It’s been just over 2 decades since digital cameras were introduced on mobile phones. From the inception of the VGA camera which was perceived to be amazing decades ago to a high megapixel smartphone camera that competes with DSLR cameras and produces high resolution images, the innovation has indeed stood the test of time and also proved to be the focal point of every smartphone on the market.
With the rapid rate mobile phone cameras have evolved, one can only wonder what the future holds in store as the technological upgrades since inception have been tremendous over the years.
Let's take a trip down the memory lane
Remember the time when pictures were not instant and a world where people could not even imagine carrying a powerful camera around that fits in their pockets?
Well those days are gone as people can now take the same picture multiple times to get the perfect pose with the ability to delete, save or instantly share with friends, thanks to smartphones.
In the early 2000s, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola and Sony introduced mobile phones with built in cameras, a start of a big thing. Today, smartphones are constantly introducing new features that were not even considered 20 years ago.
What a smartphone camera can do 20 years since inception
It would be wrong to talk about the evolution of a smartphone camera and not talk about the picture quality that keeps on surprising consumers every time there’s a new phone on the market.
With the new high tech smartphone upgrades that have surfaced in recent years, we take a look at these 3 smartphones that portrays a perfect picture of how far we've come and what the current world of photography on phones looks like.
Huawei P40 Pro
With 50MP on the main camera, 12MP telephoto, 40MP ultra-wide and 32MP on the front camera, The P40 Pro has to be the best camera phone around.
The main camera’s lens is a pretty standard f/1.9 aperture on paper, but with a huge sensor size (for a smartphone) and OIS, combined with Huawei’s mighty electronic image stabilisation, it’s still a low light star. This phone can pretty much see in the dark, even in automatic mode - something no other non-Huawei phones can do.
There’s also a 40MP f/1.8 ultra-wide camera, a 12MP telephoto camera that’s capable of 5x optical zoom or 50x digital zoom, and a time-of-flight (ToF) sensor for creating bokeh effects.
iPhone 11 Pro
The primary camera features a 26mm focal length, perfect for grabbing everyday snaps. The ultra-wide camera takes a step back so you don’t have to, getting more in the frame with its 13mm focal length. As for the telephoto camera, it zooms into your subject with a 52mm focal length which is perfect for portraits.
While there’s no manual mode and the 12MP resolution is meagre on paper compared to some of the competition.
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra
It all starts with a 108MP primary camera sensor, and also got over 200 megapixels across the front and rear cameras, then there are those smart new shooting modes to talk about,a 12MP ultra-wide camera and finally there’s that huge zoom - 100x Space Zoom.
With all the upgrades emerged over the years, it is without a doubt that the invention of the mobile phone camera has impacted the nature of photography in a huge way and surely there will be more to come from the world of photography as the future continues to unfold.
IOL TECH