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On February 20 (Beijing time), HTC released HTC One , its 4.3 megapixel camera shocked users around the world. It seems to everyone that the higher the pixel of the mobile phone camera, the better the photo taking effect. Therefore, when Nokia launched the Nokia PureView 808 with 41 million pixels, it attracted great attention from the mobile phone user community. HTC is going against the current?

And today there is also news that Samsung may release a 16 million pixel camera phone Galaxy S4 Zoom this summer. It can be seen that all manufacturers are developing towards high pixel camera for mobile phones. Recently, Jessica Dolcourt, senior editor of CNET, a foreign media, published an article on smartphone camera analysis, analyzing and commenting on the "comparison" phenomenon of smartphone camera pixels, and expressed her own opinion: the higher the camera pixel, the better. The article is very detailed, Some netizens translated the article at the first time, and the editor also combined Love to play computer games This article was excerpted from the previously published article on mobile camera.

Concept map of Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom (photo source: ）

The main contents of the article are as follows:

13 million pixels became the standard camera pixels for this year's flagship models, such as Galaxy S4 , LG Optimus G Pro, and Xperia Z. Is the camera pixel higher the better? Of course, 5 million pixels is better than 2 million or 3 million pixels, but 13 million pixels may not be better than 8 million pixels.

A high-quality 5 megapixel camera is likely to have better shooting ability than a low-quality 12 megapixel camera. The shooting effect of the camera is not determined by the number of pixels, but by the quality of the entire camera module. The entire camera module contains several components, such as the size and production materials of the camera, optical sensors, image processing hardware and software.

sensor

Exmor RS smartphone camera sensor released by Sony

Most professional photographers will tell you that the most important and critical component of the optical system is the sensor, because its main function is to capture light, and there is no photo without light. Light enters the camera and then arrives sensor The sensor receives the information and translates it into an electronic signal. Then the image sensor creates an image and fine tunes the image defects such as noise. In addition, the size of the image sensor is also extremely important. Generally speaking, the larger the sensor, the larger the pixel. The larger the pixel, the more light it can absorb. More light means better photos.

The reason why the SLR digital camera's 8 megapixel camera has a better shooting effect than the same pixel smart phone is that the SLR digital camera camera has a larger sensor, which can absorb more light. More light means less noise and better dynamic range. Perhaps you have begun to realize that putting more and more pixels on the sensor may not be the best way to improve the resolution. But this does not prevent the mobile phone industry from continuing to do so.

When the cell phone pixels collectively jumped from 1 million to 2 million pixels, Jon Erensen, an analyst at Gartner, said that they would reduce the size of pixels and put more pixels while the image sensor remained unchanged. The smaller the pixel size, the more difficult it is for the light to enter the sensitive part of the sensor, and the final result is that the image resolution is not improved much, and the noise is more. The relationship between the number of pixels and the physical size of the sensor is precisely the reason why some 8 million pixel smart phone cameras have photographic effects exceeding 12, 13, or even 16 million pixels. The pursuit of thin smart phones also limits the size of sensors. Since the photo quality cannot be improved by increasing the size, it can only be increased by adding pixels.

Nokia 41 megapixel PureView technology

Nokia PureView808

The core part of PureView technology is to "condense" an image of 41 million pixels to an image of 5 million pixels, which is the "supersampling" process. In the actual process, every 8 pixels will be integrated into a "super pixel". This means that, under the same conditions, light of the same intensity will shine on the pixel points much larger than that of the general 5 million pixel sensor after entering the lens.

Nokia spent about five years before and after researching Pureview technology. In addition to using a larger 1/1.2 inch (between 1/2.3 inch and 4/3 of ordinary DC) image sensor, 808 Pureview has also made many custom algorithms on the sensor to adjust the image and eliminate noise.

HTC4.3 megapixel Ultrapixel technology

And the UltraPixel technology used by HTC One, according to the popular saying, UltraPixel is three layers of 430W pixels superimposed together, and then there is a popular saying that "shooting three layers together". However, I believe that UltraPixel technology is a PureView technology similar to the Nokia 808 technology, which condenses pixels together. The simple understanding is that through UltraPixel technology, certain pixels (1300W, I guess) are condensed to 430W pixels, that is, each ultimate pixel is composed of three ordinary pixels, so the pixels are larger and the amount of light input is more.

image processing

In addition to the size and quality of lens and sensor, image processing technology is also very important. Most modern high-end smart phone CPUs integrate the graphics processor into the chip, which can quickly render images, such as photos, videos and games.

HTC and Samsung have been working hard to develop a continuous shooting mode. With independent hardware acceleration processors, mobile phones can take a picture in an average of one tenth of a second or less. However, the disadvantage of continuous shooting is that the user does not have time to adjust the focus, which sometimes results in blurred photos. In addition, the image processor can achieve zero shutter delay. When you press the capture button, the camera can capture images.

Other factors

Now many smart phones use backlight sensors, which have good low light shooting ability because it increases light sensitivity. In the field of low light shooting, Lumia 920 is the best low light shooting phone, and the iPhone 5 is also good. In addition, the newly released HTC One is also working hard to promote the low light shooting performance of the phone. Indeed, the low light shooting capability of HTC One is far superior to that of Samsung Galaxy S4.

So far, we know that the sensor size, pixel size and image processor of the camera play a key role in picture quality. In addition, there are other factors that can affect the image quality, such as high-quality components. The total cost of all the above elements is not cheap. The cost of the camera module is only a small part of the cost of smart phones. Jon Erensen said that the price of the high-end camera module is twice that of the basic module, and the cost is about $15.

Practicality is king

mobile phone Photo function Its convenience and overall user experience are very important. The ease of opening the camera application, the speed of shooting, the special effects of photos, and the shooting mode together determine whether this is the camera users want. Now more and more mobile phone manufacturers, such as HTC, LG and Samsung, have added many additional tricks to their photography. For example, smiley face detection and selecting the best one from multiple photos. There are also front and rear cameras to take photos or record videos at the same time.

These features are interesting, but for most mobile phone users, how to share pictures quickly and easily is more important than the number of pixels. This can be seen from Twiiter and Instagram. Jon Erensen agreed with this. He said that when the user Intelligent mobile phone When uploading photos to online albums or sending photos to friends and relatives' mailboxes, the required format is 8 million pixels or even less than 5 million pixels.

In general, when we compare the specifications of smart phone camera, we need to see the number of pixels is not enough, but all the hardware and software, as well as practicality.

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