How to choose a smartphone with the best camera. What is the best camera? (2019) Image quality depends on photography

Publication date: 13.03.2015

This lesson will be especially useful for beginner photographers who have just picked up a camera. Often the joy of buying a camera is quickly replaced by sadness from the fact that the pictures are not as high quality as we want: either the color is not the same, then the photo is too dark, then not very sharp ... And it also happens that the photographer cannot adequately assess the quality of his own photos. pictures without noticing their obvious flaws. This happens due to his inexperience or excessive enthusiasm for taking the first steps. To improve in photography, you need to decide what flaws you currently have in your pictures. This will help you understand what to strive for and what to consider in future shootings.

Of course, in the context of creative photography, any flaw in the quality of a picture can be used as an artistic device or passed off as such later. "That's how I see it!" However, only those who know them well and know how to take technically competent pictures break the rules in their favor.

Let's see what "three pillars" the technical quality of the image is based on and understand what camera settings they depend on.

Image Brightness

For a photo to look good and be perceived by the viewer, it must be neither too bright nor too dark. In most situations, it is important that all the details are conveyed in the photo - both in dark and in light areas.

Dark photo.
Details in dark areas are indistinguishable. In their place are just black spots, "underlight"

Too bright frame.
Details in highlight areas are lost. In their place there were only white spots, "overexposure"

Speaking of the brightness of the shots, it should be mentioned that the photographer can often approach the work with the brightness creatively, for example, when creating photos with silhouettes.

But this is more of an exception to a simple rule: in a high-quality photograph, you can distinguish details both in the dark areas of the image and in the light.

What will be the photo? Bright or dark? The exposure parameters are responsible for this - shutter speed, aperture, photosensitivity. It is by combining these three parameters in different ways that photographers achieve the brightness of the photo that they need.

Even when we shoot in automatic mode, the camera itself sets three exposure parameters for us, independently determining how bright the future frame should be. But the camera does not know what we are shooting and what brightness we want to get the result. Therefore, camera automation can make mistakes, especially in difficult conditions: when shooting in the dark, when working in backlight (for example, when photographing a person against the sun or opposite a window).

Of course, any photographer should know how to adjust the exposure settings: shutter speed, aperture and ISO. In this article, we will look at the easiest way to adjust the brightness of a future photo. If we took a test shot and saw that the picture is too dark or too light, we will use exposure compensation. By making exposure compensation, we tell the camera how much brighter or darker the frame needs to be. In Nikon cameras, exposure compensation can be used in P, A, S and M modes (in the latter case, when using Auto-ISO).

Exposure compensation is set up a little differently on different cameras (it's best to look in the instructions for your camera). However, on the display, its introduction is displayed approximately the same.

sharpness

Our subject must be sufficiently clear, detailed. Only then will we be able to see it fully. Sharp shots look much more attractive! It is not necessary that absolutely all objects in the photo be sharp. Sometimes it is enough to sharpen only the main object, focusing attention on it.

Sharpness is a very tricky thing. Things with her are not always as obvious as in the upper example. Small flaws in sharpness may not be noticed when viewing images on the camera display without magnification. Let's compare these two images.

Looking at these two photos in such a small format, you won't notice that one of them isn't really sharp. Let's take a look at these pictures in detail. What is most important in a portrait shot? What should we sharpen in a portrait photo? First of all, the face, the eyes.

And this slight lack of sharpness will then affect both when viewing images on a computer monitor in a larger format, and when printing. Therefore, in order to fully appreciate the sharpness of an image, it is better to view it at full scale, at full magnification.

Make sure your shots are sharp enough! Only in this case, the pictures will be of the highest quality, and those megapixels, of which there are so many in your camera, will not be wasted when creating fuzzy pictures.

What parameters are responsible for the sharpness of the photo?

Focusing. To get a sharp shot, you need to focus exactly on the subject being shot. Modern cameras have very advanced autofocus systems.

The camera can automatically choose which point to focus on. But she can make a mistake with the choice, focusing very precisely, but not where you wanted. Learn how to manage focus points on your camera. Remember that after focusing, you cannot change the distance between the subject and you, move away or even approach a centimeter: in this case, the focus will fail, the frame will be blurry.

Lack of depth of field. Sometimes it turns out like this: something in the picture turned out to be sharp, but we wanted to bring much more objects into focus. So we didn't have enough depth of field. The lack of depth of field is especially felt when shooting with fast or long-focus optics at close range. We just recently wrote about what depth of field is and how to adjust it.

