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Megapixels & Camera Phones
CEmongler writes "Consumer Electronics publication CoolTechZone.com tackles the integrated camera attachments in today's cell phones. According to the author, "The camera integration has in fact reached such a stage that any self-respecting phone would incorporate at least a megapixel camera. The cutting-edge feature to have though is the 2-megapixel variety. The question is: is it really worth the extra money you pay for it? Without getting into model-by-model comparisons, I am questioning the entire range of 2-megapixel camera phones. Are they really worth it?
For the most part, no."
Look, the number of pixels is simply not as important as the optical properties of the system. I've seen better pictures come out of a four megapixel (MP) camera with better lenses than those that come out of a seven MP camera with poorer quality optics. So, if your lenses allow clean transmission of light without chromatic aberration and little to no change to the fidelity of the image, then you will have better images than just simply bumping up the MP count through commodity CCDs.
This of course is what the phone manufacturers are doing, buying commodity CCDs because that is what is being made. It is cheaper for them to spend an extra dollar or two on a higher MP count CCD rather than putting the development dollars on improving the user experience, interface or infrastructure.
This of course is because people respond to higher MP counts in the same way they like "bling". "Ooooh shiny things!" Come-on people! Put some effort into purchasing quality products that demand a bit more work and are functional for longer periods of time instead of purchasing things that you throw away after only a short time. It shows you are more discriminating, pushes companies to produce better products, is easier on the environment and gives you better quality goods that help to improve your life rather than clutter it up with junk.
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Who really takes their digicam with them everywhere they go? I know I don't.
I did not own a digital camera up until this xmas, and it was a gift. I purchased my w800i because it's sort of a MacGyver-esk tool used for pictures, music, and communication.
Since I prefer film vs digital, I thought it would be nice to consolidate tools into one device that I have on me all the time. It has proved to be a good investment, despite the $400 investment. The premium price I paid has a lot to do with markets and such, but those aside, the phone fits its niche in my life and it's always convenient to have a camera on you at all times.
Most phones available in the US have really crappy cameras, but the w800i is an exception.
And why? Because the optics still sucks. I guess there ain't enough space for a good camera inside a phone, because the optics ain't small enough. While the ccd or cmos sensor is small enough, it needs good optics to give good quality.
Say you've got the good optics, and a decent sensor... A ccd uses more power than a cmos, and needs more light. A cmos however, gives lots of artifacts (noise) in the picture, but performs better in low-ligt conditions, and needs less power.
Ok, so we go for a ccd. Then we need a good flash, which takes even more power. Power which has to come from a capacitor since a battery can't deliver high enough voltage and enough current fast enough. A capacitor and flash takes up space.
In short, if we want small phones, we won't get decent image quality. If we can accept a phone twice as big as the ones we have, we can just bundle together a normal compact camera and a phone...
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
The whole "cameras in cell phones" craze is starting to cause some problems for me. Many DoD installations do not let you take camera phones onsite. This has the effect of severely limiting my cell phone choices, so that I'm stuck with "crackberry" or "super cheap", neither of which is terribly appealing. What happened to a nice, mid-range phone with no camera? It's not even that I don't like a camera integrated into it - it's just not an option for me. This insanity is even starting to creep into PDA phones - witness the Treo 650's digital camera, for instance.
It's gotten to the point where I'm thinking of switching from Sprint to Nextel, just because Nextel's phones actually seem more reasonable for my (and my wife's) usage. Interestingly, the Sprint rep I spoke with said I could do this, and they even had a group for going from Sprint -> Nextel!
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
You have any idea how hard it is getting to find a good phone with all the features you want.. and NOT have a camera attached to it? You almost have to go to Nextel as they seem to be about the only cell company that doesn't have every phone be camera enabled.
I ended up having to get a camera phone just so I could have some of the features I wanted (mainly bluetooth) and found a case that fits the phone that covers over the camera eye. Good enough to get past the rent-a-cop security.
