we might as well call every lossy compression format ever useless
Lossy compression is a trade off between loss of quality and file size. You can objectively test whether one file is better quality than another at the same file size or whether one is smaller than the other at the same quality.
im sure they have documentation on automatic camera switching,
You can read technical websites to learn how it works just like you can read about multi threading or other hardware features of your phone.
But to the end user there is there is no feature to learn. It is the same pinch to zoom whether you have one camera or three. My technologically illiterate mother in law uses her iPhone to take pictures and has no idea her phone has more than one camera. Just like she has no idea her phone has more than one CPU.
you provided an example as to why generic hardware would be beneficial
I didn’t change to the context of PC’s or generic.
"Ranting about cameras you don’t use is like ranting about CPU cores you don’t use. I don’t game on my phone, where’s my phone without a GPU??? "
Do I have to preface every single sentence with “on a phone”? Am I now allowed to misinterpret every sentence that doesn’t contain the phrase “on a phone” as meaning you are talking about cars?
You can do a 2x digital zoom and still retain reasonable quality
15 years ago 100 million people a year bought digital cameras to get 3x-5x optical zoom (the typical range of consumer digital cameras). There is a huge difference with optical zoom and you still have digital zoom to get even more. The wide lens is needed when you can’t frame everything in the shot and can’t physically move farther back. Again consumer points and shoot digital cameras had that feature because they had the physical space to use a wide lens on a expanding mount to give the range. Now phone can match consumer digital cameras from 15 years ago but have to do it with a separate lens because of size constraints.
Why a wide lens? You want the Christmas dinner table shot of everyone and can’t move farther back in the room. You want the shot of the entire orchestra but can’t get out of your seat, walk 5 rows back and block the audience. People bought cameras with a wide lens and good zoom before smartphones.
You edit video. What made the video ? A camera without zoom or interchangeable lens? Of course not.
I feel like since the invention of phone cameras, particularly good ones, people have just been photographing EVERYTHING,
I already quoted with sources the 100 million cameras a year every year. Before that it was analog cameras. People have been taking garbage photos for as long as there have been consumer cameras. The boring carousel slide show of vacations was a staple comedy joke 40 years ago. At least now the photos aren’t also blurry.
If you REALLY insist on having more than 2, do a fish eye
Well there you go, 3 camera modules just like my Pixel ( not including the front). It can do it with only 3 because of the periscope lens (there was a consumer compact digital camera that did the same trick 15 years ago). But the periscope lens requires more physical space. On a smaller phone manufacturers use more lenses to cover the same zoom ranges. If phones could be as large as a camera with a long lens sticking out the back, all phones would need only one lens just like cameras from 15 years ago.
Phone manufacturers add lenses to equal the features of compact digital cameras from 15 years ago but in the form factor of a phone. People loved their digital cameras. Now phones can replace them.
Again, the switching between cameras isn’t something the user is aware of. It is completely seamless with not even an option on the UI to know that it is happening.
You can objectively test whether one file is smaller than another at the same file size or whether one is smaller than the other at the same quality.
ignoring the circular reasoning here, my point is not that it’s impossible to gauge the difference, my point is that you have to be careful with what you state and what you measure. Can you objectively quanity the quality difference and efficiency of two different lossy compression algorithms? Yes, theoretically you can. Now go that and create a model for it applicable to every real world use case that compression algorithm is going to see. That’s the hard part. Also not to mention the fact that it likely doesn’t even matter. The reason we use lossy compression is because to a point, it’s impossible for us to notice any significant degradation in quality. That point from person to person, varies.
You can read technical websites
Those lack depth and specific information, i wouldn’t be making that point if that wasn’t a problem. And besides joe shmoes blog on why the [insert item] here has [insert feature] here might not even be correct. Or present all the information required even.
Just like she has no idea her phone has more than one CPU.
it has more than one core, not more than one cpu, a cpu is loosely defined as an explicit piece of a hardware, that can perform the tasks of a CPU. You can have multi cpu configurations, but you can also have cpus with multiple cores. This is a semantic complaint though.
I didn’t change to the context to PC’s or generic.
i did, because that’s what im familiar with, though it does also apply to things outside of PC hardware, naturally, as evidenced by the fact i brought up embedded devices.