In short, the main parameter by which you can adjust the depth of field when shooting is the aperture. By closing the aperture, we will increase the depth of field, by opening it, we will reduce and blur the background in the photo more strongly.

Excerpt. A very common flaw, especially for novice photographers, is blurry frames when shooting at too slow a shutter speed. Sometimes some fast-moving object can be smeared in this way: a running person, a driving car. It is better to shoot such things at shorter shutter speeds: the faster our hero is, the shorter the shutter speed is needed. For example, in order for a running person to turn out sharp in a photo, it must be shot at a shutter speed shorter than 1/250s.

But it also happens that there is no fast movement in the frame, but it is still blurry. This usually happens when photographing without a flash indoors, in the dark. When the shutter speed is too long, the camera shakes in the hands of the photographer begin to affect, and the frame is blurred from this. This often happens if you use telephoto lenses and shoot with a strong approximation, at maximum zoom. Photographers call such a defect "shake".

How to get rid of "shake"? There are two ways. The first is to shorten the shutter speed. This option is suitable for shooting moving objects. The second is to put the camera on a tripod or secure support. This option is only suitable for shooting still scenes (landscapes), people will be blurry due to the fact that they themselves are also moving. Shutter speed is adjusted in S or M modes. If we work in other modes, the automatic system itself will shorten the shutter speed, if we raise the ISO, open the aperture wider. The shutter speed is always indicated in the camera display. How much should the shutter speed be shortened so that there is no “shake”? Here a lot depends on the photographer himself: on his physiology, on how correctly and firmly he holds the camera. Despite this, photographers have deduced two more or less universal methods for calculating the maximum shutter speed allowed for handheld photography: simple and complex.

• The "easy way" is that for most handheld shots, you don't need to slow your shutter speed past 1/60s. This rule will help you get more or less sharp shots in almost all cases of shooting with a whale lens. However, if you have a telephoto lens, then at maximum zoom it will require faster shutter speeds.
• The "complicated method" will help to calculate the shutter speed for each specific shooting case, which will insure against the appearance of "shake". Photographers, based on their own experience, came up with a formula: the maximum slow shutter speed when photographing handheld should be no more than 1 / (focal length x 2). Let's say the focal length of our lens is 50mm. It turns out that the value of the maximum shutter speed will be 1 / (50x2). That is 1/100 s. So if your shutter speed is longer than the resulting value, it is better to shorten it. But if we shoot with a lens with a focal length of 20 mm, then this formula will give us a different value: 1 / (20x2) \u003d 1/40 s. So the shorter the focal length of the lens, the slower the shutter speed can be used. Note that earlier this formula was dispensed with without a two in the denominator. The formula was: shutter speed = 1 / focal length. However, the increase in the resolution of camera matrices (they have more and more megapixels) and the transition to a reduction in the APS-C format matrix have made their own adjustments to the formula.

However, once again, we note that these rules will not insure 100% against wiggling: after all, anything can happen when shooting. For example, if you jerk the camera sharply when taking a picture, then even at the shortest shutter speeds, blurring may appear. When photographing, it is better to hold the camera still, gently, but strongly.

Optical image stabilization technology also helps a lot in the fight against shaking. The stabilizer will compensate for camera shake in your hands. In this way, you can take handheld photographs at slower shutter speeds. However, optical stabilization is not a panacea. It will only reduce the likelihood of blurry frames. In general, the photographer will still have to ensure that the shutter speed is not too slow when shooting handheld.

As a rule, the optical stabilization module is located in the lens. So if you have problems with shaking, you often have to shoot handheld in poor light, then you can just choose a stabilized lens for yourself. In the case of Nikon cameras, such lenses have the letters VR (Vibration Reduction) in the name. It is believed that the stabilizer helps to take pictures at shutter speeds 3-4 exposure steps longer. When working with a stabilized lens, instead of 1/60 s, a shutter speed of 1/5 s can be used. However, in practice, of course, not everything is so rosy: only an experienced photographer who skillfully and firmly holds the camera in his hands can get good results with such shootings. For beginners, it’s better to shoot at standard shutter speeds, without lengthening them once again, relying on a stabilizer. For a beginner, a stabilizer is a means of securing and protecting against accidental jerking of the camera when photographing.

digital noise. When there is a lot of noise in the picture - the so-called digital noise, this also cannot but affect the sharpness of the photo. One of the exposure parameters, ISO, is almost entirely responsible for the appearance of digital noise in a photo. The pattern is simple: the higher the ISO value with which we shoot, the more noise will appear in the photo.

digital noise. The image is covered with small dots of different brightness and color, “ripples”. It is worth checking pictures for the amount of noise, as well as for focusing accuracy, at 100% magnification. On a small preview, you run the risk of not noticing anything.