Dammit, I've already got a phone (an old Nokia candybar model that has a wonderful interface and battery life and no stupid camera). Any self-respecting phone should be just a phone. If I want to take along my camera, I'll do so.
I'm hoping my current phone doesn't break so I don't have to involuntarily "upgrade" to the next model which has countless features I don't want and an interface whose designers I want to reciprocally torture by redesigning their TV so that changing channels requires multiple button presses in even the most common case. Gah *head explodes*.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
k750 from opening lid to photo can be done in 6 or 7 seconds, not 15 or 30 as this piece of well informed journalism states.
Camera phones are fast replacing a number of regular phones
Are they? The "article" quotes no source and no statistics for this claim. How can anyone be sure?
What does TFA mean by "fast"?
Not sure about it in the US, but in Germany I get a new cellphone every year at least if you make ~150 a month for the provider. I can choose from about 80 models and I pay nothing for the latest model.
You might argue that I pay the phone via my monthly bill, but given the competition I don't think it's true anymore. Basically the phone is pretty much a giveaway for staying with the same provider.
Cams in mobiles are pretty handy btw. I use it to record information that I would otherwise forget, stuff like the settings of my distortion pedal for my guitar and the like.
He says he took only 20 pictures in 3 months with his 2 mp camera phone. Why the hell is he reviewing cameraphones then?
I probably take 20 pics per week on mine, I send them to friends and family straight from the phone, sometimes I post things on my family's website from it. I'll never get a phone without a camera.
Couple of things - first off I have a 4MP compact digital camera and a 2MP (Sony K750i) camera phone.
.5 Gb Memory Stick Pro Duo, no flash (but you can buy one)
The camera comes with me to 'occasions' - places where I know I'm going to take photos (outings, birthdays, family stuff, etc) - it has a real optical zoom, 1Gb Sd card and flash.
My phone is with me all the time and so I can take photos of things that catch my eye - landscapes, unexpected events, something fun that happens in the pub - it has only a digital zoom,
And, you know, for outdoor, non-zoomed stuff, the results a re about the same. I'm not a camera buff, nor a pro and I think that is the point - to those of us that just want a memory recording device that will adequately capture an event most phones are up to the task.
And so back to the point of my title - that is certainly my experience IN THE UK and EUROPE - having spent sopme time in the US they are WAY behind when it comes to phone tech - seems to be the result of a bad market and provder model. Anyway - phones in the UK and Europe are certainly up to being useful, usually free with a contract and do the job. I wish more article writers would remember or explicitly state US != World
The problem with the rat race is, even if you win, you're still a rat!
Having a 2 megapixel camera is pretty pointless if you only use it to put a picture of your partner on the phone's main screen, or to send multimedia messages (which reduces the quality to something like VGA quality).
However if you can get the image from the phone to an internet site like Flickr, TextAmerica, Kodak, &c, then it is worth having a 2 megapixel image, just like it's worth having a decent amount of megapixels for your regular digital camera. The higher quality is useful for displaying on a PC, or for printing the photo, and so on.
Unfortunately it's very hard to get your pictures from your phone to the internet. Email and WAP uploaders have proved not good enough for this task, and hardly anyone does this.
A new generation of software is emerging on phones though. Services like ShoZu allow you to upload full quality images from your phone to sites like Flickr, TextAmerica, &c, in a very simple manner, and also allow editing of titles, descriptions and even tags both before and after upload. With this sort of service on your phone it really is worth having a decent camera in your phone.
I dont care if you can get a 30 megapixel phone, It's images will suck.
The only way they can get lenses in these things is to either use the ceramic lenses or tiny plastic lenses at fixed focus and the image will stink no matter what.
I have an old Fuji S1 3 megapixel digiatal camera in my closet that will kick the crap out of the highest megapixel point and shoot on the market today simply because I can plop a $1000.00 lens on it.
90% of the image is in the optics and ALL cameraphones have crappy optics simply because there is no room for the real stuff.
