Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The latest "volume" in the mobile phone industry still takes place on camera cameras. A technology called "super light-changing camera" has become an important selling point on Huawei's Mate 50 series of phones. At the scene, officials said that the mobile phone lens uses a physical aperture and supports ten adjustable gears, making it the first in the industry.

Aperture, which may be the first professional term heard by many people when they come into contact with photography, controls the amount of light entering and affects the depth of field, and is one of the "three elements of photography". An "old bird" must master the adjustment of the aperture (for example, if the light is strong during the day, the aperture should be narrowed, and if the light is dim at night, the aperture should be widened. ), and cooperate with the other two "elements"-- shutter and ISO, to make appropriate choices and combinations to take the photos you like.

Photo from Weibo @ Wang Xiaoqi Colin due to the precious space, most of the smartphone lenses are fixed aperture, and the mature solution is to simulate the adjustable effect through the in-machine algorithm. But there are also crab eaters, the earliest physical variable aperture phones appeared in 2009, when the booming mobile phone giant Nokia released the N86 series of phones, the aperture adjustable range is F2.4~F4.8, supporting three adjustable gears (F2.4, F3.2, F4.8). Samsung later released the Galaxy S9 series with variable aperture technology.

The relationship between aperture and brightness, depth of field The Smartphone Photographer however, due to the limited size of the mobile phone camera module, it is necessary to balance the optical design and mechanical structure in such a sophisticated structure of the mobile phone lens. Before Huawei launched the "hyperlight variable camera", the variable aperture of Nokia and Samsung phones was not very playable.

Many commentators believe that Huawei's "ten-gear adjustable technology" has injected fresh vitality into the mobile phone market that has entered the "bottleneck period". However, for ordinary consumers, they once again "passively" accept a professional term. Just like in the past few years, even people who are indifferent to smart hardware can be familiar with marketing terms such as "ultra-wide angle, large aperture, megapixels, AI beauty"-even if you never understand what they really mean.

Behind these professional names is the 20-year "internal history" of mobile photography.

The functional era of stacking pixels in the history of mobile phone photography do you remember your first camera phone? This is a strange question for most young people nowadays: which of my mobile phones can't take pictures?

Indeed, to return to the appropriate context of this question, time has to be set forward more, which belongs to the memories of the post-70s and post-80s-Nokia 7650.

The phone, which went on sale 20 years ago, has made great progress in photo pixels, more than tripling the world's first mobile phone with a camera, the Sharp J-SH04, released in 2000, to an "astonishing" 300000, so its initial price of 5000 yuan is also astonishing, and you can actually buy a toilet in Beijing.

"people don't know what they want until you put it in front of them."Mobile phones that can take pictures quickly set off public demand. Seeing that the market is ready to start, other manufacturers have followed suit and gradually pay attention to the shooting function of mobile phones. Nokia 7650 is also seen as an important milestone in the era of mobile phone shooting, as a" modern exhibit "in the China Lishui Photography Museum.

Nokia 7650? pictures from the Internet, new mobile phones with stronger camera functions are springing up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. In 2003, Sharp launched the J-SH53, the first mobile phone with a megapixel lens. Five months later, Casio unveiled the world's first 2-megapixel mobile phone, the A5403CA, which kicked off the competition for cell phone photo pixels:

In 2004, Casio launched its first 3-megapixel camera phone, the Casio A5406CA. Samsung made its debut in early 2005 with the launch of the P850, a flip phone with a rotating display and a 3.15 megapixel camera. At the end of the year, Nokia released the N80 with 3.15 megapixels. The war came with 5 megapixels, with Samsung launching the M509, Nokia N95 up to standard, and Sony Ericsson K850 and LG KU990 Viewty quickly following suit.

Since then, the competition seems to have become a rolling "digital game", 7 million, 8 million, 10 million. By the first decade of the new century, mainstream mobile phone manufacturers have raised their doors to 1200 megapixels.

In order to achieve higher pixels, it is followed by the sacrifice of mobile phone design: deformed appearance, thick body, large lens and cumbersome control buttons gradually turn the phone into a "stitching monster".

Samsung SCH-B600? pictures from the Internet, we cannot deny the progress that pixel improvement has brought to the quality of mobile phone photos, but simple and rough stacking has become increasingly unable to bring poor perception of the experience to consumers. People can't help but wonder: if there is a digital camera, why do you need a camera phone that is not more convenient than it?

Pixel stacking in the full-scale smartphone era is temporarily moving towards fatigue, a new species, and the emergence of smartphones has changed the direction of the volume. IPhone4 was born in 2010, which not only sets a new benchmark for the design of mobile phones, but also makes photography really fresh and eye-catching: 5-megapixel cameras can still produce photos with good texture. The new experience brought about by the addition of the front camera has also become a new object for mobile phone manufacturers to compete with each other later.

IPhone4? the smartphone era led by iPhone4 affects the direction of mobile photography in at least two levels: on the one hand, simple and ultra-thin design has become a consensus, and there is no room for rough stacking of hardware. In addition, with the advent of mobile Internet and the prosperity of content ecology, mobile phones have officially become an important social platform, while the "one-click" solution and convenient operation have become the basic needs of consumers for mobile photography functions.

In order to meet the new needs of photography, mobile phone manufacturers are looking for improvements from sensors, lenses, processors and other aspects that affect the imaging quality of mobile phones. The era of comprehensive "volume" is coming:

The camera. One camera won't solve the problem? Then two. HTC and LG first launched dual-camera phones in 2011, Honor and Coolpad joined them in 2014, Xinghe 360 also launched dual-camera phones in 2015, and Apple launched its first dual-camera model, iPhone 7 Plus, in 2016. Can't you solve it? Keep going!

