Posts tagged Camera
iOS 4 and its Newfound Camera Speed
Jul 8th
I was at a sci-fi convention over the weekend. It was my first one, so naturally I wanted many photos. My experiment was to use just the iPhone. The results? Not great. With iOS 3 (can we call it that, or is it iPhone OS 3.0?), the camera was slow, but some magic made nearly every photo clear, sharp and amazing.
Leo Laporte (of TWiT) had an interesting suggestion on what used to happen. Taking a photo would cause the iPhone to take several photos at the same time. Then, an algorithm would process the photos and pick the cleanest, sharpest, best looking one and save it to the camera roll. This process is what caused the iPhone camera to be “slow” in comparison. iOS 4 makes the camera much faster (x2 or x3 faster, even), but it feels like every photo is blurry.
Every lighting condition, every situation, every object in the frame - I had to take two or three shots to capture it clearly. Even still, I’m not pleased with the quality of my photos. The gentle quivering of my hand caused photos to be ruined. Even my “clean” photos are blurry.
The pictured photos are of a mostly stationary person on the elevator with a silly shirt tagline as an example. It took five photos to get the “clear one” you see in on the right. I’m convinced that iOS 3 would have been one photo. Has anyone else noticed this? Seriously. I’m pissed.
Who wants a digital camera that makes phone calls?
Feb 10th
I love technology as much as the next guy. Even seemingly useless technology catches my eye; I want to be able to control my PS3 from my laptop, my car from my phone, my lights and speakers from my iPod Touch. But still, sometimes I see technological “advances” that I just don’t understand.
Sony, makers of all things fancy, quality and expensive, has gone all out with their new XPERIA X10 phone. It has all the features of a high-end smart phone: huge touchscreen, Wifi, the Android OS and an absolutely absurd 8.1MP camera with up to 16X zoom. Yes, a phone with a camera better than many people’s stand-alone digital camera. While I don’t see why someone would need an 8.1MP, 16X zoom camera on a phone, that’s not even the technology I don’t get.
The XPERIA X10 has the coolest, less-practically-useful feature I’ve seen in a while: facial recognition software. Apparently, with this phone, when you take a picture of someone whom you’ve photographed in the past, the camera picks up on the face and gives you immediate access to all the other pictures of that person you’ve taken in the past. It also groups them together in the media folder. This sounds like a great idea and, according to the video I saw of it working, seems to function just as described.
Still, I can’t imagine a scenario where this would we necessary. If you take enough pictures to want an 8.1MP camera on your phone, why wouldn’t you just buy a decent digital camera? I take a decent number of pics from my phone, but simply using folders seems like enough organization for me.
Add that to the reported $850+ price tag (I’m sure it’s less with a contract) and I see this as another awesome Sony product that doesn’t quite fit anyone’s needs.
More about the phone here and watch the short video of this feature over here.
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