Unless people want to put a SLR up to their head to talk Cameraphones will always stink at photo's.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
One of the black-clad trainers arrived to investigate my suspicious phone answering shortly thereafter. Had to scroll him through my few snaps to show him nothing was amiss. Still, he kept my phone safely behind the counter until I was ready to go. Reclaiming the phone later was plenty embarrassing.
(Personally I would prefer a ban on hanging out naked to shave out of some exhibitionistic impulse, but that's harder to define than "cell phone camera.")
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I just want a phone with a gigabyte of flash memory and bluetooth capability to be able to mount as a drive and store data on.
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We used to use a regular digital camera, and just keep one in each conference room. But they kept growing legs, getting misplaced, needing batteries, or just malfunctioning. Cameras that are owned by individuals have the advantage that the individual actually takes care of the thing, so it is much more likely to be available and work when it is needed.
The key to any tool is to use it appropriately. A camera can be misused, such as to transmit confidential material to a competitor. A camera can also be very useful, to record and communicate drawings within the company.
Banning cameras does not protect the confidential information, unless the organization also bans email, removable disks, printers, paper, and briefcases. Only two things are actually accomplished by banning any specific tool: It makes the organization less productive; And it tells the people that they are not trusted. Both effects are counter-productive.
It's about EASY. I have a camera phone. It was free with my contract. It has a 2MP camera. I take it with me everywhere because it's my phone, so if I see something I want to snap, I can. Camera phones are not for people that want artistic or even "good" pictures. What they take is memories and reminders, things otherwise forgotten, not art. So get off your damn high horse. Of course it would be great if they managed to fit a DSLR quality camera system inside a phone. FOr now they can't and the products are STILL great, and within the budget of most people here in the UK.
I have to say I feel it was entirely worth it.
Firstly i'm not coming on to defend my purchase. To be honest the phone was free anyway on a contract upgrade I needed to make so I thought i'd go for it.
The phone is a Nokia N70 and, for all of its foibles (including the incredibly annoying slide open camera activation / lens protection cover) the camera stands out as a superb product.
I'd love to link to an image i've taken from it but fear the slashdot effect would ruin me on hosting charges.. but under the right conditions (ie NOT night time) the camera returns impressive pictures. Yes, in low light it makes everything look incredibly washed out - yes the delay is enormous on taking a picture - but in good average daylight conditions pictures come back looking almost as good as those of my old 2MP Olympus point and shoot which i've since retired.
One of the 'points' of camera phones for me was just having a camera with you at all times in case something unusual happened - be that a car accident (and you need to record photographic evidence of the scene), a good sunset, etc - the increase in MP allows you to do this more and more - previous generations meant that the picture was only 640x480 or so and this didn't really allow you to get the whole picture across!
Cheers.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Not going to happen.
;) It also lets me add the GPS coordinates to any picture that is taken with the built in camera, and will plot it on a map for me online if I wish.
Almost every cellular phone company that is not based in Japan competes with the ones who are.
I have seen 2 models of cellular phone here in Japan without a camera built in. Both of those models are meant for "old people". It's simply a keypad with an lcd display so you can double czech the number you are calling. Keys are big for people who have a hard time pushing these tiny buttons. Even the latest phones designed for elementary school children have cameras and gps built into them.
On the other hand, some of the latest models here in Japan come with 4 megapixel cameras built in.
I am of the mind, however, that a phone should be exactly that. Something to call others with. A way to take calls when I am not in the office. Don't get me wrong. I like my current phone (W21S) but I never use any of the features of it. I call people. People call me. What use have I for the GPS, TV tuner, Radio, Java, QR Code reader, and camera that are built in? The camera does come in handy sometimes, for those spontaneous shots or situations, but other than that, I don't need the other features. Hell, I'm thinking of re-activating my "old" lcd only phone mostly because of it's "lack" of features.
Here in Japan, we simply cannot buy phones without most of these features. They don't exist.
