Nokia Puts 41MPixel Camera In a (Symbian) Phone 204
judgecorp writes "We aren't sure what's the strangest thing about Nokia's new offering, the fact that it's got a 41 Megapixel camera or the fact that it runs Symbian. It has a very high resolution sensor and uses oversampling, apparently producing good results in low light. Users can either save a maximum of 38Mpixels, or else zoom and crop for normal resolution images. Observers expected a maximum of one more Symbian phone before Nokia shifts over to Windows Phone. This suggests either a longer life for Symbian — or maybe [that] Symbian was just an easier platform to make a show-stopping device that may turn out to be more of a concept phone."
Or perhaps this isn't Star Trek (Score:5, Informative)
"This suggests either a longer life for Symbian — or maybe Symbian was just an easier platform to make a show-stopping device that may turn out to be more of a concept phone"
Or perhaps the phone has been in development for some time, maybe it takes longer than Marketing announcement cycles to design and deliver new technology.
Get the facts (Score:5, Informative)
I strongly recommend reading the white paper:
http://europe.nokia.com/PRODUCT_METADATA_0/Products/Phones/8000-series/808/Nokia808PureView_Whitepaper.pdf
Re:Question is.. (Score:4, Informative)
Sensor is much larger than a traditional 5MP phone cam sensor:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/2012/02/27/Nokia-808-PureView-with-41MP-sensor
Re:Or perhaps this isn't Star Trek (Score:5, Informative)
Or perhaps the phone has been in development for some time, maybe it takes longer than Marketing announcement cycles to design and deliver new technology.
I can't find now the link (maybe it was on a video), but they say they have been developing this technology for four years.
And BTW, the summary is somewhat unfair. On the announcement [nokia.com] they have posted (besides some impressive photo samples) a whitepaper [nokia.com] were they clearly say that is not about quantity of megapixels, is about the quality you get when you average the results given by each one. I've also seen some of the videos were you get a very smooth digital zoom without loss of quality, and is quite remarkable.
Re:Screw Megapixels (Score:5, Informative)
Link to whitepaper: http://europe.nokia.com/PRODUCT_METADATA_0/Products/Phones/8000-series/808/Nokia808PureView_Whitepaper.pdf [nokia.com]
sample pictures (Score:4, Informative)
Some sample pics, apparently:
http://cdn.conversations.nokia.com.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Archive2.zip [amazonaws.com]
They look OK, and amazing for a phone.
Re:Diffraction limited? (Score:5, Informative)
Summary is terrible and misses out the parts of the camera that are actually exciting. First, they never intend for people to use the 41MP setting, instead, they intend you to use 5MP and let their fancy new pixel averaging do it's thing to dramatically reduce noise levels by averaging out 8 pixels into one. That will allow higher iso settings, better low light pictures, etc. The other interesting thing is the size of the sensor, 10x7mm, which is ludicrously large for a phone, about 4 times more surface area than the latest iPhone's sensor. Heck, it's larger than the vast majority of point and shoots. Now obviously, just like megapixels, I imagine that sensor size could be artificially inflated just like any other number, but the example pictures they have posted look pretty incredible for a camera phone.
Re:Screw Megapixels (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Screw Megapixels (Score:5, Informative)
The core use here is for super-sampling with dedicated hardware that produces superior 5MP & 8MP images.
But you can also "super sample" by making fewer, larger pixels that will collect more light each. Canon stepped back to a 10MP sensor for low-light performance in their G and S9x series cameras (they've since gone back up to 12).
Re:Screw Megapixels (Score:5, Informative)
Mod up parent and reduce the rest of the comments into nothingness.
Pictures are 5MP standard.
On the short end, combining pixels help to reduce lens abberations due to pixel size.
On the long end, placement of relevant pixels in the centre reduces lens abberations.
And it could not be done in WP7, as the processing power is simply missing there.
Not too many pixels in fact. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually since this is a near diffraction limited lens working at f/2.4 the spot size is going to be about 0.56um * 2.4 ~ 1.344um on the focal plane. The cycle size is about double, or 2.688um.
Considering it uses a Bayer array, and the pixels are spaced at 1.4um, the green pixels will be spaced at 2um (minimum distance to next green pixel). To properly sample you need at least 2 pixels per cycle (said Mr. Nyquist), but since pixels are not exactly points (they have an area) astronomers working in diffraction limited imaging advise 3x sampling in practice.
What this means is you would need a pixel size of 2.688/3/sqrt(2) ~ 0.63um (or 0.9um if using a Foven-style sensor) to properly sample this lens. 1.4um vastly undersamples the lens, as can be seen near the central area in the available samples: they are razor sharp in the central area, and otherwise are limited by aberrations.
A practical article describing this, with example images, can be seen here:
http://samirkharusi.net/sampling_saturn.html