Tag Archives: computational photography

OPPO Find X7 Ultra with four main cameras challenges the status quo

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Smartphones have long been regarded to be ringing the death knell of digital cameras, but that has mostly been hyperbole. Sure, the old point-and-click cameras may have finally met their match, but professional-grade shooters like DSLRs will hardly feel threatened. While smartphones have quite a number of desirable features like advanced computational photography and filters, dedicated cameras win in the sheer raw power of their optics. That’s especially true since they can easily switch out lenses as they need to while keeping the same powerful sensor. Since that’s nearly impossible with smartphones, the OPPO Find X7 Ultra has made the bold decision to carry the world’s first Quad Main Camera system that’s poised to blow the competition out of the water and deliver stunning photos at every click.

Designer: OPPO

Smartphones have started using more than one camera to make up for the inability to switch lenses. Each camera used a different lens with a different focal point, but because of limitations in past technologies and design, phone manufacturers were forced to make do with different sizes of sensors to fit inside a smartphone’s cramped space. This meant that ultra-wide or telephoto cameras would have significantly different output qualities from the main camera, sometimes better, more often worse. Parity between these cameras is exactly what OPPO has been trying to deliver in the past generations, culminating in what is probably the most advanced smartphone camera system in the market to date.

The OPPO Find X7 Ultra boasts not only a quad camera system but a Quad Main camera system. Although they differ slightly in terms of specific specs, all four use a 50MP sensor, lead by the new Sony LYT-900, the latest generation of that coveted 1-inch sensor. What this practically means is that there is no loss of quality and no disconcerting jitter when switching between wide, ultra-wide, 3x zoom, and 6x zoom cameras. And yes, the phone has two optical zoom telephoto cameras, both of them with periscope-style lenses. With this unprecedented combination, OPPO is able to seamlessly cover a wide range of focal points, from 14mm to 135mm to even 270mm as if it were changing DSLR lenses on the fly.

Combined with this impressive hardware is OPPO’s new HyperTone Image Engine, designed to combat the unnatural colors, exposure, and sharpening that most computation photography software produces on smartphones today. Along with the famed Hasselblad Portrait Mode that accurately emulates four iconic Hasselblad cameras, you are promised to get breath-taking and natural-looking images, as if they were taken with a professional DSLR or mirrorless camera. And if you’re the type to really get into the nitty-gritty of camera settings, the Hasselblad Master Mode upgrades the typical Pro Mode to add even more fine-grained control over image quality.

Despite all the camera hardware packed inside, not to mention the latest and greatest components available in the smartphone industry to date, the OPPO Find X7 Ultra remains slim, sleek, and stylish, belying its powerful capabilities. The two-tone design of the previous Find X6 generation returns with a bit more character this time, wrapping around the distinctive camera circle more loosely. Available in Ocean Blue, Sepia Brown, and Tailored Black, the OPPO Find X7 Ultra marries head-turning elegance and groundbreaking performance in a package that’s sure to give shutterbugs something to talk about.

The post OPPO Find X7 Ultra with four main cameras challenges the status quo first appeared on Yanko Design.

This insane modular camera rig lets you mount hexagonal cameras for higher-resolution 3D video capture

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The RayShaper BeeHive works on principles of computational photography/videography… something your smartphone already does but on a much bigger, more powerful scale.

A winner of the Red Dot Product Design Award, the RayShaper BeeHive is trying to reinvent professional photography/cinematography by borrowing a clever trick from the most popular camera in the world – the one in your pocket. You see, as smartphones were struggling to compete over who could build a bigger, better camera, someone figured out that the secret to better photography was to just introduce multiple cameras. Famously, the iPhone X’s dual-lens setup kickstarted the trend of using two cameras to handle the workload of one single powerful camera. One lens captured color detail, the other focused on black and white detail, and working just like the rods and cones in your eyes do, both those photos were composited together to make one single image that was vastly better than what a single camera lens could do. In fact, two lenses could help the smartphone identify depth too, allowing the iPhone to click ‘Portrait Mode’ photos – a trend that really picked up back in 2017.

RayShaper’s cameras follow the same principle. Their unique hexagonal shape allows you to create a ‘honeycomb’ of multiple cameras snapped together. This array has two main benefits – firstly, the slightly offset cameras allow you to capture a wider shot without using a wider lens, and while provide spatial resolutions of over 1 billion pixels at 120fps. Secondly, the offset cameras allow you to capture depth information too, and even perform spatial recordings with 6 degrees-of-freedom (6 DoF) that are necessary for VR headsets. “Compared with ultra-high-resolution and light field camera systems currently on the market that use legacy architectures, BeeHive provides higher performance at a much cheaper cost”, say the folks at RayShaper. The modules allow you to add or subtract lenses on the fly, and give you the power to build up your camera setup without necessarily needing to upgrade by buying the newest cameras. Just add a few more modules and you’ve got a camera rig that’s much more powerful!

The RayShaper BeeHive is a winner of the Red Dot Product Design Award for the year 2020.

These smartphone camera lenses bridge the gap between the iPhone and DSLR

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Imagine if the words “Shot On An iPhone” weren’t a distinction. What if the iPhone was just as powerful as a DSLR, so those words “Shot On An iPhone” were more of an assumption than an achievement. Well, in order to be compared to a DSLR, you’d need a powerful sensor and interchangeable lenses… and the iPhone definitely has one of those.

