An article tells you that mobile phones have never surpassed cameras. What is the gap between them?

At the beginning, we asked a question: the imaging system of modern smart phones is already very powerful. So, what is the gap between smart phones and professional cameras?

The reason why I ask the above two questions is not to ask: "Does the mobile phone surpass the camera?" Explain that the viewpoint of this article has been affirmed, and there is still a gap between the imaging systems of smartphones and cameras, and the purpose of this article is to explain to you where the gap is.

Note that what I am talking about here is the concept of "image system", not just discussing the image quality. Why? Not much to say, look down.

At present, the gap between high-end smartphones and professional cameras is mainly reflected in the following eight aspects:

1 picture purity

At present, the sensor size of smart phone is close to 1 inch, but even so, there is still a certain gap with the sensor size of professional full-frame camera, resulting in a larger pixel per inch, a smaller single pixel size, and a large difference in lens volume and aperture size between smart phone sensor and professional camera. These gaps will directly affect the image quality, and also directly reflect the control of image noise. In the same environment, comparing the proofs of full-frame camera and mobile phone, we can see that the picture of professional camera is purer, with pure color, good transparency and no smear. After zooming in and comparing, there is little noise in the camera picture, while the mobile phone has a serious smear feeling and more noise in the picture, especially in the dark environment.

2 blurred background

The degree of background blur is the most obvious gap between mobile phone and camera in the visual experience of proofs. After a quasi-professional camera with a large aperture lens, whether shooting still life or portrait, the background is naturally blurred, and the bright spot between the subject and the environment looks very comfortable, which is beyond the reach of mobile phones. Although there are people like models in smart phones now, they all dig people out by algorithms and blur them. There is still a certain gap between the blur obtained by this algorithm and the blur brought by the real optical lens, and in the outline part of the character, it is often inaccurate.

Many people may ask, now the main aperture of smart phone can reach f 1.5 or even f 1.2, why is blur worse than camera? The answer is that in the same object distance environment, it is not only the aperture that determines the blur, but also the size of the sensor determines the background blur. Because the sensor of the mobile phone is too small, the aperture of F 1.2 on the mobile phone is almost equivalent to f8 of a full-frame camera, and there is a formula for calculating the equivalent aperture. If you are interested, you can check it out, so I won't go into details.

3 focus section perspective

This gap is not felt by many people, especially those who have never used a camera. We all know that the main focal length of smart phones is generally around 24mm, and most people use the main focal length 90% of the time when taking pictures. The focal length of 24mm is wide-angle on the camera, which means that most people take pictures with their mobile phones, which leads to a certain degree of distortion of the picture, especially when taking portraits. It will appear that the character's face is a little too big. When taking a full-length photo, the background is too big to highlight the subject. By changing the lens, the camera can use classic portrait lenses such as 50mm focal length and 85mm focal length, which is closer to the human eye angle and reduces portrait distortion.

For longer focal lengths, especially when shooting urban buildings or landscapes, the perspective and air pressure of telephoto lenses are more prominent. However, in the past two years, smartphones have also followed this point. Many hands are equipped with 50mm portrait lenses, five-fold optical zoom lenses, and ten-fold optical zoom lenses. This makes up for this defect to a great extent.

4 telephoto quality

As I said just now, many smart phones are equipped with five or ten times optical zoom lenses, which can achieve good optical zoom effect. However, due to various reasons such as volume limitation and lens quality, the imaging quality of optical zoom lenses of most smart phones is not ideal. At the very least, the image quality of the main camera can't be reached at all, so don't worry about this camera at all. By matching professional lenses, professional cameras can use 200mm and 400 mm, even if the focal length is 800mm~ 1200mm, they can also be used to shoot distant objects, even the moon, and still get quite good image quality. Although it is popular to shoot the moon with mobile phones in recent years, the picture quality ... is well known.

5 shutter speed

Anyone familiar with cameras knows that the shutter speed of professional cameras can reach 1/8000 seconds or even higher. One of the benefits of high shutter is that for capturing high-speed moving objects, especially sports and animal photography, a snapshot of a certain moment must be completed by high shutter, and then there are various continuous shooting. For the flashing picture, we must finish it by high-speed continuous shooting, and then choose the best one, such as high-speed snapshot and high-speed continuous shooting.

7 professional equipment cooperation

The peripheral equipment of professional cameras can be described as huge, including not only a huge lens group, but also a series of peripheral equipment, such as rabbit cages, stabilizers, filters, magnifying glasses, hot-shoe flashlights, and various professional tripods, high-power synchronous flashlights, soft umbrellas and so on. These huge peripherals can help the camera to complete better shooting and get the best picture quality. This is completely incomparable with mobile phones.

8 colors and beyond.

The color depth of professional cameras is as high as 14bit. As we all know, the higher the bit depth, the wider the range of colors and brightness that can be recorded, the smoother the brightness transition at each level, the better the color reproduction, the thicker the image, and the larger the space for later photos. No matter how to do various operations such as color matching and brightening in the later stage, the color will not break and the details can be better preserved. Although 100 billion color camera model (equivalent to 10bit color depth) has been introduced by smartphones in the past two years, there is still a big gap between the actual effect and the space after taking pictures, as well as the quality of professional cameras.

The above is my summary. At present, there is a certain gap between smart phone imaging system and professional camera. There is one thing that must be explained here. This paper has no intention of belittling the imaging system of smart phones. It is remarkable that the imaging system of modern smart phone can achieve such image quality effect in such a narrow module space today. I think the current mobile phone photo effect, including video shooting effect, is completely sufficient for most users, and in terms of portability, the thinness and compactness of smart phones can never be compared with cameras.

I believe that with the advancement of technology, the gap between smart phones and professional cameras will become smaller and smaller. This article is to let everyone fully understand the gap and difference between mobile phone photography and camera photography. I hope I can help you, code words are not easy. Thanks for your support.