If you are fifty something, then you must remember the days when mobile phone operators were focused on making their handsets as small as possible. Not surprising as my first mobile phone was like this:
Then phones got “smart”, they started to grow, and we were told we needed them to do lots of things for us. Then they got thinner, which just seemed to mean the battery got smaller and some models then folded in your pocket (The Guardian Sept 2014). Then they got a legitimate fold so they could get bigger again but that comes with an eye watering price tag (TechLinked Feb 2019).
A recent article on the BBC – “Nokia 9 PureView uses five cameras to take a photo” – seems to be showing that the next big “smartphone competition” will be the number of cameras on your phone. But do more lenses mean better quality photos, well the quick answer is usually yes, and I invite you to search YouTube for reviews of whatever phone you are interested in to see if the “lens war” is improving the pictures on that model. The thing I want to talk about here is zooming in.
Smartphone cameras have usually got a feature called “digital zoom” something I always turn off. Digital zoom is a software feature that apparently gets you closer to your subject, but in reality it normally degrades the quality of the image as a trade off for getting closer, hence I do not use it. The same effect can be got by cropping the bit of the image you want to get nearer to, out of the better quality wider shot. Now this will mean a better quality “closer” shot but also a smaller picture.
Now I am always looking to produce that great image using my smartphone so it was an easy decision for me to swap to an iPhone Xs (even though it is expensive) because it had two lenses for the camera, one standard and one that is a 2x zoom. Now I can get a closer shot without loosing image quality as the camera actually swaps to a real zoom lens to get closer, no software tricks involved.
Here is a recent “zoomed in” shot from my smartphone:
So my advice, to you, is to check that in among all those extra lenses, offered by the manufacturers, that a real zoom lens is one of the features included. So you too can get good quality closer photos.
Clive
Here are some more images I took on a recent trip to Scotland using my smartphone: http://www.clivecatton.co.uk/2019/01/27/photos-from-my-recent-trip-to-scotland/.
Since New Year’s Day 2012, Clive has posted a “photo a day” on his blog at www.clivecatton.co.uk, using a variety of iPhones. Clive is the CIO at Octagon Technology and has special responsibility for Privacy and Security. To understand these issues better he is currently studying on a distant learners course for an MSc in Advanced Computer Security and Digital Forensics at Napier University. If you would like to talk to Clive about security or privacy issues and feel you could buy him a cup of coffee (but not Starbucks!) give me a call and I will book some time with him for you.
Kamila
General Manager
Octagon Technology Ltd