Do I have to preface every single sentence with “on a phone”?
no but it’s also probably good to not make arguments after making an assumption. If you want to preface an argument with a known assumption you can. You asked me if i edited video on my phone, and then continued to make an argument as to why it was weird that i said that. That’s just not something you do.
You edit video. What made the video ? A camera without zoom or interchangeable lens? Of course not.
literally not a camera? I have edited ONE single video (sourced from real footage), and as i said, it was perfectly fine. The biggest issue with it was an audio problem the hardware created, ironically enough. Everything else i edit is screen recorded. With OBS. And like i already said, if i want better quality, i’ll just buy an actual camera, for the same price as a top of the line smartphone. And then get modularity, as well as other convenient features that make shooting video for production much easier.
People have been taking garbage photos for as long as there have been consumer cameras.
this is not explicitly true, go look at film camera enthusiasts in the modern day. One of the selling points is taking photos that don’t waste film “make you shots count” even then it’s only been multiplied by 10 fold.
digital camera that did the same trick 15 years ago
i’d much rather not spend modern premiums to get features that are a decade old. I think that’s reasonable. Especially when we start talking hardware real estate, these camera arrays take up a considerable portion of the phone. You could put a headphone jack there, more battery, better hardware, cooling, etc…
Especially when i can buy a modern used camera for a few hundred bucks, and get image quality MILES better than any phone sensor could ever think to produce. As well as flexibility with how i use it. I’m objectively just not buying a phone for better camera quality. It’s a non starter, it’s like saying every car NEEDS to be sporty. And now suddenly everybody is buying trucks and SUVs because they prefer the lofty ride of trucks over small cars with stiffer suspensions and smaller tires. Even though they might handle better, nobody cares. They want something more “luxurious” rather than performant. It’s just not a good use of money.
It is completely seamless with not even an option on the UI to know that it is happening.
this isn’t true. Unless you place the cameras in the EXACT same location, there will be differences in parallax. As well as camera sensor quality itself. The iphone 15 when zooming, while recording has very explicit artifacts from switching between cameras. Not to mention the difference in quality due to the fact they have different lenses. It’s not as significant with photos. But all of those still apply. And besides, maybe i dont want it to forcibly switch, maybe i want to have control over the hardware i paid for and own?
You can’t tell me that the minor difference in quality between camera A and B is significant enough to warrant B over A or vice versa. And then ignore the obvious negative implications that multiple cameras have. Or tell me that lossy compression can be objectively quantified in an explicit manner that removes ALL doubt present about the efficacy of its algorithm. And then tell me the very physical nature of having two cameras in two different spots, means they take two different pictures just doesn’t matter at all.
Now go that and create a model for it applicable to every real world use case that
That wasn’t your claim. You said all lossy compression is useless. Is a pixel there that was in the source? It’s a test that anyone can agree on. Which is beside the point that a better quality camera is an objectively testable feature.
That two cameras could give images that are so close as to result in subjective judgement as to which is better isn’t what we are discussing. Unless you are going to get weird and claim you prefer a blurry pixelated image.
Those lack depth and specific information, i wouldn’t be making that point if that wasn’t a problem
Because it isn’t a problem! If you want to look at the Android source code and see how it multi threads based on the number big cores and little cores you can. But an end user does not need to read that documentation to use their phone. It is completely transparent to the phone user.
Nor is how the camera software distributes control to various camera modules a problem for end users. How the camera takes the photo is completely transparent to the end user.
i’d much rather not spend modern premiums to get features that are a decade old.
Most of those 100 million cameras purchasers every year were not buying a camera for the first time in their life. Most were upgrading from their old camera. They bought the new camera to take better photos.
I already linked the study that showed people buy new phones primarily to take better photos.
Especially when i can buy a modern used camera for a few hundred bucks, and get image quality MILES better
The best camera is the one you have with you. You claimed you almost never take photos but now you are claiming you would buy another gadget to carry around all the time?
this isn’t true. Unless you place the cameras in the EXACT same location, there will be differences in parallax.
Yes a professional comparing a non zoomed and zoomed could tell they were taken from a different position. So what? The end user doesn’t need to care. The UI is pinch to zoom. That’s it.
