XiaoMi to launch first phone with 108 megapixel camera (not the Mix alpha) along with a new watch and television

[Sauron]

On 10/29/2019 at 9:57 AM, Ryan_Vickers said:

The most disappointing thing about zoom cams is they're always a lower tier than the main cam.  I want to see this amazing new sensor paired with a 5x optical lens, but I suspect if's physically impossible within the body of a phone.

Even if it was possible, I question the sanity of just slapping 5 separate sensors on a phone just for the sake of a small optical zoom. It screams "we're out of ideas".

25 minutes ago, Mysticode said:

FYI it can do native 108MP, but the quality is just "ok". No real purpose in doing it when you can use the pixel binning and get a higher quality photo:

 

Yeah, so they could have just gone with larger pixels for better low light performance, which actually matters in the kind of pictures you're likely to take with a phone. But you gotta have moar megapluxels, right?

On 10/30/2019 at 3:47 AM, Ryan_Vickers said:

Giving a mm in 35 mm equivalent to me seems very dated and unintuitive for two reasons: a) it's a pain to have to rate everything in 35 mm equivalent and convert back and forth between that and the true focal length by using the crop factor, b) stating zoom in mm is not intuitive at all (other things like sensor size use mm also and that can be confusing) and c) without some photography experience, you have nothing for reference.  Is 200 a lot?  A little?  Who knows.  90°?  Well, everyone can sorta picture that.

FoV wouldn't really work much better, aside from the fact sensors aren't round it's still very hard to tell what will fit into that FoV at a moderate distance. mm values still tell you how much zoom it is compared to baseline and you have an absolute reference if you really need it. To be honest though, most people are more than fine with a "5x zoom" label.

On 10/30/2019 at 3:35 AM, D13H4RD said:

I'm just not big on referring to focal lengths by "X zoom". Just kinda prefer saying out the actual focal length equivalent to 35mm.

See above, the "x" is good enough for a quantitative judgement and if you're doing photography at the level where the exact focal length matters... for the love of everything, don't use a phone unless you have no choice...

[vanished]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Even if it was possible, I question the sanity of just slapping 5 separate sensors on a phone just for the sake of a small optical zoom. It screams "we're out of ideas".

Well, yeah that would be a bit silly but I don't think we need that many.  A wide angle (~20 mm), moderate distance (~50 mm), and powerful zoom (~200+ mm) should cover pretty much all scenarios imo.  If they're adding more than that it should probably be used to combine with the other cameras in some fancy computational manner rather than just ot offer more focal lengths.

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

FoV wouldn't really work much better, aside from the fact sensors aren't round it's still very hard to tell what will fit into that FoV at a moderate distance.

Has nothing to do with being round, FoV is just an angle, most often horizontal.  It's used in games, VR headets, etc. all the time.  And I'd disagree that it's very hard to tell what would fit.  Can you not picture a 90° or 45° or 120° triangle in front of you?  I will admit it becomes less intuitive with things like 10° or less, but a) it's still better than mm for which no one will have any frame of reference or intuitive understanding unless they've done some photography before, and b) it makes it easy to compare between devices.  50° on a phone is 50°, which is the same as 50° on a APS-C camera, a medium format camera, or a full-frame camera.  We don't have to deal with the nuisance of "ok this is 140mm but it's on a 1.5x crop body meaning it's 210 mm full-frame equivalent, so my phone's zoom needs to be at 50 mm ..." etc.

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

mm values still tell you how much zoom it is compared to baseline and you have an absolute reference if you really need it. To be honest though, most people are more than fine with a "5x zoom" label.

FOV is equally good as giving you an idea of zoom compared to a baseline, and the likelihood or frequency with which someone is going to need to break down and dig into the actual mm of the lens is, I think, far less often than they want to simply know the FoV of the image captured as a result of the lens + camera system, so even if FoV was used more commonly, of course mm would still exist when needed.  In fact, in terms of describing the actual end result, FoV is better than mm.  As I've said before, mm is a property of the lens, but wide or tele the shot is depends on the combination of the mm of the lens and the camera it's attached to, so if phones started quoting in mm we'd really be in trouble.  At least right now we get a rough idea with "5x", meaning it's 5x more zoom than the main cam, and that's relatively easy to deal with because most main cams are roughly the same, but if they all started quoting mm, it would make comparing a huge pain because you'd have to convert to 35 mm equivalent, which requires knowing the sensor size, and at that point you've already lost most people.  Certainly they could just directly give the 35 mm equivalent themselves, but there's no point since the "5x" system is already more convenient.

 

The main issue with "5x" though is you do have to know the baseline.  It's not an absolute measure, and it also doesn't compare directly with other cameras and lenses without you doing a bit of math.

[D13H4RD]

6 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

The main issue with "5x" though is you do have to know the baseline.  It's not an absolute measure, and it also doesn't compare directly with other cameras and lenses without you doing a bit of math.

That's kind of where my entire beef lies with this metric. 

 

It needs a baseline figure to understand what it really covers. Otherwise, it's arbitrary. 

 

3x of what? 24mm or 100mm?

[Sauron]

13 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

The main issue with "5x" though is you do have to know the baseline.  It's not an absolute measure, and it also doesn't compare directly with other cameras and lenses without you doing a bit of math.

Well yes, but most smartphone cameras have a very similar focal length to each other. Users have a feel for what it means even though they don't know the exact specifics.