Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Even before the whole global pandemic thing, vlogging was on the rise. This last year, though, seems to have caused a significant boost in the number of vloggers out there and many have taken to doing it on their smartphones.
We’re on lockdown again here in Scotland and getting out with a bunch of camera gear to shoot videos isn’t exactly possible right now. So, I’ve been testing out some smartphone vlogging gear over the last few weeks during my daily exercise to see how well they hold up.
Well, it looks like Huawei’s not the only one with high photographic sights as smartphone manufacturer Vivo has also announced a partnership with Zeiss for camera development in their new X60 series. There will be three models in the X60 series – the regular X60, the X60 Pro and the X60 Pro+.
The first two smartphones have already made their public debut, but the third has not. Allegedly leaked renders found online, however, suggest that the X60 Pro+ may feature a quad-camera unit, bearing that famous Zeiss logo.
It’s been a long time coming, and they’ve been common in compact cameras since the days of 35mm film, but it looks like retractable lenses might finally start popping up in our smartphones. During yesterday’s Xiaomi Developer Conference in Beijing, they showed off a new lens tech that could potentially help smartphone photography take a giant leap. And soon, too!
GSMArena reports that Xiaomi has said the tech is ready to go, right now for implementation in real products. They say that it can collect 300% more light than traditional lenses – which means we might finally start to see phone images higher than ISO50 with drastically reduced levels of noise.
The world of smartphones moves thick and fast these days, and a lot of them all start to look the same after a while, but this is one announcement I’ve definitely been waiting for. Chinese smartphone company, vivo has today announced their expansion into Europe and they’ve announced a new phone – sort of.
It’s the X51 5G, which is essentially the European release of the X50 Pro, from the company’s flagship X series and it features a gimbal stabilised camera. You might remember the gimbal camera was first teased in the vivo Apex concept camera back in March, expected for the X50 in May and then released in China in June. Now, it’s coming to Europe.
Massive wildfires are currently raging in the US West Coast. The skies have been colored orange and red, but you might not be able to accurately capture it with your phone camera. Many people have noticed that auto white balance on phone cameras is severely affecting orange and red hues. This makes this whole tragedy look way less dramatic and alarming than it is.
We heard last month that the world’s first smartphone with an under-display camera was about to be launched in September. And indeed, here it is: the ZTE Axon 20 5G is now finally available and the under-display camera is more than just a concept.
While there have been a few prototypes and concept phones from the likes of Oppo, Xiaomi and Samsung, it seems none of them will win the race to release the first smartphone with an under-glass selfie camera. No, that honour will be taken by Chinese smartphone manufacturer, ZTE with their new ZTE Axon 20 5G.
No specific details have been mentioned about the specs of the under-glass selfie camera contained within the phone, although XDA-Developers says it’ll be 32-megapixel. ZTE says that it will be “the world’s first mass-produced 5G smartphone featuring under-display camera” and will launch on September 1st.
One of China’s largest OLED manufacturers, Visionox who provides panels for flagship smartphones like Xiaomi’s Mi 10 and Mi Note 10 has announced that they’re ready to begin mass production of smartphone displays compatible with under-screen cameras.
The concept has been around for a little while now. The first was unveiled in June last year, by Oppo. But it was mostly a proof-of-concept prototype showing off the idea rather than an issue-free device that was ready for prime time. It faced one big challenge, which Visionox claims to have beaten.
Samsung is reportedly ramping up its image sensor production capabilities in a big way, although it’s doing it at the expense of RAM production – again. The process began in 2018 when Samsung converted its DRAM-producing Line 11 plant to make image sensors instead. At that time, they also announced their intention to convert Line 13 to do the same.
The conversion of Line 13 was expected towards the end of 2018, but it seems to have not happened yet. Business Korea reports that the plan is now going ahead, though, at a cost of 1 trillion Korean won (₩) or around US$815 million. Which, apparently, is actually cheaper than building a whole new factory.
Vivo’s next flagship smartphone will have a giant gimbal-style camera, a teaser posted to Chinese social media site, Weibo suggests. The gimbal-like smartphone camera technology was first shown off in March in Vivo’s Apex 2020 concept phone.
According to The Verge, Vivo was inspired by the way a chameleon’s eye works and its effectiveness and that this system 200% more effective than the types of optical image stabilisation found in most smartphone cameras today. If the implications in the teaser hold true, this will be its first implementation in a commercial device.
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