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True Color in Real Time: The Challenge of Mobile Imaging
rocannon writes "A mobile phone with a color display and built-in camera - it's the quintessential info-imaging tool. But communicating accurate color at high-speed data rates and rendering color on displays that do not deliver even standard screen color rendition are still challenging. Kodak explains why photo and color science are as important as clock speeds and data rates in this expanding market."
Have a look at 10 years old pictures or printouts. Especially those exhibited to light. Make that 10 months for printouts.
Digital images aren't distorted, they just don't fit our colour perception. (AFAIK, among others, more a logarithmic scale in contrast to the linear used in digital images)
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Not exactly... many films lean towards more green or red, and there are a lot more variables involved than the light source. Differences in developing can also make a very noticable difference in colour. Even so-called black and white images often have a green, blue or reddish cast to them. (I stare at photos all day at my job, professional and not.) The age and quality of the developing fluids, etc, all factor in. As someone who photographs a lot of artwork, I probably see this a bit more often than a lot of people. I usually have to take anywhere from 3-6 photos to get one that looks suitably like the original artwork. I often still have to digitally alter them once they're scanned, anyway. So as far as colour is concerned, I don't think the quality is any better between analog and digital, esp. for the average person (myself included) who doesn't do their own developing and doesn't have much more than a point-and-click knowledge of cameras.
I do agree with you that analog is still currently superior to digital, but that's mostly to do with the fact that the really impressive digital cameras are way beyond the price range of most people, and the less expensive ones leave enough to be desired that film still has the advantage.
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So they solve data rates, they solve porcessor speed, they solve image quality - now I can really quickly download high quality images for the 10 minutes my battery lasts!
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It's all more videophone sillyness. Very low res, no focus, bad optics, no imaging options, 14kbit on most lines outside of huge cities, what's the point? I can take and email much nicer photos just fine with iPhoto and a real camera. This video cell phone thing is yet another attempt to catch star eyed gadgeteers in a trap of mediocrity for the sake of modularity. "The essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form?" Concentrated, maybe. Pure? Not half.
This is almost as dumb as "wireless web." WML sucks, guys. It's even more confusing that the regular web's interface, and 40% of people don't understand that. Combine it with the size limit on WML pages (1400 bytes is the max through tmobile's gateway, and the goddamn XML headers take up 100. Hell, this post wouldn't sneak in under 1300 characters!) and you've got a confusing, bland interface with no real data. Hardly the killer app that's going to change the world.
Give me a cell phone with no dumb games, a nice address book, sizable buttons, a clean look with no precarious plastic, plug & play USB interface that works with mac/linux/palm/pocketpc, and a phone plan that doesn't try to put its tongue in my ear every time I do something interesting and you'll have solved the cell phone puzzle. I'll gladly give you my $40 per month.
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My wife has used a mobile webcam I built from a tablet computer, a USB microcam, using CDPD communications.
One of the biggest problems we found was battery power, always a problems with computers, but enhanced due to the power sucked by the webcam (lots of pixels to move to the computer at high bandwidth, even if they are just to be compressed using JPEG), and the power sucked by CDPD transmission. Of course, the cam was sending out an image every 5 minutes or so, and the camera was "always on."
I think the naysayers on the camera wireless phones are totally wrong. I don't expect everyone to purchase a camera phone, but I think a lot of people (especially young people and several business niches) will. It's really fun!
The uses of a camera phone do not intersect much with a high-quality megapixel digital camera used for "archival quality" pictures. PhoneCams will be used much more for quick little shots where quality matters little...a bunch of friends at a bar (which will totally change Mardi Gras!), to show a potential purchase while shopping, to show a map with directions, to see if you like the night club, or a "hey I'm in Vegas, look" call while travelling.