Although the iPhone DOES come with multiple camera lenses, it’s worth noting that only one of them is really the primary, versatile camera, while the others (the Wide Angle and the Telephoto) are more specific in their function. The +Lens modular system by Shawn Wang relies on empowering the primary camera with add-on lenses – much like the way you snap lenses onto your DSLR. Unlike most smartphone camera-lenses, Wang’s +Lens system is both exhaustive and powerful. The system consists of four add-on lenses that come in a nice, AirPods-case-shaped box along with a holder that lets them snap right onto your iPhone. These lenses, apart from augmenting your iPhone’s photographic abilities, come with their own focus rings, giving you precise control over how you capture the world around you. Wide-angle, Fish-eye, Telephoto, and Macro lenses give you the versatility of a DLSR in the convenient portability of an iPhone, and the +Lens holder even features a slot to add modules like an external flash. Combine the power of the interchangeable lens system with that of the iPhone’s computational photography chops, and you’ve really got the best of both worlds, right in your pocket!

Designer: Hsuan-Tsun “Shawn” Wang

The new Pixel 4 isn’t just a great phone for users, it’s a great phone for Google too.

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I was in the Scottish Highlands a week ago, on a road trip with the family, with absolutely no network on my Pixel 2 phone. In essence, I was cut off from the rest of the world. No internet, no messages, no calls. All I had was the car’s radio, which happened to be catching some music on a DAB station. I looked at my Pixel 2’s screen, completely stunned to see that without any network or internet, my Google Pixel 2 had identified what song was playing. Right underneath the notification bar, it said “Come Together – The Beatles” (the radio channel was celebrating Lennon’s birthday on the 9th of October). My phone had essentially identified a (pretty popular but) completely random track on the radio… completely on its own. I was partly terrified but mostly impressed. Fast forward to today, a full week later.

I’m sitting in front of my TV, watching the Google Keynote live. I’m feeling a similar feeling of euphoria and mild terror at how incredibly advanced Google’s new devices are getting. The Google Assistant has the ability to work incredibly well WITHOUT being connected to the internet. Everything sits in Google’s small machine-learning chip, allowing your phone to be smart on its own. That’s incredible and terrifying, depending on how you look at it. Google’s devices, its smartphone in particular, are growing increasingly powerful in order to achieve what Google calls ‘ambient helpful computing’.

Google’s keynote, just nearly over a month after Apple’s keynote, feels quite different. In fact, I’d say the roles have reversed. Apple was once a bastion of serious innovation, and Google, a fun-loving company that made delightful hardware to complement its software. Now the tables are turned, as Apple takes on a more informal route, with its partnerships with Oprah and Jason Momoa, and its foray into Arcade and Apple TV Plus, while Google has assumed the mantle of power, having just built the most powerful Quantum Computer among other achievements. The once fun-loving company is all about showing how they can ‘help’ change the world, one product at a time. I mean, they even had an on-stage interview with Annie Leibovitz, to talk about how a professional would use Google’s Pixel camera.

The Pixel 4 is built around Google’s motto for being an incredibly advanced piece of tech envisioned to help you. Its incredible advancement comes from the fact that it’s now the first and only phone to use radar as an input, allowing you to wave your hands in the air to swipe through your music playlist, mute your alarm by showing your phone your palm, and much more. The Soli radar chip, developed in 2015, went from 4 square-feet in size, to a mere 4 square-millimeters, sitting in the Pixel 4’s upper bezel. The Soli is so powerful, it knows what to do before you even tell it to. When your hands approach your phone, Soli activates the facial recognition camera on your phone, so you just need to look at it to wake it up… no pressing buttons or anything. It even reduces the volume of your alarm when it senses your hand approaching the phone. It can detect and differentiate between you waving to a friend versus trying to swipe in the air to change tracks on your phone, making it both ground-breaking and incredibly intelligent for something so new. Google’s assistant grew a tad bit smarter too, being able to work across apps, completely offline, and being able to recognize complex commands without even needing the phrase “Hey Google”. If that wasn’t enough, the Pixel 4 will be the first smartphone to be Google Stadia compatible, come 19th November when Stadia finally launches.

As for the camera, Google’s found new ways to excel in that department. There was a good 15 minute segment just on how Google practically built and perfected computational photography. The camera can now click infinitely better HDR images with HDR+, better Portrait photos with its two lenses, even completing it with realistic bokeh, and absolutely stunning low-light pictures that puts the Pixel 4 in the category of SLR cameras. You’re literally looking at a powerful professional camera touted by Annie Leibovitz herself, that fits right in your pocket.

The Pixel 4 comes in three colors, with no fingerprint sensor and a massive square camera bump that easily overtakes the iPhone 11 Pro in its photography capabilities (although there’s a high chance the 11 Pro still dominates in the video department). Google’s very cleverly moved on from showcasing trivial details like wireless chargers and fabric cases (or even the Pixel 4’s battery life) to focusing on the larger picture, like how the Pixel 4 is an incredibly powerful digital assistant in your pocket. From being able to anticipate and understand your needs much in advance and being able to read your gestures in mid-air, to being able to allow you to talk to its assistant in a natural seamless manner (so the technology recedes into the background), the Pixel 4 is a great phone for users, while being a complete magnum opus for Google, showcasing its absolute potential as a dominating force in practically every department, from Voice AI to the state-of-the-art computational photography. That feeling of delight (with the zest of terror) is a pretty interesting one. It shows that there’s still a lot left in the smartphone innovation department, that Google is capable of still blowing our socks off, and there’s no stopping them.

Designer: Google