This is the new Huawei P20 Pro smartphone, which boasts what the manufacturers claim is the best ever smartphone camera. Actually, a combination of three sensors with individual lenses, a 40 megapixel (yes!) 1/1.7 inch colour sensor (significantly larger than the 1/2.9 sensor in the iPhone X), a 20 megapixel monochrome sensor (both these sensors are approximately equivalent to a full-frame 27mm lens) and a 8 megapixel 80mm equivalent lens for zooming.
Would a circular image sensor be the best thing ever? Heck yeah!
Have you ever wondered why camera lenses produce a circular image circle (in general) but sensors are rectangular? Of course the answer is mostly historical – the format of a 35mm photo is in 3:2 aspect ratio, a ratio that people have long known to work well due to human binocular vision.
But lenses, in general, are circular. they produce an image circle, a circle that, in general, allows the 35mm sensor to just fit inside it. You don’t want your image circle much bigger than this (except for tilt-shift lenses) because that makes your lenses heavier and more expensive.
A hipster’s guide to EOS film cameras
Are you the sort of person who thinks that digital photography is as unexciting as shaving? Then read on…
FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!