Besides the actual parallax change will be smaller than a human hand is capable of being steady. The lenses are 1cm apart. Taking a picture 10 m away ( and really you would use zoom for things much farther ) yields an angle change of .01 degrees. Hand motion is why photographers have the 1/f rule. Your hands can’t keep a camera perfectly steady.
And besides, maybe i dont want it to forcibly switch, maybe i want to have control over the hardware i paid for and own?
Then download a pro camera app. But your original claim that extra lenses are a burden on the end user is false. The default camera UI presents a seamless UI to the user just like the user doesn’t have to know how many and what types of cores are in their phone in order to use it.
You can’t tell me that the minor difference in quality between camera A and B is significant enough to warrant B over A or vice versa.
Is your claim that there is absolutely no measurable difference between any cameras ever? Because that’s what you are arguing.
I claim my Pixel 7pro camera is objectively better than the camera in my 11 year old Galaxy Nexus. This isn’t iPhone 15 vs Pixel 8 pro where both are so equally matched that it becomes subjective.
You claimed you don’t see a need for more than one lens on a smartphone. I explained the technical reasons why phones have use multiple lenses to do what compact digital cameras can do with one lens.
Consumer now buy smartphones every few years for the better camera just like they bought better cameras every few years before smartphones existed.
as an analogue to your point about the camera being objectively better. My point is that you can’t boil everything down to objective facts, even if it is true, there are a number of other variables.
Is a pixel there that was in the source?
With lossy compression, that quite literally gets thrown out the window the second it’s used. If that’s the standard then all lossy compression is bad. The question is at what point, does N amount of deviation from the original image, make it noticeably different from the original image, to the point that it negatively affects the image more than the space it saves. That’s the hard part to quantify. And yet we use lossy compression everywhere. Literally nobody can agree what standard of compression is acceptable. I for one never touch HW accelerated encoding because it’s not efficient, and introduces artifacts. Yet other people are perfectly content using it. I would much rather store the original source file, even if it’s insanely big, over HW encoding it down to something more manageable, and potentially forever altering that file.
That two cameras could give images that are so close as to result in subjective judgement as to which is better isn’t what we are discussing. Unless you are going to get weird and claim you prefer a blurry pixelated image.
It depends on what standardized photo testing you use. If i can take a photo roughly 2-10 feet in front of me, and it looks decent. I do not care about anything else. If it’s outside of that range my eyesight is bad enough it doesn’t matter anyway. A phone with a built in zoom lense might be able to take better far shot photos. But i never take those, so it’s useless to me.
How the camera takes the photo is completely transparent to the end user.
i mean, if we include photo processing, that’s just not true, unless major phone manufacturers have started open sourcing their software since i last checked.
I already linked the study that showed people buy new phones primarily to take better photos.
i didnt look at it, but im not going to discount it either, frankly i just don’t care. I just don’t think more than like 30-40% of why people buy a new phone is to take better photos, maybe thats how they justify spending that money to themselves, i could see that. But JUST for better photos? idk. Maybe i’m just a bad capitalist who doesnt spend enough money.
You claimed you almost never take photos but now you are claiming you would buy another gadget to carry around all the time?
as you already said "the best camera is the one you have with you, you continually brought up editing, and real world use cases where having a better camera would make sense. Which is where i would use that actual camera, i just don’t really care about the quality of the pictures i take that aren’t supposed to be actual media. It’s fine enough as is. Being any better isn’t going to appreciably change that.
But your original claim that extra lenses are a burden on the end user is false.
i didn’t say that, i just stated that at a certain point, an end user is going to stop caring about a “feature” when it’s feature set is severely convoluted. Maybe i actually just care about what i spend my money on, and other people don’t. But i like knowing what im buying, before i spend my money on it.
Is your claim that there is absolutely no measurable difference between any cameras ever?
no my claim is that anything that is 80% efficacy is going to be more than fine, your claim is that 99% efficacy is worse than 100% efficacy, which is true, but not perceptible.
I claim my Pixel 7pro camera is objectively better than the camera in my 11 year old Galaxy Nexus.
i claim my iphone 5 as having a better camera than the leapfrog leappad. My point there, even though you have butchered it incredibly, is quite literally the difference between a pixel 8 and an iphone 15. You can’t go back to before multi cameras, because a modern single camera phone will still have improved since then.
