Rumor: One iPhone model will have triple rear cameras in 2019

[JediFragger]

Coming to a phone near you soon.....Spider Lens(tm)!!

[GoldenLag]

Well....... This confirms 4 camera next gen P20 pro called the P30.

With all the cameras people want

[vanished]

On the one hand, this looks really dumb... reminds me of a certain cartoon fish.

 

But, it also makes perfect sense.  IIRC, Huawei P20 already has 3 lenses so I expect everyone else to catch up in the next gen of releases.

 

As for the purpose, I really hope they do something interesting with it.  So far we've seen separate RGB + B&W sensors, which I question the usefulness of, as well as dedicated wide and zoom cameras, which in theory is a great idea but in practice, the zoomed one uses such crappy glass that it actually ends up being no sharper than just cropping the wide shot, which is totally pathetic and renders it completely pointless.  What I'd like to see, if possible, is having all 3 be identical and using them to sum to one final image, effectively simulating a larger sensor.  Obviously if they could just install a larger single sensor that would be better but I think due to thickness that would be impossible to put a working lens on.  Either that or just re-try the zoom idea and actually get it right this time.

 

Edit: just read that they're gonna use it for 3D vision... if that's the case, wouldn't you want as much separation as possible?  like one lens on the top and one on the bottom?  They seem a bit close for that to work well.

Edited June 1, 2018 by Ryan_Vickers

[Centurius]

So an article citing another article citing someone that doesn't work for Apple?

[NinerL]

Now they're saying it'll be this year. https://www.macrumors.com/2018/06/01/iphone-x-plus-triple-lens-camera-rumor/

[79wjd]

2 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

On the one hand, this looks really dumb... reminds me of a certain cartoon fish.

 

But, it also makes perfect sense.  IIRC, Huawei P20 already has 3 lenses so I expect everyone else to catch up in the next gen of releases.

 

As for the purpose, I really hope they do something interesting with it.  So far we've seen separate RGB + B&W sensors, which I question the usefulness of, as well as dedicated wide and zoom cameras, which in theory is a great idea but in practice, the zoomed one uses such crappy glass that it actually ends up being no sharper than just cropping the wide shot, which is totally pathetic and renders it completely pointless.  What I'd like to see, if possible, is having all 3 be identical and using them to sum to one final image, effectively simulating a larger sensor.  Obviously if they could just install a larger single sensor that would be better but I think due to thickness that would be impossible to put a working lens on.  Either that or just re-try the zoom idea and actually get it right this time.

 

Edit: just read that they're gonna use it for 3D vision... if that's the case, wouldn't you want as much separation as possible?  like one lens on the top and one on the bottom?  They seem a bit close for that to work well.

The degree of separation probably doesn't matter too much given that any separation should provide enough data points to create a 3D mapping.

 

Honestly, I don't much care for 3D mapping -- at least not yet. When we get to the point that we have the equivalent of a Star Trek holocam, then I'd be interested. But in the meantime, I'd rather another zoom level or as you mentioned some kind of composite image to artificially increase sensor size. Although it's the outside of the lens that's most prone to quality issues -- so you'd be increasing the area of bad lens -- but at the same time it's probably not such a concern on such small glass.....

[mynameisjuan]

5 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

so you'd be increasing the area of bad lens -- but at the same time it's probably not such a concern on such small glass.....

On a small lens with a small sensor, glass quality needs to had higher tolerances. A bad small lens is 10000x worse than a bad large lens. 

[79wjd]

4 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

On a small lens with a small sensor, glass quality needs to had higher tolerances. A bad small lens is 10000x worse than a bad large lens. 

Is it much of a concern on small lenses though? Yes, the outside of the lens is the area most prone to quality issues, and a small lens naturally has a very large area coming from the outer edges -- but the glass overall is so small that shouldn't it be easy (and cheap) to set high tolerances whereas with a larger lens you're talking about something far more expensive with significantly more room for error (e.g. why yields of small dies are better than yields of large dies).

[mynameisjuan]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

Is it much of a concern on small lenses though? Yes, the outside of the lens is the area most prone to quality issues, and a small lens naturally has a very large area coming from the outer edges -- but the glass overall is so small that shouldn't it be easy (and cheap) to set high tolerances whereas with a larger lens you're talking about something far more expensive with significantly more room for error (e.g. why yields of small dies are better than yields of large dies).

Glass flaws have a minimum size but can vary. On a large lens a microscopic chip is nothing, bring this down to phone scale and that chips proportion is now much larger and with micron pixels, it could cover 10,000s of pixels.

 

The sensor and its pixels are so small that any flaw will be exaggerated compared to say a CMOS where the pixels are not only larger but the focal length also mitigates these flaws. 

 

I research this quite a while ago when I first got into photography. Little sensors get fucked by almost everything