Saturday, August 20, 2016

Simulated shallow depth-of-field

I've been saying that one of the next steps for phone cameras would be simulated shallow depth-of-field for blurry backgrounds. And here it is, a review of the Huawei-Leica phone. Good stuff.
[Update: there are even iPhone apps for this.]
The next important step would be an extra lens, for tele- and portrait-photography. (I think this will be easier than making a good zoom lens in the tiny space available.) My wish is for a 100mm-equivalent lens. This would be a good portrait lens, and give a bit of reach, unlike the 70mm which is so common on Normal zoom lenses, 70mm is just a longish normal, not a tele. (In my view it's the downfall of the last two generations of the otherwise great Sony RX100 camera, they shortened the zoom to 70mm.)


9 comments:

  1. I have a different solution. Carry a good-enough cheap phone - mine is a Moto G. Also carry a compact camera with a decent zoom which will fit into a pocket. Mine is a Panasonic TZ80 (SZ60 in the US) with a superb 30x zoom. That might be overkill for some, but I love it. And the total cost of camera and phone is less than that of a top-quality phone.

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  2. Yes, there's a good argument for that at this time.

    Actually I argued for that recently as opposed to buying these clip-on lenses for phones, which have so many compromises.

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  3. Someone is going to figure out really good simulated DOF control. This looked better than average, but obviously still has trouble with edges. Might need more computing power, perhaps an upload/download system like the Prisma app.

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  4. I think having two or three cameras on the back of a phone might solve the problem. Two identical cameras on the outside could be used to calculate distance from the lens by comparing the position of each element in the photos from each camera.

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  5. I'm not happy with the use of so much computing power (and possibly network traffic) to make a phone image look as if it was taken by a bigger camera. If you're that into the look of your image, carry the right equipment!

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  6. Bru, yes, that's pretty much what the reviewed camera, Huawei P9, does.
    Though I thiink that with faster processors etc, it's probably not needed for that purpose.

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  7. Ahhh, I see now. Robin Wong reviewed the Huawei-Leica. That was a good read, thanks for linking to it.

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  8. A simulated depth of field always makes me go a big rubbery one.

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