Many of you are aware of the mobile camera megapixel race but there is also another thing which is growing competitively, that is camera sensor size, recently we have seen the flagship smartphones cameras from huawei, oneplus, xiaomi, samsung that are challenging the professional cameras,
Camera sensor size in recent flagship smartphones-
Ø Xiaomi MI 11 Ultra - 1/1.12 inch size 50MP samsung GN2 sensor
Ø Huawei Mate 40 pro - 1/1.28 inch size 50MP sony IMX 700 sensor
Ø Samsung Galaxy S21 ultra - 1/1.33 inch size 108MP ISO cell
Ø Oppo Find X3 pro - 1/1.56 inch size 50MP sony IMX 766 sensor
Ø Vivo x60 pro plus - 1/1.3 inch size 50MP samsung GN1 sensor
Ø Oneplus 9 pro - 1/1.43 inch size 48MP sony IMX 789 sensor
Importance of camera sensor size-
Ever heard some saying that a camera's megapixel doesn't matter, because people see it as a unit that defines the picture quality of the camera, even though it improves the details a bit but it is deceptive most of the time, because other factors like censor size matters a lot.
We know that even mid range mobile cameras excels in daytime photography, but when it comes to night photography even flagship smartphone cameras struggles a lot,
Because of the form factor of smartphones it is difficult to have big camera hardware like sensors, so it reduces the ability to capture the good amount of light in low light conditions,
If you got a larger sensor in low light conditions the amount of noise in the picture will be reduced, the picture will be well exposed.
not in low lights, larger sensor in combination with the larger aperture values will give amazing depth of field, so it will produce nice natural background blur with bokeh effect. it will help to enhance the HDR performance.
1 INCH camera sensor mobiles-
Recently some smartphone manufacturer reached a milestone in that process, building mobile phone cameras with 1 inch sensor,
Sharp in association with the Leica launched Aquos R6 which has 20 megapixel 1 inch sensor, and leica itself launched a flagship smartphone called leica leitz phone 1 with 20 megapixel 1 inch sensor,
and huawei launched their P50 series with a sony IMX 800 which is almost close 1 inch sensor.
Some of you might think, we have already seen big camera sensors in mobile phones, even 1 inch camera sensors in a mobile 5 years ago. Let's see that in a bit. but what so special now,
We have never seen that big sensor in the form factor of modern smartphones. 1 inch sensors are too big to fit inside a smartphone camera setup, 1 inch sensors usually come with sony RX point shoot cameras that makes it more interesting.
Legendary smartphones with big camera sensors
Microsoft lumia 950 series-
Microsoft lumia 950 and 950 xl came with a 20 megapixel big 1/2.4 inch pureview Camera sensor which is powered by zeiss optics.
It was one of the best smartphone cameras at that time, it offered great low light performance, well balanced HDR performance at that time, it also had optical image stabilization.
Microsoft lumia 1020-
Microsoft lumia 1020 came with a 41 megapixels 1/1.5 inch BSI camera sensor which is also powered by zeiss optics.
It had a powerful xenon flash, and optical image stabilization, with help of a big camera sensor, with more megapixels it was able to produce 3x lossless digital zoom and it could take good images with comparatively less noise.
It also had great camera software with pro photography features which offered much more controls over exposure, white balance, and focus which helped with manual photography.
Nokia 808 Pureview-
The mobiles i mentioned above are great, but this mobile phone in something more than that, it was truly a revolutionary product,
It had a 40 megapixel 1/1.2 inch sensor in a mobile phone almost a decade ago, it was also released in collaboration with zeiss optics,
It was a huge leap in technology at that time, the mobile wasn’t even an android device, it was an Era where symbian mobiles, nokia 808 was running on symbian.
In Nokia 808 pureview they introduced a feature called pixel oversampling, which is similar to pixel binning in high resolution smartphone cameras nowadays. it combines the nearby pixels into one pixel, by using that they could efficiently handle the big camera sensor.
Still, these Nokia phones I mentioned above have a lot of fans because they brought many revolutionary features to the smartphone industry.
Panasonic lumix CM1-
Only mobile that had 1 inch camera sensor before the release of sharp aquos R6 and leica leitz was panasonic lumix CM1,
But at times, they tried hard to keep up the smartphone form factor, even though it was an android phone it looked closer to a point and shoot camera, but no cons with the camera, it was great at that time.
Need for big camera sensors:
When phones like Nokia 808 were released the smartphones didn't have that much processing power, so smartphones can’t do much with the software processing, so they have to rely on hardware solutions.
The goals were different at those times. They were working hard to make a camera that produces a usable image that looks well enough to share it in social media. now flagship every year getting more closer to professional level cameras.
But today smartphones like Google pixel can do magical things with the help of powerful software and minimal hardware.
So the next Goal of smartphone cameras is to capture images like professional cameras. That is why now once again we could see the brands leveling up the hardware like camera sensors to reach the next goal.
Conclusion-
Soon we are going to witness the smartphones that could take on professionals, till that happens, i’m going to sit back, relax and enjoy watching the progress. So comment your thoughts about this post down here, share it with your friends who are interested in mobile photography.
0 Comments