The level of digital noise for different cameras is different: a lot depends on the matrix, processor. But in general, the pattern is simple: the larger the camera matrix and the more modern it is, the less noise.

Light sensitivity is measured in ISO units. The minimum value in most cameras is ISO 100. At the minimum ISO value, we will get the cleanest picture, without noise. But ISO 6400 is already a very high value. At this ISO, digital noise will be clearly visible on any camera. Partly in the fight against digital noise, the noise reduction system helps: images become smoother, suitable for large format printing. However, everything is not so simple here either: when using “noise reduction”, the picture can also lose detail.

More banal than this axiom is only the explanation "the iPhone, it turns out, does not have a slot for a memory card." But beginners continue to make mistakes when they "peck" on the number of megapixels in the camera, which means they will have to repeat themselves.

Imagine a window - an ordinary window in a residential building or apartment. The number of megapixels is, roughly speaking, the number of glasses inside the window frame. If we continue to draw parallels with smartphones, in ancient times, glass for windows was the same size and was considered a scarce commodity. Therefore, when the conditional "Tolyan" said that he had 5 glasses (megapixels) in his window unit, everyone understood that Anatoly was a serious and wealthy person. And the characteristics of the window were also immediately clear - a good view to the outside of the house, a large glazing area.

A few years later, windows (megapixels) were no longer in short supply, so their number only needed to be brought to the required level, and then calm down. Just bring it into line with the area (window for ventilation and a loggia, for the sake of strength, require a different number of windows) so that the camera gives out a slightly denser picture than 4K monitors and TVs give out. And finally, to deal with other characteristics - for example, to deal with clouding of glasses and image distortion. Teach cameras how to properly focus and paint the available megapixels with high quality, if you want specifics.

There are more “megapixels” on the right, but they give nothing but “obstacles” with the same “sensor” area

But people are already used to measuring the quality of cameras in megapixels, and sellers gladly indulged this. Therefore, the circus with a huge number of glasses (megapixels) in the same size frame (the size of the camera matrix) continued. As a result, today the pixels in smartphone cameras, although not “filled” with the density of a mosquito net, but the “devitrification” has become too dense, and more than 15 megapixels in smartphones almost always spoil rather than improve photos. This has never happened before, and here again it turned out that it is not the size that matters, but the skill.

At the same time, as you understand, the "evil" is not the megapixels themselves - if tons of megapixels were spread out on a sufficiently large camera, they would benefit the smartphone. When the camera is able to unleash the potential of all the megapixels on board, and not “smear” them in bulk when shooting, the photo can be enlarged, cropped, and it will remain high-quality. That is, no one will understand that this is just a fragment of a larger picture. But now such miracles are found only in the “correct” SLR and mirrorless cameras, in which the matrix alone (a microcircuit with photo sensors, on which a picture arrives through the “glasses” of the camera) is much larger than the smartphone camera assembly.

"Evil" is a tradition of sticking a clip of megapixels into tiny cell phone cameras. This tradition has brought nothing but blurred pictures and an excess of digital noise (“peas” in the frame).

Sony piled on 23 megapixels where competitors put 12-15 megapixels, and paid for this with a decrease in picture clarity. (photo - manilashaker.com)

For reference: in the best camera phones of 2017, the main rear cameras (not to be confused with the b/w additional ones) all operate with “pathetic” 12-13 megapixels as one. In photo resolution, this is approximately 4032x3024 pixels - enough for a Full HD (1920x1080) monitor, and for 4K (3840x2160) too, albeit back to back. Roughly speaking, if the smartphone camera has more than 10 megapixels, their number is no longer important. Other things are important.

How to determine that the camera is of high quality, before looking at the photos and videos from it

Aperture - how wide the smartphone "opened its eyes"

The squirrel feeds on nuts, the deputies feed on the money of the people, and the cameras feed on light. The more light, the better the photo quality and more details. Only sunny weather and studio-style bright lighting lamps for any occasion of life can not be enough. Therefore, for good photos indoors, or outdoors in cloudy weather / at night, cameras are designed in such a way that they produce a lot of light even in adverse conditions.

The easiest way to get more light to hit the camera sensor is to make the hole in the lens larger. The indicator of how wide the “eyes” of the camera are opened is called aperture, aperture, or aperture ratio - this is the same parameter. And the words are different so that the reviewers in the articles can show off incomprehensible terms for as long as possible. Because, if you don’t show off, the aperture can simply be called, excuse me, a “hole”, as is customary among photographers.

