
| me, it's just incredible and I'm not talking about the 12
| pro.
|
| There is trade offs, none of them justifies carrying
| heavy gear around most of the time.
|
| edit: it's a hobby and I just spent a lot of time trying
| to take pretty pictures, and searching the proper cost
| tradeoff to do them
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Right. Gear churn just seems peculiar.
|
| I think this is also why we see lots of people who own
| high end full-frame etc., are now adapting old lenses,
| building extraordinary DIY rigs like the "digital camera
| obscura" trend of the moment, making entirely custom
| lenses with surplus optics and 3D printers, etc.
|
| It's the same reason as for why there's so much interest
| in film.
|
| These things have different strengths. I think mobile
| phones have liberated photography in a way unparalleled
| since the time when 35mm film liberated photography.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Gear churn just seems peculiar.
|
| There was a period when DSLRs were improving pretty
| rapidly and it made sense to move up on a pretty regular
| cadence because the new stuff was so much better. (And
| we've seen this with phones more recently.)
|
| There's definitely a retro aspect to film and vinyl.
| Personally that's not for me having lived with the
| limitations of both. But I spent years working with
| custom film developing chemistry and the like.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| I still think of myself as someone who shoots a little
| bit of film, though like other things I still think of
| myself as doing, not since the pandemic.
|
| But I think I view film photography, darkroom work, and
| mobile phones in basically the same way.
|
| They are just _some photography tools among many_ , and
| my photography education would be incomplete without
| them.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was photo editor of my undergrad newspaper, editor of
| high school yearbook, and made beer money with
| photography in various ways. (I was also de facto photo
| editor of a newspaper in grad school among other things.)
|
| I spent a lot of time on it and got a lot of enjoyment
| out of it. I also probably got a bit burned out and
| wasn't really interested any longer once I didn't have
| easy access to a good darkroom any longer. But yeah,
| happy I did it, zero interest in doing any longer.
| Digital pretty much rekindled that interest.
|
| (Also could really not get into video in those days
| because overhead was just too much. Don't have obvious
| entry point into creative video these days but at least
| casual is easier.)
| ghaff wrote:
| It depends on what you're doing and what the photos are
| for. If you're shooting events, sports, wildlife, or want
| to do shots with specialty--like ultra-wideangle--lenses,
| precise aperture control, large blowups, no. But phones
| can now handle a huge amount of what most people--even
| relatively serious photographers, need day to day or on a
| random hike/city visit/etc. need. If you're shooting with
| a DSLR and whatever kit lens it came with on A you're
| probably fine using a phone.
| [deleted]
| jug wrote:
| No but earlier many overshot what they needed because
| smartphones were so obviously inferior even for social
| media. FF and even APS-C are still clearly better but
| what matters here is that modern smartphones are reaching
| the "good enough" bar to no longer look bad.
| bagels wrote:
| So are these lens assemblies designed by some optimizer? There
| are a lot of radical shapes in there.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| Yes. Zemax, CodeV, and other optical design software is
| fundamentally optimization as a design strategy.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| It's possible, but they are sufficiently regular I think some
| obvious hand optimization math could get you there. I've seen
| similar in other fields.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| How much does this lens cost?
| trevortheblack wrote:
| Yining Karl Li has mentioned in previous posts their intention to
| write a blog post about modern lens optics, which should outline
| multiple things.
|
| Hopefully, a general overview of the 100s of lenses they've
| found/made the models for, alongside how modern optics fail to be
| accurately modeled by the polynomial model of optics...
| dima55 wrote:
| Polynomial models are generally usable for most applications.
| If you need lots of accuracy, such as for long-range stereo,
| they sorta work only for traditional and non-wide lenses.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I don't really get it. Also could this be used to improve
| telescopes?
| sega_sai wrote:
| (astronomer here). Some comments below partially answered the
| question, as modern optical/ir telescopes are based on mirror
| designs (i.e. they have primary, secondary, and sometimes the
| tertiary mirror like the Vera Rubin telescope). But the lenses
| are still heavily used in the camera part of the instrument or
| in spectrographs. And there is a lot of know-how there, as well
| as optimization in terms of minimising light losses,
| aberrations etc. I think the constraints and goals are clearly
| different from the cameras in iphones, but I'd think the
| techniques must be pretty similar (although Apple clearly has a
| ton of money that astronomers don't so it's possible that there
| are some big innovations there, that I don't know about).
| leeoniya wrote:
| SCT reflector telescopes use an exotic looking "corrector
| plate" (lens) to compensate for the easier-to-produce
| spherical mirrors vs parabolic.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmidt_corrector_plate
| scheme271 wrote:
| Possibly for refracting telescopes where the light passes
| through lenses but pretty much all serious telescopes use
| mirrors to reflect light and therefore couldn't do this.
