[Trickortreat]

If these are really images made with new Nokia 9, call me highly impressed:

Feast your eyes on these Nokia 9 PureView camera samples - GSMArena.com news

seems that mobile phones will start chipping off market share even of bigger sensors really soon...

[MarkJerling]

Interesting. Those 5 cameras seem to do a good job creating an image. But, it's still a phone and I won't be giving up my DSLR for a phone.

Not a bad phone though.

[BigMackCam]

Those do look rather good for a smartphone camera.

But the effects of smoothing, sharpening and other heavy image processing are pretty strong and rather obvious if you look more closely. On the first image (a table of food), zoom in and look at the brick work in the top left of the image - it looks like it has been drawn or painted rather than photographed. Now move to the right hand side of the image and look at the text on the card that reads "PRESERVED POTATO" with its heavy, large radius sharpening. And see how the wood grain in the table has been completely smoothed, so only the larger details are visible?

I'm sure folks will be able to take some wonderful shots with this smartphone, and for many it may be "good enough"... but the comparison to larger sensors doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. The image quality we take for granted with our DSLRs simply isn't possible with a tiny sensor, no matter how many processing tricks are employed.

Still, all things considered, this is pretty impressive for a phone

[Trickortreat]

hmmm... artifacts might be from overprocessing or just the default OOP (out of phone ) JPG settings.
I'll keep an eye on RAWs and see what can be done with those as the merged images from all cameras end up into single final RAW.
Might end like a really good tool for all kind of photography where tripod and base ISO are only things to concern about.
Anyway - still hope real camera manufacturers will start implementing some kind of computational photography algorithms sooner than later

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Last edited by Trickortreat; 02-25-2019 at 05:59 AM.

[ne!]

I think “computational photography algorithms” are unnecessary if you have amazing glass and a big terrific sensor, how would it benefit a K-1 and FA77?

[victormeldrew]

To a lot of people...most actually...the content and meaning behind an image outweighs mere flim flam like the device used or technical details like sharpness, artifacts and algorithms. Most people don't care one jot about that stuff. Whether it is a personal memory, a journalistic record or an artistic endeavour, these images are more than adequate to serve the purpose, and being a phone makes them all the more likely to have been taken in the first place, where a DSLR might have been left at home or still in the store.


Of course they will never satisfy those who believe the purpose of photography is to satisfy their desire for technical perfection when pored over at a pixel scale...but those people are not the audience of the vast majorty of photography. Yes, this is another step towards a phone being perfectly suited to the images created by 99.9% of photographers, and that is going to impact on the amateur and enthusiast market greatly. Will they replace professional equipment for professional photographers...no (at least not in the foreseeable future), but that market is far too small to support the current flock of manufacturers, so there will eventually be casualties.

The biggest issue will be momentum in the market. Once high quality phone cameras are commonplace and more keen amateurs think of buying a better phone rather than an enthusiast camera, this will drive the market further and further away from cameras, and flood the coffers with cash for R&D into miniature sensors and lenses and software. The next generation will be painful for manufacturers of entry-level cameras...which is probably why we're seeing a slew of FF and MF cameras right now, as manufacturers attempt to proof themselves against losing the entire small format market.

[Winder]

If these are really images made with new Nokia 9, call me highly impressed:

Feast your eyes on these Nokia 9 PureView camera samples - GSMArena.com news

seems that mobile phones will start chipping off market share even of bigger sensors really soon...

Need to see how they print at A3+.

[ZombieArmy]

but the comparison to larger sensors doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.

Where phone cameras will always fall short is not the sensor size, it's the lens form factor. You can't do much when your lens has to be tiny and flush to the back of a phone these days. You can't change the laws of physics.

I guarantee the raws don't hold up to even a Q, and that most certainly has a smaller sensor than this phone.