You claimed you don’t see a need for more than one lens on a smartphone.
i know, but for the same reason that i don’t care about a 4090 ti being faster than a 1070 due to its price being fascinatingly high. I don’t care about phones with more than one camera having better camera quality. I just dont want that feature.
Literally this entire thread started with “still don’t understand the appeal of multi camera phones” or something like that, it’s paraphrased. I know there are technical reasons one would do that, but i just can’t justify it for what it provides. Unless i see an actual proper realistic breakdown, of which exactly NONE exist. So i couldn’t line them up even if i wanted to. I’m just left to my own devices to see what else could be done. And so i just dont care. Same reason i dont care about phones having high refresh rates, it just wastes processing power, it feels smoother sure. I don’t really care though. I use it like 10 minutes out of my day maybe. Swiping sideways at 90hz doesn’t matter if i dont use it anyway. (dont bother explaining the difference to me, because i own multiple 144hz displays, i already know.)
Lossy compression is a trade off between loss of quality and file size. You can objectively test whether one file is better quality than another at the same file size or whether one is smaller than the other at the same quality.
You can read technical websites to learn how it works just like you can read about multi threading or other hardware features of your phone.
But to the end user there is there is no feature to learn. It is the same pinch to zoom whether you have one camera or three. My technologically illiterate mother in law uses her iPhone to take pictures and has no idea her phone has more than one camera. Just like she has no idea her phone has more than one CPU.
I didn’t change to the context of PC’s or generic.
"Ranting about cameras you don’t use is like ranting about CPU cores you don’t use. I don’t game on my phone, where’s my phone without a GPU??? "
Do I have to preface every single sentence with “on a phone”? Am I now allowed to misinterpret every sentence that doesn’t contain the phrase “on a phone” as meaning you are talking about cars?
15 years ago 100 million people a year bought digital cameras to get 3x-5x optical zoom (the typical range of consumer digital cameras). There is a huge difference with optical zoom and you still have digital zoom to get even more. The wide lens is needed when you can’t frame everything in the shot and can’t physically move farther back. Again consumer points and shoot digital cameras had that feature because they had the physical space to use a wide lens on a expanding mount to give the range. Now phone can match consumer digital cameras from 15 years ago but have to do it with a separate lens because of size constraints.
Why a wide lens? You want the Christmas dinner table shot of everyone and can’t move farther back in the room. You want the shot of the entire orchestra but can’t get out of your seat, walk 5 rows back and block the audience. People bought cameras with a wide lens and good zoom before smartphones.
You edit video. What made the video ? A camera without zoom or interchangeable lens? Of course not.
I already quoted with sources the 100 million cameras a year every year. Before that it was analog cameras. People have been taking garbage photos for as long as there have been consumer cameras. The boring carousel slide show of vacations was a staple comedy joke 40 years ago. At least now the photos aren’t also blurry.
Well there you go, 3 camera modules just like my Pixel ( not including the front). It can do it with only 3 because of the periscope lens (there was a consumer compact digital camera that did the same trick 15 years ago). But the periscope lens requires more physical space. On a smaller phone manufacturers use more lenses to cover the same zoom ranges. If phones could be as large as a camera with a long lens sticking out the back, all phones would need only one lens just like cameras from 15 years ago.
Phone manufacturers add lenses to equal the features of compact digital cameras from 15 years ago but in the form factor of a phone. People loved their digital cameras. Now phones can replace them.
Again, the switching between cameras isn’t something the user is aware of. It is completely seamless with not even an option on the UI to know that it is happening.
ignoring the circular reasoning here, my point is not that it’s impossible to gauge the difference, my point is that you have to be careful with what you state and what you measure. Can you objectively quanity the quality difference and efficiency of two different lossy compression algorithms? Yes, theoretically you can. Now go that and create a model for it applicable to every real world use case that compression algorithm is going to see. That’s the hard part. Also not to mention the fact that it likely doesn’t even matter. The reason we use lossy compression is because to a point, it’s impossible for us to notice any significant degradation in quality. That point from person to person, varies.
