This archive report was first published on 29 July 2019.
July 29, 2019
Smartphone cameras have become a crucial aspect of mobile devices, with many high-end and mid-range Android smartphones featuring multiple lenses. However, the trend of increasing megapixel counts has led to a debate on whether higher resolutions translate to better photos.
Carl Zeiss CEO Dr. Michael Kaschke has expressed his concerns about the overemphasis on megapixel counts, stating that there are limits to smartphone camera hardware. In an interview with the Indian Express, Kaschke noted that any camera lens with more than 40MP on a smartphone is overkill.
“More pixels are not necessarily better. Why? If you stay with the full-frame sensor and divide that sensor into more and more pixels, the pixels become smaller and smaller, and then you get into a noise problem. I think for most of the applications, also serious professional applications, my guess would be the 40MP is already more than enough,” Kaschke said.
Instead of relying on higher megapixel counts, Kaschke suggests that smartphone vendors focus on digital processing to improve photography. He believes that having multiple camera lenses with lower resolutions is the way to go, allowing smartphones to produce enhanced photos similar to those taken with DSLRs.
Google's Pixel series is a good example of this approach, using lenses with fewer megapixel counts but producing great results courtesy of computational photography. Kaschke claims that having many camera lenses won't necessarily improve the quality of smartphone photography due to limitations such as thin profiles, processing speed, noise, signal to noise ratio, and the expense of having multiple lenses.