| However, I'm sure that you can come up with some wild optics if
| you are optimizing for size or minimizing distortion.
| bagels wrote:
| These designs are required due to the package size constraints
| and the relatively generous lighting conditions.
| ElephantsMyAnus wrote:
| Isn't the primary reason that the picture has to be projected
| on a flat plane?
| aliher1911 wrote:
| Not an astronomer, but from my limited knowledge telescopes
| usually use reflection e.g. mirrors so they don't need to
| correct for chromatic aberrations introduced by lenses and they
| also don't use things like optical stabilisation. Refractors
| could possibly be corrected, but AFAIK they aren't widely used
| in astronomy and hobby telescopes is such a niche market.
| amelius wrote:
| They are still rotationally symmetric, at least.
| pvillano wrote:
| what are the applications for non rotationally symmetric
| lenses?
| amelius wrote:
| Some people have rotational asymmetry in their eyes, and this
| is compensated for by eyeglasses with rotational asymmetry.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astigmatism
| jzwinck wrote:
| Movies are often shot with anamorphic lenses which are lenses
| with a sort of vertical cylinder shape. This lets wider
| aspect ratios be shot using the full frame of a more square
| aspect film or sensor.
|
| https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/amp/video/buying-
| guide/...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Complicated, but simply an incremental evolution of a very old
| solution. These complicated lens arrangements to counteract
| chromatic aberration got started in the 18th century. The game is
| all about getting three distinct wavelengths to focus despite
| each reacting differently at each lens. The lens in the iPhone
| looks complex but it isn't any more complicated than others. The
| most complex I've ever read about was for a satellite which had
| to maintain focus despite temperature changes. Iirc that employed
| a stack of over a dozen lenses.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achromatic_lens
|
| https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/61074908
| https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/here-is-what-to-l...
|
| https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/journal-of-appli...
| gmueckl wrote:
| The craziness in the iPhone design isn't exactly the number of
| elements, but their weird aspherical shapes. The traditional
| approaches for designing optics are have been developed for
| spherical lenses because they are much simpler to describe
| mathematically. Even then, optimizing them requires a lot of
| numerical computation. At first glance, optimizing these wavy,
| complex lens shapes seems to require much more involved
| methods.
| fsh wrote:
| I don't think the computational complexity has been a
| significant problem for at least half a century. Aspheric
| lenses are described by simple polynomials and ray tracing is
| just elementary geometry. You only need to analyze a hand
| full of rays to get the relevant parameters of an imaging
| system. Probably a few thousand floating point operations in
| total.
|
| The problem is that it is extremely difficult to manufacture
| surfaces with optical quality that are not spherical. Even
| today, aspheres tend to be more expensive than spherical
| lenses and have significantly worse surface quality. This is
| the price you have to pay if the objective has to fit inside
| a phone.
| prvc wrote:
| If only the designers at Apple had access to devices that
| could perform numerical computations...
| gmueckl wrote:
| You first have to know what to compute before you can
| compute it. A computer won't tell you that.
| TedShiller wrote:
| They're crazy, and still no match for DSLRs
| astrange wrote:
| DSLRs are no match for a Fujifilm GFX100 or a Phase One or the
| Hubble Space Telescope but none of those users seem to like
| comparing them as much.
| teekert wrote:
| I recently switched from a OnePlus3 to an iPhone 12 mini and
| although the pictures are really much better, one thing is worse,
| the lens glare. There is often a glare and sometimes a bright
| green dot. Is that a consequence of these many elements? Less
| spherical and chromatic aberrations but more glare and other
| internal reflections?
| GoToRO wrote:
| From what I've learn from 3d software tutorials (trying to
| simulate a glare), this glare comes from the lenses and each
| lens will add another ring in the glare? not sure.
| red0point wrote:
| Maybe dumb to suggest, but when this happens usually the lens
| is dirty / a bit greasy, at least from my experience with
| iPhone cameras.
| teekert wrote:
| I'll degrease the lenses now, perhaps this was quite a
| brilliant suggestion :)
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Not only is this likely, I intentionally leave my phone
| camera lenses smudged sometimes because it produces an
| unpredictable dreamy effect.
| science4sail wrote:
| That's an old Hollywood special effect:
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GaussianGirl
|
| > When filmed, the Gaussian Girl is shot through a soft-
| focus filter, a piece of translucent plastic (or very
| sheer silk, in the days of classic film), or a quick
| smear of Vaseline, depending on the director's and/or
| cinematographer's preference. This surrounds her with a
| softly glowing aura, and smooths out any unappealing
| pores or lines on her face. The result makes her look
| nothing short of ethereal.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| The OnePlus 3 had a sapphire camera lens, Apple does not. Maybe
| that's why the flare.
| [deleted]
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