Those lack depth and specific information, i wouldn’t be making that point if that wasn’t a problem. And besides joe shmoes blog on why the [insert item] here has [insert feature] here might not even be correct. Or present all the information required even.
it has more than one core, not more than one cpu, a cpu is loosely defined as an explicit piece of a hardware, that can perform the tasks of a CPU. You can have multi cpu configurations, but you can also have cpus with multiple cores. This is a semantic complaint though.
i did, because that’s what im familiar with, though it does also apply to things outside of PC hardware, naturally, as evidenced by the fact i brought up embedded devices.
no but it’s also probably good to not make arguments after making an assumption. If you want to preface an argument with a known assumption you can. You asked me if i edited video on my phone, and then continued to make an argument as to why it was weird that i said that. That’s just not something you do.
literally not a camera? I have edited ONE single video (sourced from real footage), and as i said, it was perfectly fine. The biggest issue with it was an audio problem the hardware created, ironically enough. Everything else i edit is screen recorded. With OBS. And like i already said, if i want better quality, i’ll just buy an actual camera, for the same price as a top of the line smartphone. And then get modularity, as well as other convenient features that make shooting video for production much easier.
this is not explicitly true, go look at film camera enthusiasts in the modern day. One of the selling points is taking photos that don’t waste film “make you shots count” even then it’s only been multiplied by 10 fold.
i’d much rather not spend modern premiums to get features that are a decade old. I think that’s reasonable. Especially when we start talking hardware real estate, these camera arrays take up a considerable portion of the phone. You could put a headphone jack there, more battery, better hardware, cooling, etc…
Especially when i can buy a modern used camera for a few hundred bucks, and get image quality MILES better than any phone sensor could ever think to produce. As well as flexibility with how i use it. I’m objectively just not buying a phone for better camera quality. It’s a non starter, it’s like saying every car NEEDS to be sporty. And now suddenly everybody is buying trucks and SUVs because they prefer the lofty ride of trucks over small cars with stiffer suspensions and smaller tires. Even though they might handle better, nobody cares. They want something more “luxurious” rather than performant. It’s just not a good use of money.
this isn’t true. Unless you place the cameras in the EXACT same location, there will be differences in parallax. As well as camera sensor quality itself. The iphone 15 when zooming, while recording has very explicit artifacts from switching between cameras. Not to mention the difference in quality due to the fact they have different lenses. It’s not as significant with photos. But all of those still apply. And besides, maybe i dont want it to forcibly switch, maybe i want to have control over the hardware i paid for and own?
You can’t tell me that the minor difference in quality between camera A and B is significant enough to warrant B over A or vice versa. And then ignore the obvious negative implications that multiple cameras have. Or tell me that lossy compression can be objectively quantified in an explicit manner that removes ALL doubt present about the efficacy of its algorithm. And then tell me the very physical nature of having two cameras in two different spots, means they take two different pictures just doesn’t matter at all.
That wasn’t your claim. You said all lossy compression is useless. Is a pixel there that was in the source? It’s a test that anyone can agree on. Which is beside the point that a better quality camera is an objectively testable feature.
That two cameras could give images that are so close as to result in subjective judgement as to which is better isn’t what we are discussing. Unless you are going to get weird and claim you prefer a blurry pixelated image.
Because it isn’t a problem! If you want to look at the Android source code and see how it multi threads based on the number big cores and little cores you can. But an end user does not need to read that documentation to use their phone. It is completely transparent to the phone user.
Nor is how the camera software distributes control to various camera modules a problem for end users. How the camera takes the photo is completely transparent to the end user.
Most of those 100 million cameras purchasers every year were not buying a camera for the first time in their life. Most were upgrading from their old camera. They bought the new camera to take better photos.
I already linked the study that showed people buy new phones primarily to take better photos.
The best camera is the one you have with you. You claimed you almost never take photos but now you are claiming you would buy another gadget to carry around all the time?
Yes a professional comparing a non zoomed and zoomed could tell they were taken from a different position. So what? The end user doesn’t need to care. The UI is pinch to zoom. That’s it.