I DO like the GPS features though. For example. I go to the cell phone shop and pick myself up a phone with a GPS. Then, I pick up some phones for the kids (and wife). Those phones will transmit their GPS coordinates to my phone when I request to know the other phone's locations. If the "child" phones are not within GPS range (due to the kids being in school or on the bus or whatnot), then I will get approximations on where they are based on triangulation of the standby signal they generate when in contact with 3 or more cellular towers. All in all, a good way to keep track of those teenagers' whereabouts
Get used to the idea that cell phones will have cameras built into them. If you don't like that, use land lines.
Sorry.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Image quality is limited by optics and by the size (overall size -- in millimeters) of the sensor. With trashy optics and a tiny sensor, it doesn't matter how many (ever tinier) pixels one jams onto that sensor; the image quality just won't be there.
I advise people who want a point and shoot (which has a much bigger sensor than a cell phone, but much smaller than an SLR) to not bother with more than 3 megapixels or so. There are some expensive "advanced" non-SLR digital cameras that have sensors comparable to SLR sensors, but most point and shoot cameras have sensors no more than 1/2" on the diagonal. Most digital SLR's are about 1.2" diagonal, and 35 mm SLR's (such as film cameras and the EOS 5D and 1Ds digital cameras) are a bit less than 2" on the diagonal.
The basic issue here is the pixel size, which (along with lens speed) controls how much light the pixel can gather. The larger the pixel, the more light it can gather and the less noise it will have. There's also the wavelength of light to consider; as the pixel gets smaller, the ability to resolve between neighboring pixels becomes less.
The sweet spot for digital SLR's with APS-C sensors with 1.5 or 1.6 cropping factors (such as the low to midrange Canon and Nikon cameras) seems to be about 8-10 megapixels. Canon's latest offering (the 30D) stayed at 8 MP. The Nikon D200 is 10 megapixels, but it's noisier at high ISO settings than the 20D/30D. This would suggest that full-frame (35 mm) digital SLR's won't get much above 20 megapixels (based on pixel size), and you'll have to go to medium format to get much more than that. If the Foveon sensor ever gets perfected the marketing numbers will triple (since each position would have a sensor for each color), but the grid won't change.
It's possible to reduce noise by lowering the effective ISO (in other words, allowing more light into the sensor by requiring longer exposures). So while the EOS 20D has excellent noise performace even at ISO 800, a typical point and shoot (with its tiny sensor) will be very noisy above ISO 100 or 200.
Finally, there's the matter of the lens. My own tests suggest that I only get the full 8 megapixel resolution out of the 20D if I use a good lens (such as the 85 f/1.8 or 200 f/2.8 prime lenses), well stopped down and very carefully focused, and otherwise in good conditions (on a tripod or with a very short exposure). I recently took a shot at sunset with a 1 second exposure at f/16 with my 200 mm lens and there was very sharp single pixel detail. Even slight blur will very quickly reduce the useful pixel count; if it's blurred to the extent that there's no useful detail at less than 2 pixel resolution, you're effectively at the 2 megapixel level.
So what does all of this mean? Camera phones have tiny sensors, with cheap lenses, and can't have long exposures. However many pixels the sensor may have, I'd be surprised if the effective resolution of the output is more than a few hundred thousand pixels.
obligitory onion reference
The Camera-Phone
Death and danger are my various breads and various butters.
2-megapixel is "cutting edge"? Last time I made a post about Japanese cell phones being better than the ones in the West, I got a bunch of replies telling me that "I was wrong", "if they're better, why haven't they taken over the market" and so on.
But, I haven't lived in North America for a while, so I honestly don't know. Is 2-megapixel "cutting edge"? Is that how pathetic cameras are in the West? My current 3G Japanese cell phone is by no means top of the line (it cost less than one American cent, and came with no commitment--I was already a subscriber when I bought it) and it still has a 2-megapixel camera (including video, digital zoom, barcode reader), flashlight (that doubles as the camera's flash), schedule, calculator, currency converter, alarm clock, MP3 player, Bluetooth interface, I can surf the web, use it as a television remote control, check train schedules, play video games, interface with my television, sing karaoke on it, and on and on and on. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of stuff. And NO, the battery life for modern Japanese phones isn't as crappy as people say it is.
