The retractable camera lens works like a mini point-and-shoot!
there used to be a thing called a "point-and-shoot camera." This was a purpose-built device that only took photos
Don't do this to me
Back in 2012: Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom.
So we have come full circle.
I hope that catches on. I hate that my phone is 80% as good as my $500 DSLR but has absolutely no depth perception. Software fills in the background with a shitty bokeh effect that ruined my favourite wildflower photo I've taken. If we get a trend of actual lenses then maybe that will start to go away.
The problem is fundamentally a physics issue.
You're going to struggle to get depth of field on any pancake stack, much less one that is as miniaturized as a mobile phone.
Also your sensor isn't actually nearly as good as a DSLR. A DSLR has a sensor about 5x the size of a phone and that makes a huge difference in the photos.
Here's a handy graphic:
Show
Responding to the comment on the sensor quality.
By posting this image, the takeaway that I think most people will have is that the phone camera will be somewhere around 4.4 by 3.3mm, and that's 1.5% of what you want. But this one, the one in the article's sensor is 9.8 by 7.4mm, somewhere in the middle of this chart.
It's also not a direct apples to apples comparison, because phones are smaller and thus have smaller lenses and so smaller sensors make more sense. If bigger is always better, then big cinema cameras would be even bigger, but they're usually full frame. A smaller sensor doesn't have to be worse, it just has to be more compact, meaning it's more expensive, and that would often translate to worse, but in phones, compactness is a valued feature.*
*There are physical limitations to how much light will hit a surface.
The size of the sensor limits the size of the lens as well as the way the optics are formed for the stack.
You will never get starry bokeh from a stack of lenses that are so tight.
There's a reason that you'll have filmmakers shooting in larger and larger formats - it changes image quality and the type of lenses you can use.
oh cool, now your phone can suck in dust that lands on the sensor and you'd either have to do a lengthy cleaning operation or live with it.
