OmniVision Unveils 12 MP Camera Sensor

[WenWM]

​

When you want some stellar pictures, you rarely ever turn to your mobile phone in your pocket for those memories. Well, that might change with OmniVision’s latest announcement. Today they unveiled the latest imaging chip destined for Smartphone. This new chip is the first to offer 1080P video recording at 60 Frames per second to mobile users, and that’s not all. It even allows you to take great 12 MP pictures, all from your phone’s standard camera. This means your phone will capture stills with a resolution of 4224x3000 pixels at 15fps. The best part, for you quick action people, is it will include pixel-shift image stabilization and fast continuous still image shooting.

All these features make current imaging chips on our devices, seem like distant memories, and I will be excited to see some company (come on LG, Samsung, and HTC) adopt the technology for our next Droids.

Source: OmniVision unveils new 12.6MP sensor for cameraphones - GSMArena.com news

 

[steveninspokane]

All I can say is they better bring down the price in micro SD cards for this to have a shot.

 

[Big Ry]

All I can say is they better bring down the price in micro SD cards for this to have a shot.

Even 12+ MP pictures barely take up any storage

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk

 

[Abadus]

5Mp takes great pictures. Light is the only issue.

The other upgrades sound nice though but I don't get all geeked at the size of your MP's. Most people print out 5 x 7 pictures anyway

Faster cameras more pictures per minuet is good. Hopefully this chip also gathers more light.

 

[bazar6]

Light, but also color. Every phone camera I've had has a ton of grain in it, even tho it's "O wow, look, we put a 5MP camera in there", but the pics look like sh*t.

I don't care how big I can print the picture out at full resolution if it has no shot at having great colors.

lol, we'll need to have a ring of 5 LEDs around the lens so it gets enough light

 

[TheOldFart]

Light, but also color. Every phone camera I've had has a ton of grain in it, even tho it's "O wow, look, we put a 5MP camera in there", but the pics look like sh*t.

I don't care how big I can print the picture out at full resolution if it has no shot at having great colors.

lol, we'll need to have a ring of 5 LEDs around the lens so it gets enough light

It's noise. The smaller each sensor is the less light it gets and the more noise it produces. That is because the lack of light is compensated by increasing the gain. It is sort of like turning up the volume on a small stereo and just getting distorted sound. You turn up the gain on small sensors and just get noise. More megapixels in small sensors are designed to sell to those who have no idea how CCD and CMOS sensors work and what their limits are. Of course, as technology progresses, the noise factor decreases, but the growth in the number of pixels in sensors is way faster than the ability to eliminate the noise. Even in dedicated cameras with much larger sensors than what are in cell phones, 12 MP creates a lot of noise. Only the DSLRs can handle 12MP and greater efficiently.

 

[johnomaz]

Light, but also color. Every phone camera I've had has a ton of grain in it, even tho it's "O wow, look, we put a 5MP camera in there", but the pics look like sh*t.

I don't care how big I can print the picture out at full resolution if it has no shot at having great colors.

lol, we'll need to have a ring of 5 LEDs around the lens so it gets enough light

I've taken a TON of pictures on my DroidX. On the computer, they look grainy. But i recently bought a new printer that has photo printing capabilities and have to say, my DX takes AMAZING pictures. I've printed a bunch of 4x6 photos, but I have three borderles 8.5x11 prints and have gotten a TON of positive remarks not only about the contents but the quality of the print. They are all amazed it was taken on my phone. Here are two examples: Sample 1 Sample 2

The black/white one prints AMAZINGLY well. The detail of the bark at the playground is crazy good. The color one is also truely amazing looking. I've had people accuse me of photoshoping parts of it. The colors are WAY WAY more vibrant on the print than in the photo. My sons eyes are a crazy blue too on the print. And no, hes not bleached out from the flash, hes just very fair skinned.

I have a 14 megapixel camera and the images are very comparable. When you zoom in, they look grainy, but print beautifully. When viewed on a TV or something (I did as a slideshow for my parents a few times) the images are gorgeous.

 

[bazar6]

I haven't tried the pics on my moms DX, but those pics do look awesome for a camera phone. Sometimes i can get lucky with a great photo with the right light like TheOldFart was talking about. I was comparing the quality of the only devices I have; OG Droid (5mp), Xoom (5mp), Nikon D80 (10.1mp) and CoolPix S70 (12.1mp). Yes the DSLR takes the best pics, because that's all it does, it had better take great pics.

