Smart phone cameras simply don’t produce DSLR-quality images, except perhaps in ideal conditions.
With several new product announcements and upcoming new technology, that is starting to change.
By Mason Resnick
June 30, 2015: Smart phones are tempting as cameras. They offer users instant gratification and, thanks to our Wi-Fi enabled, data plan-driven social platformed filled digital world, allow us to instantly share images anywhere around the world seconds after we shot them. To be able to sit at a Paul McCartney Concert, take a shot then immediately share it with your Beatle maniac friends on Facebook while the concert is still going on is a very powerful, seductive technology.
But we’ve also compromised. We have accepted that smart phones have lousy cameras when compared to DSLRs, and produce amateur-quality images except in ideal conditions.
This is about to change.
With today’s announcement of the Olympus Air—which comes on the heels of the DxO One—the novelty of Sony’s clip-on larger-sensor camera concept introduced nearly two years ago, after a long pause, is now evolving into a trend. This news comes just a couple of months after simultaneous announcements of similar high-resolution, multi-sensor and multi-lens smart phone camera modules were announced and are in competitive development. We’ve reached another milestone in the convergence of smart phones and high-resolution digital photography.
The huge advantage is that pairing a camera to a smart phone eliminates the intermediate step of using Wi-Fi with the mobile device as an intermediary between the camera and online sharing and storage. It’s more convenient and (at least in theory) has less that could possibly go wrong. And of course, since the sensors are bigger, they will record higher-quality images and take a big step towards reducing the quality gap between smart phones and stand-alone digital cameras.
Let’s take a look at what’s out there or about to be released.
First Came Sony’s QX Lens-Style Cameras
In September 2013, Sony surprised the photo industry with the DSC-QX10 (above) and QX100, which they called Smartphone Attachable Lens-Style Cameras. Both were self-contained cameras, complete with sensors (they featured a 1/2.3 and 1-inch sensor, respectively) and built-in zoom lenses. They lacked any kind of viewfinder, but could be clipped onto a smart phone and paired via BlueTooth. An app brought manual exposure and focus to smart phones, another first. We at Adorama were impressed, but consumer reaction was skeptical.
A year later, Sony refined the concept, morphing the QX10 into the higher-resolution QX30, now equipped with a 20MP 1-inch lens and a built-in 30x superzoom lens. More intriguingly, Sony also announced the QX1 (above), the world’s first interchangeable-lens module; this one is fully compatible with Sony E-Mount lenses, and uses the largest sensor to date, a 20MP APS-sized sensor. Suddenly, DSLR and MILC users can now use their lenses on their smart phones. And for the last eight or so months, that was it. Then this happened:
DxO’s Surprising ONE
Fast forward to a few weeks ago—June 18, to be precise—when DxO announced the DxO ONE, a pocket-sized camera attachment that features a 20MP 1-inch sensor and built-in f/1.8 lens. The surprise is that until now, DxO has been best known for its photo software suite —Optics Pro, FilmPack, and ViewPoint—and for its independent tests of other manufacturers’ sensors and lenses for image quality. (Full disclosure: The Adorama Learning Center is an editorial partner with DxOMark Labs, DxO’s test division, and is therefore permitted to incorporate DxOMark’s test results in our camera and lens reviews.)
Unlike the Sony QX cameras, the DxO One is engineered for the iPhone or iPad—not other systems—and attaches to the device via the USB port; like the Sony, it turns the display into the camera’s viewfinder and control interface. Made of high-grade aluminum, the One weighs 3.8 ounces and is sized to fit the profile of an iPhone. It swivels plus/minus 60 degrees, and features a fixed focal length (32mm equivalent) f/1.8-11 lens. Users can control aperture, shutter speeds (15-1/8000 second) and ISO (up to 51,200), as well as a variety of scene modes, manual exposure or full auto.
DxO won’t say who made the sensor, but the sensor’s specs bear a remarkable resemblance to the Sony 1-inch 20MP sensor—and quality is expected to be similar. The DxO One will be available in September for just under $600.
Olympus Air Makes Three
Based on a design similar to the Sony’s, the Olympus Air A01 incorporates a Four Thirds sensor and a Micro Four-Thirds interchangeable lens mount—for which both Panasonic and Olympus as well as a handful of independent manufacturers have made lenses ranging from Fisheye to long telephotos. The 16MP live MOS sensor is the same one found in Olympus’s Digital Pen line, and its RAW+JPEG capture and full range of manual and auto focus and exposure controls put it in the same league, feature-wise, as Olympus’s latest Mirrorless Interchangeable-lens compacts.
The Air sensor unit can be clipped to the smart phone (it will work with both Apple iOS and Android devices) or used separately, with the phone LCD monitor acting as a live viewfinder and camera control via a downloadable app. Images are stored on a MicroSD card or can be uploaded to cloud strage. Olympus is working with a number of cloud-based image storage services and will soon roll out direct-to-cloud integration with Google Cloud, iCloud, Dropbox, and Amazon Cloud Drive.
But Wait…There’s More!
Collectively, these three new camera attachments represent a new trend in augmenting existing, smaller-sensor digital camera modules housed within smart phones and tablets. But wait…two announcements within a couple of days of each other in April indicate that the next generation of smart phones may include new built-in cameras that will be a major leap in quality and flexibility.
It started on April 14, when Apple announced it had bought LinX, an Israeli camera technology company, for $20 million. LinX, it is reported, builds miniature multiple-lens cameras that are designed to be used in mobile devices including cameras and tablets. Apple is keeping the details close to the vest, and the LinX web site has been deactivated. However, information gleaned from it at the time indicate the ability to capture 2D and 3D images, the ability to re-focus images after the fact, HDR, high-performance in low light, and possibly stitching of multiple images—all while staying within the current form factor of iPhones.
Then a new company, Light, came to light. Like LinX, Light intends to employ an array of multiple lenses, each aimed at its own discrete sensor. The camera then uses smart algorithms to instantly stitch the images together to create images possibly as large as 52MB, with DSLR quality. They also say the camera will deliver an extended zoom range and DSLR quality while staying within the confines of a smart phone. Their goal is to have these cameras available for smartphones by next year. To that end, they recently signed a deal with Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer and guess what: Foxconn works closely with Apple.
This could get interesting.
Then there’s the already-existing Pansonic Lumix DMC-CM1 (currently a pre-order for $999.99), a smart camera/phone with a built-in Leica lens, a 1-inch 20MP CMOS sensor (supplied possibly by Sony?) and a fast 28mm (equivalent) f/2.8 lens, as well as 4K video and RAW still recording capabilities. It’s a self-contained hybrid that bears a strong resemblance to a camera in the front and a smart phone in the back. The new LinX and Light camera technologies most likely won’t look at all like a traditional camera.
Clearly, the world of camera design, and therefore photography and distribution of images, is changing yet again. The next generation of cameras—at least for snapshooters and a growing number of enthusiasts—is more likely than ever to be a phone.