I've actually moved away from Japan, so I'm not sure, but I imagine that all self-respecting Japanese phone companies have moved away from 1-megapixel phones completely, and are just selling their existing stocks to bargain hunters and the elderly. After all, a cell phone is an absolute necessity in Japan. Even octogenarians have them. I've heard that in Japan there are 3 cell phones for every 2 people.
The only phones that DON'T have a camera are made for niche markets. For example, one of my friends works at a Japanese bank, and she's not allowed to bring a camera of any kind to work, even if it's just a cell phone camera. So she had to buy one without a camera in it. I imagine she had a hard time finding it; that's the only phone I've ever seen in Japan without a decent camera in it.
Of course megapixels don't mean much without the optics to match. Compare these two images, both taken at 640x480. Spotting the photo taken on the Treo isn't hard...
... For me personally I'm pretty happy with the 640x480 fixed lens no-flash cam on my P800. I have a 5mp Minolta Dimage A1 that gets _amazing_ results, but it's also big and bringing it along means that I'm on a photography 'mission'.
The phone cam is good for the spontaneous shot. Mine is pretty fast to load the camera program (and has a dedicated cam button) and I can whip out the phone and shoot a pic within 3 secs. The resolution is low when compared to a computer monitor, but when viewed on a standard TV the resolution is great. There's definitely noise but no more so than a DV pause on S-Video. Also, the quality of the 'print' is not the point, it's the quality of the moment captured.
The cam is no substitute for a real cam of course, but for camblogging, spontaneity, and even real-life stuff like car accidents or 'citizen reporting' it's fine.
Oh, and real-life camphone save.. my old 2mp Elph died after I landed in Belgium for a 2-week vacation, I ended up using my camphone to document my trip to Normandy, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Waterloo. As long as I had adequate daylight it worked pretty darned well IMHO. A side benefit was that I could get away with taking snaps in the Van Gogh museum without attracting unwanted attention (they prohibit cameras there) as well as at other museums on that trip (Louvre, Pompidou Ctr, Rijksmuseum, etc). And with the 128MB memory stick duo I get at least 250 snaps...
Us photographers have already had this argument dozens of times over dSLR vs. pocket camera (and a phone camera is the ultimate pocket camera). The problem with non-dSLRs is not the MP, nor is it necessarily the optics. The limiting factor is the chip size. No tiny camera phone is going to achieve a low-noise image because the photosites on the sensor are packed so close together. These cameras will never be serious for picture taking until technology provides a high-dynamic range, noise-free image from a tiny sensor.
Having said that, the best camera is the one you have with you. What do I use my camera phone for? When I park in a parking lot next to a jerk (someone who's askew in their spot, over the line, etc), I snap a picture that includes their license plate, make/model, and the horribleness of their parking job. If there's a ding in my door when I get back, they're busted! If I ever get caught snapping by the jerk, I'll just tell him I run a website called inconsideratebuttholes.com and I'm thinking of making him the feature of the day.
(I've often thought about leaving such parkers a note--something along the lines of, "Your parking job is inconsiderate and I hope you'll think about this next time you leave the house"--using nothing, of course, but my ignition key and their hood.)
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
* It's not about the number of pixels, it's about the lense and camera design
* I just want a PHONE that is a PHONE goddammit
* blah blah blah
For those who believe humans have free will, slashdot provides plenty of evidence to the contrary. I think I've seen these same posts modded up in a dozen different stories about camera phones. It reminds of the dilbert cartoon where the most overused phrase is how "swimming is the best form of exercise".
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
My buddy told me about this company in Japan called ColorZip. In their own words...
"We started Colorzip because we believe that ColorCodeTM technology is the most exciting mobile content delivery and management system ever imagined. It is the only technology in the world that allows any device with a CCD/CMOS camera and an Internet connection to read color-coded images and instantly download music, video and data from a server."
See http://www.colorzip.co.jp/
They apparently already have a beta working on many mobile phone's Java App.