IPhone 5 will reportedly sport 8 megapixel camera from Sony | Hacker News Reader

IPhone 5 will reportedly sport 8 megapixel camera from Sony

edibleapple.com

11 pointsanderzole19 comments

I'm hoping the iPhone's camera will someday use a larger image sensor. That would improve the quality of images shot with an iPhone, a lot more than just increasing the resolution from 5MP to 8MP. The iPhone 4 has a 1/3.2" sensor [0]; it'd be nice if a future model had a 1/1.6" sensor or even a 4/3" sensor [1]. The camera in Nokia's N8 already has a sensor size of 1/1.83".

[0] http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/sizing-up-the-ipho...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format#Table_of_se...

It won't. When you start getting bigger sensors, you start needing a longer focal plane or crazy optics with aspherical elements. This most definitely means a thicker phone.

The iPhone 3GS' camera has a 1/4" sensor. With the iPhone 4, Apple shaved off 24 percent of the size of the iPhone 3GS. And yet, the iPhone 4's camera has a larger 1/3.2" sensor.

Sure, to get to 1/1.6", the iPhone would have to get thicker. Personally, I wouldn't mind. I've owned every iPhone model since 2007, and honestly, the original iPhone was thin enough for me. (Of course, Apple likes to make their products thinner, not thicker, so it's not likely.)

5 MP is more than enough, better optics & bigger sensor, please.

The resolution is completely irrelevant. The optics are what define quality.

Well… The sensors do define quality too, and there is some correlation with resolution, which is reverse: given the same size of the sensor having more pixels makes matters worse: less photons hitting one pixel, lower S/N ratio, noisier images, poor low light performance.

I'd rather see larger, rather than denser, sensors. Although I suspect the tiny apertures of phone cameras will always be the limiting factor.

I look at 8 megapixel and wonder why such poor resolution. These days with RED Epic (http://www.red.com/) and similar such on the market, surely better can be accomplished? I mean if it is good enough for hobbits, should be good enough for 'complex social interaction' right? Oh well maybe by IPhone 10 or so...

Physics, that's why. The sensor in the standard DSLR is fairly large and thick and has a fairly large aperture to let enough light hit it. The sensor in the iPhone is about the size of a pinky nail. You cannot get the megapixels the RED has without larger sensors.

I am a little set back by the fact that we are comparing $50k pro video cameras to an iphone... higher resolution won't fix a crappy camera.

Anyone else think that this is a bit of overkill for what is effectively a snapshot camera? Nobody is doing serious photography with an iPhone.

That's true but don't forget that the iPhone is the world's most used digital camera.

Charts: http://www.flickr.com/cameras/

I'd be curious to know what Facebook's stats are, because they're WAY larger than any of the other photo sharing sites.

No one's ever suffered because their camera's quality was too high. (resolution != quality)

This is true, but the megapixel god is a false profit as well. Often the highest resolution cameras don't take the best pictures. I have printed (pictures)[http://www.nucleusdevelopment.com/media/photo/goog.jpg] taken with my iphone 3gs. I was never able to do so with my N1, or galaxy S. The quality just wasn't there even though those phones camera's where nearly double the resolution.

> Nobody is doing serious photography with an iPhone.

Bullshit. A quick Googling reveals plenty of professional photographers using iPhones in their work.

For example: http://www.chasejarvis.com/index.php#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10...

Professional != Serious, necessarily.

If my wedding photographer showed up with an iPhone, I'd demand my money back.

You need to define "serious", then. I'd consider photos taken with the intent of exhibiting them in a gallery pretty "serious" photography.

I wouldn't hire an artist to do a building-sized mural in pencil, but that hardly means no one's doing serious art with pencils.

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