Marblelike Lens Could Make Smartphone Cameras as Powerful as SLRs

[Guest]

Small enough to fit in a cellphone, a tiny spherical lens attached to fiber-optic cables can pull in crisp images from a third of a mile away.

Marblelike Lens Could Make Smartphone Cameras as Powerful as SLRs : Read more

 

[curiosul]

WOW, so many mistakes in such a short article:

1: focus is not a big problem in almost any camera, especially at large distances
2: the sample photos show only the sensor's limitations (pixel number) which I can bet whatever you want are way further that any other camera's
3: fish-eye lenses are defined by having distortions; otherwise they would just be wide angle lenses
4: the biggest problem in the mobile world is usually not the lens but the tiny sensor struggling with noise in any iso higher than 100

WOW again, I bet whoever wrote this, has never held a DSLR in their hands or even read about it on wikipedia or something

 

[pbrigido]

+1 curiosul, you are right on the money. It's all about sensor size. The larger the sensor, the greater the ability to capture light. As long as smartphones use small sensors, they will never compete with DSLRs.

 

[pbrigido]

+1 curiosul, you are right on the money. It's all about sensor size. The larger the sensor, the greater the ability to capture light. As long as smartphones use small sensors, they will never compete with DSLRs.

 

[teddymines]

If anything, this brings discrete surveillance to a whole new level. No longer will clunky cameras be required for long distance facial recognition or license plate identification.

 

[milktea]

Well it's not all about the sensor size. Actually lenses themself have limitation in resolving power, commonly expressed in line-pairs/mm. For DSLR type large sensros lenses might not be an issue. But for the tiny photo sensors, they might be approaching the diffraction limits of the common lenses. However, I do question how those researchers took the above photos for comparison. Because in any photograph qualify comparison, resolution, contrast, aberrations, diffraction, MTF, Circle of Confusion all come into the equation. And it is a very complex subject.
None the less, I'm sure this new fiber-coupled lenses would benefit the future development of higher quality lenses.

 

[Drizzt321]

Ok, David Eitelbach needs to take some reading comprehension courses or something. From UCSD news, http/ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/new_miniaturized_wide_angle_lens_captures_images_in_high_definition. It seems instead of using corrective optics to channel the light into a 'tunnel' to expose the sensor, they used a bundle of optical fibers with specially shaped/polished ends. Oh, and it's a 5MP sensor, however it's likely it was extremely small so the initial lens elements didn't need to be nearly so large.

Part of the reason DSLR lenses are so big is they need to put the light onto a physically large sensor chip. Simple physics.

The article also doesn't mention that this would replace DSLR lenses, merely that it could enable smaller sensors with smaller lenses to have higher quality images without the distortion that traditional fisheye lenses have. Basically, they avoid the geometric distortion that traditional lenses impart by turning 'curved' light into a rectilinear projection onto a sensor.

Next time, please link the original information, and do a better job of actually reading the article, instead of taking 5 seconds to scan it and create a eye catching headline with mis-information in the body.

 

[fulle]

Just a suggestion, but maybe Tomsguide should hire someone who actually knows about digital cameras.

I'm not trying to be mean or anything, just throwing it out there that I think the site would benefit from such a person on the staff, considering how often camera tech comes up when discussing different types of devices.

 

[ethanolson]

So they're comparing an ultra-wide angle lens with an ultra zoom lens? Idiots. Of course the upper picture looks lame by comparison. Idiots! I'm sure the technology has some merit but the comparison does not. If I donated to USCD's science department, I'd withdraw until legitimacy could be reestablished.

 

[Drizzt321]

@ethanolson: they're not comparing ultra-wide to a telephoto. Did you read the UCSD release? The image comparison still isn't exactly appropriate because it's not of the actual 5MP sensor they describe that they are using.

 

[ttcboy]

This headline and article would be ur career killer ... !!!

 

[NShukla]

There's no doubt that smartphones will catch up to DSLRs in terms of megapixels and resolution, but pro photo/video is way more than that. Depth of field, aperture, performance under lower light condition, bokeh (how the background is blurred) are all factors that DSLRs are better at. The article gives no indication that this new lens tech beats conventional lenses, other than resolution and zoom.

 

[master9716]

all you scrubs are missing the point, look at how well the small lense makes out the person who is far away , if that lense were in a smart phone it would be amazing. ofcourse a bigger lense will give you extreme more detail up close is irrelevant because of the huge size compared to this lense. - What if this company develops this technology on real DSLR lenses?

 

[milktea]

Found more info about the images shown...
"A close-up (right) of the man holding the board shows that this picture, taken with a conventional wide-angle camera with 12mm focal length, does not have very high resolution.
Bottom: An image taken with a monocentric lens relayed onto a high-magnification digital microscope."

So they are comparing an image captured by the DSLR 21Mpx sensors versus an image from a 'high-mag digital microscope'. Comparing CMOS sensors to a digital microscope does not proof anything. This is apple to orange comparison. Pointless.

 

[John Wuethrich]

was this written for a grade school science class? "However, the researchers have not addressed how large pictures taken with such a lens will be. Given the small storage capacity of most phones, anyone taking ultra-high-resolution photos may quickly run out of space" You are fucking kidding right? I actually checked if this was an old April fools post

 

[ohim]

I just wonder why the hell is everybody thinking they can make a dslr killer from a phone ? If you have a bit of knowledge about how photography works is as clear as night and day there won`t be any contest between the two devices. Wanna see a smartphone grab a portrait with creamy bokeh at 85, 135 or 200 mm focal lenght. Oh wait... phones do only wide shots , almost no bokeh and only in very bright light to have decent quality.

 

[razor512]

The sample photos are at 2 different resolutions. to compare a lens you must use the same resolution.

 

[Caffeinecarl]

Imagine taking these same techniques and juicing them up to be used on a full size digital SLR lens, and use a digital SLR with a full frame sensor adapted to some of the same sensor manufacturing techniques used to achieve high resolutions on the tiny fingernail size sensors on smartphones and what do you get? Quality in scale! These tricks make going small better than before... go big with the same tricks, you end up with even better results!

 

[DavidSG]

The only thing this proves is the author's ignorance of photography.