I guess I just don't see the point of putting a 12mp sensor in a phone when you have to have great settings or reallllly know what you're doing; didn't mean to step on any toes.

 

[xan]

for better pictures, what we really need in phones is better, higher quality lenses.
grabbing more pixels wont help increase picture quality all that much, if the lens is still cheap and made with out proper QC.

 

[SquireSCA]

Light, but also color. Every phone camera I've had has a ton of grain in it, even tho it's "O wow, look, we put a 5MP camera in there", but the pics look like sh*t.

I don't care how big I can print the picture out at full resolution if it has no shot at having great colors.

lol, we'll need to have a ring of 5 LEDs around the lens so it gets enough light

Exactly. Adding more MP to a phone is a marketing ploy more than anything. My DX does 8MP, but I keep it set to 5MP because the quality is not in the ballpark of even a low end digital camera.

You can add as many MP as you want, but when the lens is 6mm across and not even that deep, it won't matter.

The shots it takes are great "for a phone", but that's about it.

I think that phone makers should worry less about MP in their sub-par cameras and focus more attention to battery life and timely OS updates.

 

[bazar6]

I think that phone makers should worry less about MP in their sub-par cameras and focus more attention to battery life and timely OS updates.

Don't hold your breath... lol

 

[SquireSCA]

I think that phone makers should worry less about MP in their sub-par cameras and focus more attention to battery life and timely OS updates.

Don't hold your breath... lol

Yeah, I know. LOL

I mean, why listen to actual users who pay top dollar for these things and can tell you exactly where they fall short, when you can go to some 23 year old with a marketing degree that just tells you that more of any number must be better? LOL

 

[xan]

some 23 year old with a marketing degree that just tells you that more of any number must be better? LOL

I met that guy last year... he didn't know spinal tap was a parody...

"I had all my amps modified to go up to 11, cause its one louder than 10."

 

[640k]

All I can say is they better bring down the price in micro SD cards for this to have a shot.

Even 12+ MP pictures barely take up any storage

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk

under what compression ratio? let's not forget we're losing quality also in the processing it takes to shrink the file size. I have a 12MP DSLR and some RAW photos are 10MB in size!

Light, but also color. Every phone camera I've had has a ton of grain in it, even tho it's "O wow, look, we put a 5MP camera in there", but the pics look like sh*t.

I don't care how big I can print the picture out at full resolution if it has no shot at having great colors.

lol, we'll need to have a ring of 5 LEDs around the lens so it gets enough light

I've taken a TON of pictures on my DroidX. On the computer, they look grainy. But i recently bought a new printer that has photo printing capabilities and have to say, my DX takes AMAZING pictures. I've printed a bunch of 4x6 photos, but I have three borderles 8.5x11 prints and have gotten a TON of positive remarks not only about the contents but the quality of the print. They are all amazed it was taken on my phone. Here are two examples: Sample 1 Sample 2

The black/white one prints AMAZINGLY well. The detail of the bark at the playground is crazy good. The color one is also truely amazing looking. I've had people accuse me of photoshoping parts of it. The colors are WAY WAY more vibrant on the print than in the photo. My sons eyes are a crazy blue too on the print. And no, hes not bleached out from the flash, hes just very fair skinned.

I have a 14 megapixel camera and the images are very comparable. When you zoom in, they look grainy, but print beautifully. When viewed on a TV or something (I did as a slideshow for my parents a few times) the images are gorgeous.

you're experiencing the "benefits" of higher resolution sensors but are still missing the point. these high resolution sensors are capable of "hiding" the excessive noise in any photo, IF LEFT UNTOUCHED! crop, zoom, alter said photos and the noise will become more and more pronounced. just like you observed the noise on your computer.

it's not that the printer is doing a good job of reducing or hiding the noise, it's that hte image has enough resolution that it's unnoticeable.

 

[steveninspokane]

I was mostly concerned with the 1080p video recording. I have and HD Video recorder, and a Canon DSLR that records at 720p, and the file sizes get pretty big. Unless you continue to move them to your computer the space will get used up pretty fast. But I suppose it also depends on how much video taking each person does, some do more than others.