That difference in sensor size is the equivalent of a 4.5EV ( f-stop) deficiency to overcome. Since a typical smartphone sensor might receive less than one-twentieth of the photons of a 35mm full-frame sensor for the same exposure time, it is much more prone to noise. The amount of noise is directly related to the overall amount of light captured in an image (which Guichard describes as the photon flow). Advances in sensor technology quickly began to close the resolution gap with larger cameras, but noise reduction continued to remain an elusive challenge for the smaller-sensor cameras in smartphones. Noise represents the toughest challengeĮarly smartphones suffered in both resolution and noise due to their small sensor size. However, one area that has proven remarkably stubborn in resisting improvement is image noise. They also often have access to additional information about the distance to the primary subject or even a depth map of the entire scene. Smartphone makers can do that because they provide the complete system, including the sensor, optics, and image processing pipeline. (Credit: DxO)Īll of these automatic corrections do require measuring the characteristics of the optic and sensor combinations very precisely. The color fringes in the original images on the left can largely be fixed automatically, as you can see by the corrected images on the right. When we test cameras and sensors at DXOMARK, it requires over 1600 images in a variety of lab and natural environments to get a good measurement of its performance for the most important of these: There are dozens of axes on which image quality can be measured, and hundreds of attributes. If so, is there still a role for digital cameras?īridging the gap: Smartphones caught up by conquering noise.Are today’s smartphones actually better than digital cameras?.
How have today’s smartphones managed to close the image quality gap with digital cameras?. The impressive improvement in smartphone cameras leads to three important questions that Guichard addressed in the remainder of his keynote speech: Full-frame camera or smartphone: Image quality questions Results like these induced Guichard to dig deeper into how this became possible, and where both technologies will go from here. The fact that it can be this hard to tell which image is which is a sign of how good smartphone cameras have become in many situations. Google has used the power of computational imaging to assemble several frames automatically into a very impressive result. In fact, the image on the left is the one from the Sony a7R III, and the one on the right is from the Pixel 3. Perhaps it is natural foreground blur from the optics of the full-frame camera, or is it maybe motion blur from the smartphone? On the right there is amazingly good detail preservation throughout the image, even in very low light, so it would be easy to conclude that it couldn’t possibly be from the smaller-sensor smartphone. Looking closer we notice some loss of detail in the water in the image on the left. We expect that from a full-frame camera, but it is an impressive achievement for a smartphone. Lambert, Petapixelįirst, it’s worth noting that both images are quite impressive for a night scene. Doing anything with photos captured on a traditional digital camera typically requires a lot of effort, and often a complicated set of steps: Just as importantly, smartphones revolutionized photographic workflow. As the famous saying goes (made even more famous by iPhone icon Chase Jarvis), “The best camera is the one you have with you.” As a result, nearly everyone had one, and had it with them all the time. The first major factor that helped make smartphones the camera of choice for most people was simply that they became essential tools for daily life. Convenience and ease-of-use made the smartphone the top choice for photography But in hindsight it is straightforward to see what caused the rapid adoption of smartphones for photography. Initially, it wasn’t obvious that this transition would happen so quickly-and it certainly caught many camera makers flat-footed. By 2013 they were outselling digital cameras of all kinds by a factor of more than 10 to 1. The sheer number of photos taken on smartphones is one obvious result of their increasing market share overall. By 2015, smartphone sales dwarfed traditional camera sales, and the numbers have only become more extreme since then ( Source: CIPA). 
Camera and smartphone sales by year showing the explosive growth of smartphones compared to standalone cameras.
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