In the past two years, the mainstream mobile camera scheme has transitioned from dual shooting to triple shooting or even multiple cameras, from depth of field double shooting, black and white + color double shooting, super wide angle + ordinary double shooting, and wide angle + telephoto double shooting to the combination of ultra wide angle + portrait + telephoto as the core. As a result, the new iPhone has a "bath bully" integrated on the back, and the Nokia 9 PureView even uses five cameras, plus a flash and another sensor, with as many as seven openings in the back.

Nokia 9 PureView? pictures from the Internet, the development of mobile telephoto lenses also ushered in a historic moment in 2019. Huawei P30 Pro was equipped with periscope lens design for the first time. Later, domestic and foreign manufacturers including Xiaomi, Samsung, Glory, vivo and other domestic and foreign manufacturers have launched mobile phones with periscope telephoto lenses.

Sensors. In the era of traditional cameras, sensors are the second most important area of fighting besides pixels. Cell phone photography did not escape this bullet.

In general, the larger the size of the sensor, the purer photos can be taken in a darker environment, and have a better virtual effect. The sensor size of the iPhone 4 released by Apple in 2010 is about 1x3.2 inches, and by 2021, all brands of flagship machines will be equipped with a 1-inch outsole sensor chip.

It is true that mobile phone photography has made great progress in purity and emptiness, but the 1-inch sensor has basically touched the ceiling on the phone, and manufacturers are starting to stop piling up on sensor size.

Algorithm. The number of mobile phone cameras cannot continue to increase, and the size of the sensor cannot increase indefinitely. To improve the camera performance of mobile phones, we need to find other ways. Various manufacturers have turned their attention to the software, hoping to further improve the effect of taking pictures through software algorithms.

Google's Pixel series of mobile phones have a far-reaching impact on photo algorithms, realizing the use of software algorithms to make up for the lack of hardware. Huawei launched XD Optics computational optics technology, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi and other mainstream manufacturers have also launched their own algorithms, the era of "computational photography" (Computational Photography) is still coming.

The photo taken by netizens with Huawei P9 is from @ Lin_Chuzhao. Huawei began its joint name with Leica as early as 2016, when the Huawei P9 series was equipped with Leica twins. Since then, other domestic manufacturers have also begun to follow. From the calendar created by digital blogger DTCHAT, it is clear that almost every year since vivo launched the x60 series with Zeiss in 2020, a manufacturer has begun to work with a major camera manufacturer.

The major brand manufacturers and camera manufacturers joint node, picture from digital blogger DTCHAT to 2021, one plus began to cooperate with Hassel camera, launched the one plus 9 series, this year, OPPO debut Find X5 series models added Hasu filter, Xiaomi 12s Ultra and Leica launched in July this year is a big selling point.

In addition, this year also turned its attention to customized ISP:OPPO, OPPO Find X5 Pro;vivo with its own Mariana X chip and vivo X80 Pro with built-in vivo v1 + self-developed ISP. Whoever finds the new differentiation first will be the first to get out of the predicament.

Gimmick or cool techs? Adding the adjective "classy" before the technical term has always been the favorite choice of mobile phone manufacturers in publicity, such as "really comprehensive screen" and "ultra-wide angle".... Huawei is not immune to vulgarity this time, and the "superlight change camera" obviously sounds much more cool techs than the "variable aperture camera".

Of course, compared with the previous two or three variable apertures of Nokia and Samsung, Huawei has not only given 10 variable gears this time, but also put a complex mechanical structure that previously existed only in professional cameras into a small mobile phone lens for the first time. It's really an amazing creation.

Huawei bid farewell to Leica? the pictures come from Huawei, and the possible improvements brought about by the variable aperture for mobile phone imaging are also clear at a glance: for example, it can achieve a greater depth of field effect, improve the difference, reduce the dark angle, and improve the picture quality to a certain extent. more independent control of shutter speed and so on. From another point of view, theoretically better picture quality also provides better raw material for mobile phone camera algorithms, making the algorithm training smarter, which in turn helps to improve the image quality of mobile phone imaging.

The picture taken by mobile phone is from unsplash, but as mentioned earlier, the improvement of mobile phone picture quality depends not only on the lens, but also on the cooperation of sensors, chips and other hardware. taken together, there is no optimal solution that is both desirable and desirable, but a realistic problem that requires reasonable trade-offs. Therefore, the market can not help questioning that "gimmicks are greater than reality", and the final evaluation also depends on the actual effect.

In the 2020 White Paper on Chinese artificial Intelligence phones, iResearch has revealed that "shooting" accounts for nearly 30% of the elements that Chinese consumers are most concerned about, far higher than the traditional selling points such as processors, appearance, screens and fast charging. In view of this, in the current situation that it is difficult to see a breakthrough in other hardware aspects of the mobile phone in the short term, the investment in the camera level seems to be the most cost-effective selling point.

For consumers (whether public demand or professional demand), every "volume" attempt in mobile camera technology, even if it is not worth paying the full bill, does not hinder the attention.

reference

[1] New Weekly "Evolution History of Mobile Photography | original"

[2] Love Fan er's "History of Mobile phone Photography: from introduction to Specialty, from Specialty to interest"

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: fruit Shell (ID:Guokr42), author: Matt, Editor: Shen Zhihan

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