Yeah, and arguably those systems were clunky to use, barely had any quality improvements over the native cameras, awkward to attach/detach and never really caught on.
This in part is why I made the project — it’s a thought experiment on how to make such a product more seamless and user-friendly. So I guess sorry if it came across as presenting a completely new idea, it wasn’t intended as such. It’s an attempt to revise an unsuccessful idea considering more modern solutions.
I have always wanted something like this! The processor in our phones are far more powerful than any camera, so why not use it. Same with the screen. And I want all images geotagged, something a phone has built in. And importantly, I want my images on my phone for sharing. Just need a little bigger sensor and a way to attach lenses. I always thought the old Nikon 1 system would make a great starting point.
Cameras have low processing power because they don’t require all that much. The issue is the physics of light severely limiting what a sensor small enough to fit in a smartphone can do. A small sensor requires either fewer pixels, smaller pixels, or both.
Smaller pixels = less light gathered = worse image quality and far worse low light performance.
While something like this could be made, it would be very expensive, and there is no possible way it could come close to the image quality of even an entry-level DSLR or mirrorless camera. Even the best lens in the world can’t make up for a bad sensor. Smartphones can use their higher processing power to try to hide it with HDR and absurdly bad faked depth of field, but it will always look noticeably worse compared to the same photo taken on even a very old, low-end APS-C or full frame camera.
Smartphone cameras definitely fill a big niche in photography, but unless there’s an incredible breakthrough in sensor technology, their physical limitations will always prevent them from being good enough for widespread professional use.
I agree. Which is why I want a moderate sized sensor in a format that can attach to my phone. Small enough the lenses are easy to carry, but multiple times larger than what will fit in a phone.
Also, much of the amazing things phones are able to pull off with absurdly small sensors is because of processing. My iPhone has a special chip just for image processing. Many things can be done in software. My DSLR’s are slow, clunky, and the software rarely changes much post purchase.
My use case would be travel. Phone cameras today are terrible anywhere you need a telephoto lens. But I also rarely want to carry a full dslr (I own several). And, I want to easily share photos as I take them. Today I use my phone and leave my big cameras at home. There are many times I don’t even bother getting it out of my pocket because I know taking the photo I could easily take with my SLR would be impossible.
That is a well-thought concept. I especially like the idea to attach the components to the lens and the camera itself to the smartphone magnetically, like a Mag-Safe charger to a laptop.
But here’s the question:
Since the camera lens is not connected hardware-wise to the phone - how will the data (pictures) be transferred to the phone? I estimate the phone’s display will be served as the viewfinder and the pictures will be stored in the phones flash drive. I could imagine that the camera lens will be connected via bluetooth, but wouldn’t it result in a too low data transfer rate? When I transfer pictures from my phone to my laptop via bluetooth it takes several seconds per picture. An alternative Idea regarding the data transfer I could think of is to attach a cable from the lens to the charging port.
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