[The Squirrel Mafia]

All I can say is this. The images that I see from that phone camera look pretty decent. I can guarantee you that the grand majority of consumers will also think that those phone images look good enough for them. Phone cameras that use image computations are only going to get better & better. Not only that. Phones are going to get more intuitively simple. There are far more people that don't want to deal with the "hassle" of using a traditional camera, than those of us that do. There are far more people that don't know what a RAW file is, than those of us that do. I'm pretty sure that almost all of those consumers will want nothing to do with a RAW file once they see that post processing is involved to get a final image. They just want to point, shoot, get the image, & share it instantly. There are currently far more phone shooters than there are traditional camera shooters & phone shooters are growing more & more. A lot of people do not want to deal with figuring out the aperture, shutter speed, & ISO triangle. I much prefer using a camera with a lens over a phone camera any day, but the grand majority of phone consumers don't want to. As it is, there are already enough traditional camera shooters that are perfectly fine with the out of camera jpegs & don't want to deal with RAW files themselves.

Ponder on all that for a second........

[Trickortreat]

I think “computational photography algorithms” are unnecessary if you have amazing glass and a big terrific sensor, how would it benefit a K-1 and FA77?

even the best sensor and best lens in the world are nowhere near what your eyes can see. with computational photography they just might get there or even beyond...

I guarantee the raws don't hold up to even a Q, and that most certainly has a smaller sensor than this phone.

a lot of phones are well past the capabilities of Q

[reh321]

Where phone cameras will always fall short is not the sensor size, it's the lens form factor. You can't do much when your lens has to be tiny and flush to the back of a phone these days. You can't change the laws of physics.

I guarantee the raws don't hold up to even a Q, and that most certainly has a smaller sensor than this phone.

I'm having trouble finding anyone who is willing to tell me sensor size for the Nokia 9's cameras - yes cameras; everyone is fascinated by the fact that it has 5 essentially identical cameras {3 are B&W} - then the processor churns away to create a single image from all that data.

[ZombieArmy]

a lot of phones are well past the capabilities of Q

You have evidence I presume?

[BigMackCam]

Anyway - still hope real camera manufacturers will start implementing some kind of computational photography algorithms sooner than later

even the best sensor and best lens in the world are nowhere near what your eyes can see. with computational photography they just might get there or even beyond...

Each to his or her own, I guess...

I can see the potential power of computational photography in various applications, and some uses for it... but it doesn't hold any attraction for me in terms of my photographic hobby. I'm not interested in having the camera emulate what my eye sees (or what I think it sees) through computational algorithms. I want to record how a lens captures the scene I've observed and composed. To me, there's so much character in each lens, and that adds something unique to every photo I take, warts and all. Of course, computational photography could potentially emulate the output from those lenses to some degree, but it would never be precisely the same as shooting with the original lens on a particular film or sensor format.

I used to play guitar a lot. Less so these days, but I still own a few nice instruments. The most unusual of those is a Line6 Variax Acoustic - actually a solid-bodied electric guitar (shaped like an acoustic) with an under-bridge pickup and electronic sound modelling that lets the player emulate the sounds of different acoustic guitar bodies and microphone / pickup positions. With simple adjustments, I can get a sound quite similar to a large-bodied Gibson J-200 or smaller 000-sized Martin, and anything in-between. It's clever, and has its uses for live work. But it's not nearly the same thing as playing a real Gibson or Martin acoustic, mic'd up with proper instrumental amplification microphones. The guitar doesn't feel the same. The player's experience and connection with the guitar is completely different... easier, in many respects, but bland. And while the broad sound is generally convincing in a mix, all the little nuances of the real thing - nuances that make such a difference - are missing, or lost in generalisation. Similarly, when playing electric guitars, I've used rack-mounted and software-based signal processors that try to emulate the sound of a particular guitar, amplifier, speaker and environmental combination. They're great fun, and they can be very useful - but they don't perfectly reproduce those conditions by any means. Instead, they give a broad approximation that's missing all the wonderful nuances of the real thing.

My concern with computational photography is that, however clever it may be, it would be computing and generating significant aspects of my photographs rather than simply capturing, as faithfully as possible, the output of a real lens and film or sensor combination. For some folks, I'm sure that's fine, but it would take much of the romance and validity out of the photographic process for me. And I wouldn't feel like I was wholly responsible for my photographs

[Trickortreat]

You have evidence I presume?

There are enough samples on the internet. I dont own a Q.

[mee]

Details still look mushy but then oversharpened. Like an oil painting that was just run through a high grit sander.