Besides the actual parallax change will be smaller than a human hand is capable of being steady. The lenses are 1cm apart. Taking a picture 10 m away ( and really you would use zoom for things much farther ) yields an angle change of .01 degrees. Hand motion is why photographers have the 1/f rule. Your hands can’t keep a camera perfectly steady.
Then download a pro camera app. But your original claim that extra lenses are a burden on the end user is false. The default camera UI presents a seamless UI to the user just like the user doesn’t have to know how many and what types of cores are in their phone in order to use it.
Is your claim that there is absolutely no measurable difference between any cameras ever? Because that’s what you are arguing.
I claim my Pixel 7pro camera is objectively better than the camera in my 11 year old Galaxy Nexus. This isn’t iPhone 15 vs Pixel 8 pro where both are so equally matched that it becomes subjective.
You claimed you don’t see a need for more than one lens on a smartphone. I explained the technical reasons why phones have use multiple lenses to do what compact digital cameras can do with one lens.
Consumer now buy smartphones every few years for the better camera just like they bought better cameras every few years before smartphones existed.
as an analogue to your point about the camera being objectively better. My point is that you can’t boil everything down to objective facts, even if it is true, there are a number of other variables.
With lossy compression, that quite literally gets thrown out the window the second it’s used. If that’s the standard then all lossy compression is bad. The question is at what point, does N amount of deviation from the original image, make it noticeably different from the original image, to the point that it negatively affects the image more than the space it saves. That’s the hard part to quantify. And yet we use lossy compression everywhere. Literally nobody can agree what standard of compression is acceptable. I for one never touch HW accelerated encoding because it’s not efficient, and introduces artifacts. Yet other people are perfectly content using it. I would much rather store the original source file, even if it’s insanely big, over HW encoding it down to something more manageable, and potentially forever altering that file.
It depends on what standardized photo testing you use. If i can take a photo roughly 2-10 feet in front of me, and it looks decent. I do not care about anything else. If it’s outside of that range my eyesight is bad enough it doesn’t matter anyway. A phone with a built in zoom lense might be able to take better far shot photos. But i never take those, so it’s useless to me.
i mean, if we include photo processing, that’s just not true, unless major phone manufacturers have started open sourcing their software since i last checked.
i didnt look at it, but im not going to discount it either, frankly i just don’t care. I just don’t think more than like 30-40% of why people buy a new phone is to take better photos, maybe thats how they justify spending that money to themselves, i could see that. But JUST for better photos? idk. Maybe i’m just a bad capitalist who doesnt spend enough money.
as you already said "the best camera is the one you have with you, you continually brought up editing, and real world use cases where having a better camera would make sense. Which is where i would use that actual camera, i just don’t really care about the quality of the pictures i take that aren’t supposed to be actual media. It’s fine enough as is. Being any better isn’t going to appreciably change that.
i didn’t say that, i just stated that at a certain point, an end user is going to stop caring about a “feature” when it’s feature set is severely convoluted. Maybe i actually just care about what i spend my money on, and other people don’t. But i like knowing what im buying, before i spend my money on it.
no my claim is that anything that is 80% efficacy is going to be more than fine, your claim is that 99% efficacy is worse than 100% efficacy, which is true, but not perceptible.
i claim my iphone 5 as having a better camera than the leapfrog leappad. My point there, even though you have butchered it incredibly, is quite literally the difference between a pixel 8 and an iphone 15. You can’t go back to before multi cameras, because a modern single camera phone will still have improved since then.
i know, but for the same reason that i don’t care about a 4090 ti being faster than a 1070 due to its price being fascinatingly high. I don’t care about phones with more than one camera having better camera quality. I just dont want that feature.
Literally this entire thread started with “still don’t understand the appeal of multi camera phones” or something like that, it’s paraphrased. I know there are technical reasons one would do that, but i just can’t justify it for what it provides. Unless i see an actual proper realistic breakdown, of which exactly NONE exist. So i couldn’t line them up even if i wanted to. I’m just left to my own devices to see what else could be done. And so i just dont care. Same reason i dont care about phones having high refresh rates, it just wastes processing power, it feels smoother sure. I don’t really care though. I use it like 10 minutes out of my day maybe. Swiping sideways at 90hz doesn’t matter if i dont use it anyway. (dont bother explaining the difference to me, because i own multiple 144hz displays, i already know.)