Friday, April 8, 2016

The two cameras Huawei and others: how to change the shots on smartphones – Il Sole 24 Ore

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This article was published April 8, 2016 at 09:51 hours.
the last change is the April 8, 2016 at 16:18.

It opens a very interesting season for photography on the move, on board the smartphone. A growing market for this type of functionality, Gartner indicated that for a couple of years as one of the three main technologies seen by the public at the time of the telephone dial. And now, instead of the “race for megapixels”, ie the increase in the number of elements (pixels) of the sensor that captured the photograph, the big producers open new roads. In particular, the double digital lens, which offers the benefit of other gender. The latest is Huawei in partnership with Leica Germans, there will be in the future with Apple iPhone 7, but already now there are smart phones with two camera lenses on the back.

Among the first to experience large scale was HTC, which launched in 2014 the One M8 (Duo Room) with two sensors: one dedicated to photography and the other to gain more information about the image. Then Lg with the G5, presented at the beginning of 2015, however, proposed the Dual Real Camera that offers double the focal aperture capable of offering a total viewing angle of 135 degrees panorama stitching compared to what you can achieve with a lens for mobile phones “normal.”

The use of the second “eye” on the back of your smartphone can actually serve many different purposes. According to the Morgan Stanley analyst Jasmine Lu, in fact, “not only the dual-cam will allow to reduce the gap in quality with SLR cameras, but will also allow developers to design new high quality apps leveraging capacity for analysis and three-dimensional mapping of the objects. I expect the dual-cam objectives are the accelerator for a growth cycle on several fronts for the optical industry as a whole. “

The Chinese Huawei have decided to bind to a partnership with Leica , the legendary German manufacturer of rangefinder cameras and targets with high-sounding names (Elmarit, Summilux, Summicron) to create a unique product: a camera system equipped with a seeing eye color and an eye that instead sees in black and white , compensating for the lack of color with a greater ability to “read” the light and perceive the intensity. P9 The new smartphone has in fact this peculiarity of being able to “see” differently and complement the scenes from which to take photographs. however remains unclear what the terms of this partnership: Leica has actually helped with its technologies in the design phase, also under construction, it was limited only to certify the Huawei production and put the red logo? In the past, Leica had made other substantially rebranding agreements with Panasonic (photo format micro four thirds) in which the actual involvement in the partnership is more than brand production. The CEO of Leica Camera, Oliver Kaltner, as early as February presenting the partnership agreement with Huawei explained that it is a “technological alliance”, but so far neither company wanted to explain what are the actual mutual involvement.

Until now good part of the ability to take pictures more and more realistic and quality of modern smartphones is derived from the growing power of the processor, which performs all the necessary interpolations to make images better contrast, more defined, in correct on the fly optical distortions introduced by microscopic lenses and sensors lenses. On this front, we arrived at a very high level. Why the difference introduced in the last 24 months, that today sees the fulcrum with P9 Huawei (third producer in the world of smartphones with 8.1% market share, behind Samsung with 21% and Apple with 19% according to IDC) is to improve not just the number of megapixel sensor and the ability to interpolate the image processor, as found in the most complex and powerful solutions.

Even in the field of traditional digital photography, dominated Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm and Olympus and Panasonic torque, the big manufacturers are experiencing for some time various technologies, even if it is not economically sensible to introduce an SLR camera or mirrorles with two lenses and two sensors. However, there are the same ingenious solutions: starting from the one with which the stabilizer mounted on the sensor makes move of a few hundredths of millimeters very quickly on the sensor plane at the time of shooting to capture two or four distorted images, thus obtaining a resolution more: instead of 20 even 40 megapixels. Or systems for 3D capture, or even goals with dedicated processors and the ability to correct the distortions and aberrations and color of the images captured even before saving them to the memory card.

Apple, you learn by the many sites of indiscretion, it will present to September-October version 7 of its iPhone, which will have a dual camera, such as Huawei and other Korean and Taiwanese before her. It will however, according to the rumors, of two different objectives which will have different focal: in practice a lens that covers a wider field of vision than the natural human eye (in terms photograph, equipped with a wide-angle focal length) and one capable instead of pushing further away than see our eye (telephoto). This combination would allow, with a minimum parallax, to have in every shot an image with focus and levels of different depths, increasing the resolution and the details. Here too, Apple would seek to innovate just following a trend started in the field.



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