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Samsung Producing 5 Megapixel Camera Phone
Shippy writes "Straight from Yahoo News on the other side of the pond comes a story about Samsung's latest creation: a five-megapixel camera phone. This is pretty cool considering it's a pretty big jump from the camera phones that are currently available (many max out around 1.5 megapixels). It's expected to be available by the end of the year, but only in South Korea. I doubt it'll take long for a domestic carrier to pick up on this hot new toy." Other readers submitted a closeup picture and the company press release.
...has a charge-coupled device camera and high-sensitivity flash which allow users to take high-quality pictures. It can also function as a camcorder.
One of the biggest problems of camera phones is poor flash (if the phone has one AT ALL).
Until phone manufacturers make phones with a good quality Xenon strobe flash, 5 MP still doesn't mean anything if the lighting conditions stink. (See this month's issue of PC World for a little blurb on possible developments of Xenon strobe flashes in camera phones.)
Getting philosophical on Thursday morning: At what point does it cease to be a Camera Phone, and become a Phone Camera? 5 megapixels seems like a good place to start. You could definitely use this as your "main" digital camera, and occasionally use the phone functionality, as needed.
For people like me who rarely use a cell phone, and don't really want one, a Phone Camera might be the ideal solution!
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That's starting to look more like a camera with a phone builtin than the other way around. It looks rather big. And it's not really a pretty design either.
The definition of megapixel is slippery. Sometimes these companies allow for interpolation for some reason (they are liars!). Some camera, such as the Foveon, only have 3.1 megapixels but behave like a much higher megapixel camera. This one I can't tell about what is the reality.
You can get the pictures off the damn thing.
I recently got myself a Motorola v220. Got a cute little 640x480 camera on it. Only problem is the only way to get the photos from the phone to my computer [or any other storage] is to either buy the 70$ software from motorola [that should have come with the phone] and run windows [something else I don't do] or pay 5 cents per kilobyte to email myself the picture.
So 5M pixel camera is likely to make "slightly larger" files. If I want to pay a couple of bucks to get each photo off the camera this might be a good idea.
Best thing they can do is make the thing act like a usb-disk to get maximum portability.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
There is a problem with everyone having cameras at all times (on their phones): everything, EVERYTHING becomes a photo moment, with the requisite posing, commentary, and "destruction" of the real connection with whatever you were trying to experience.
Everywhere I go (here in Tokyo), everyone takes pictures of everything, all the time. This turns a simple lunch, night out with drinks, or my wedding party into an extended photo shoot, with everyone taking turns shooting a group photo with their mobile phone/camera. It never occurs to anyone there is this thing called the Internet through which they could share one nice picture among else. *sigh*.
5M pixel cameras will only worsen this problem-- all of those people who (before) only took quick stupid shots because they knew the quality was poor will (now) switch to shooting entire photo albums from the minutae of their sardine-packed train commutes.
There are phones here with TVs in them, but my favorite is the karaoke phone
davejenkins.com |
The rush to higher density CCD's is insane.. but it's an easy number people seem to be able to understand. The optical lenses used are often much more important once you go beyond a certain threshold, e.g. 3-4MP. What's next, a 8MP camera phone? Why?
Camera phones have a limited ability to hold focusing and zoom lenses, and the sooner people understand this the better.
..don't panic
The end of the article says this:
"South Korea's top mobile carrier, SK Telecom, said it would introduce 10-megapixel camera phones produced by Samsung by the end of this year." If this isn't a mistake then this is quite a staggering rate of change in camera phones.
Tell me - if you put a black panel against white wall and snap it in the focus - how many _pixels_ would the border be? 10? 20? 100?
BTW - the simple rule is that you need only 1 MP per 10 sq.in. of print for _critically_ sharp images, i.e. those that best of modern printing equipment can realistically produce. For printing in your photolab (moreso inkjet) you can divide that by 4 safely. The question is that all those MPs from the camera are somewhat fake, see above.
PS: What's the matrix size of that phone, anyway?
Given the prevalence of camera phones in Japan, does anyone there try to ban their use in places like washrooms, change rooms, movie theatres, etc? Is it even possible to get a "pure" cellphone (no camera or fancy extras) in Japan these days?
Eric
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Ya know, with 5mp, suddenly a decent-looking digital zoom (when the output stays 640x480) becomes possible. You can't zoom optically in something this small, but you sure can digizoom it. Even with cheesy optics, that's got to be a selling point.
After all, it'll be a while before we regularly trade 2Mb photos with our pals on their cellphones with 120x240 screens.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music