Aperture is indicated by a fraction with the letter f, a slash and a number (or with a capital F and no fraction: for example, F2.2). Why

so - a long story, and that's not the point, as Rotaru sings. The bottom line is this: the smaller the number after the letter F and the slash, the better the camera in the smartphone. For example, f / 2.2 in smartphones is good, but f / 1.9 is better! The wider the aperture, the more light enters the matrix and the better the smartphone “sees” (takes better photos and videos) at night. As a bonus, the wide aperture comes with beautiful background blur when you're photographing flowers up close, even if your phone doesn't have a dual camera.

Melania Trump explains what different apertures look like in smartphone cameras

Before buying a smartphone, do not be too lazy to clarify how “seeing” the rear camera is in it. We looked after the Samsung Galaxy J3 2017 - drive in the search "Galaxy J3 2017 aperture", "Galaxy J3 2017 aperture" or "Galaxy J3 2017 aperture" to find out the exact figure. If nothing is known about the aperture in the smartphone that you have looked at for yourself, two options are possible:

• The camera is so bad that the manufacturer decided to keep silent about its characteristics. Approximately the same rudeness marketers are engaged in when, in response to “what processor is in the smartphone?” they answer “quad-core” and evade in every possible way so as not to disclose a specific model.
• The smartphone has just appeared on sale and no characteristics, except for those in the advertising announcement, have yet been “delivered” on it. Wait a couple of weeks - usually during this time the details come out.

What should be the aperture in the camera of a new smartphone?

In 2017-2018 even in a budget model, the rear camera should produce at least f / 2.2. If the number in the denominator of this fraction is greater, get ready for the fact that the camera will see the picture as if in darkened glasses. And in the evening and at night, she will be “blind-sighted” and will be able to see almost nothing even at a distance of several meters from the smartphone. And don’t rely on the “twists” of brightness - in a smartphone with f / 2.4 or f / 2.6, an evening photo with an exposure “stretched” by the program will turn out to be “rough smudge”, while a camera with f / 2.2 or f / 2.0 will take a better photo without tricks.

The wider the aperture, the higher the quality of shooting on a smartphone camera

The coolest smartphones today have cameras with f/1.8, f/1.7 or even f/1.6 apertures. The aperture itself does not guarantee the maximum quality of pictures (no one has canceled the quality of the sensor and “glasses”) - this, I will quote the photographers, is just a “hole” through which the camera looks at the world. But other things being equal, it is better to choose smartphones in which the camera does not “squint”, but receives an image with wide-open “eyes”.

Diagonal of the matrix (sensor): the more - the better

The matrix in a smartphone is not the matrix where people with complex faces in black raincoats dodge bullets. In mobile phones, this word means a photocell ... in other words, a plate onto which a picture flies through the “glasses” of optics. In old cameras, the picture arrived on film and was stored there, and the matrix instead accumulates information about the photograph and sends it to the smartphone's processor. The processor arranges all this into the final photo and stores the files in internal memory, or on microSD.

The only thing you need to know about the matrix is ​​that it should be as large as possible. If the optics is a water hose, and the diaphragm is the neck of the container, then the matrix is ​​​​the very reservoir for water, which is never enough.

It is customary to measure the dimensions of the matrix in inhuman, from the bell tower of ordinary buyers, vidicon inches. One such inch is equal to 17 mm, but the cameras in smartphones have not yet reached such dimensions, so the matrix diagonal is denoted by a fraction, as in the case of the aperture. The smaller the second digit in the fraction (divisor), the larger the matrix -> the cooler the camera.

Is it clear that nothing is clear? Then just remember these numbers:

A budget smartphone will take good pictures if the matrix size in it is at least 1/3 "with a camera resolution of no higher than 12 megapixels. More megapixels - lower quality in practice. And if there are less than ten megapixels, the photo will be on good large monitors and TVs look loose, simply because they have fewer dots than the height-width of your monitor screen.

In mid-range smartphones, a good matrix size is 1/2.9” or 1/2.8”. Find a larger one (1/2.6” or 1/2.5”, for example) - consider yourself very lucky. In flagship smartphones, a good tone is a matrix of at least 1/2.8”, and preferably 1/2.5”.

Smartphones with large sensors shoot better than models with small photocells

Is it even tougher? It happens - look at 1/2.3” in the Sony Xperia XZ Premium and XZ1. Why, then, these smartphones do not set records for photo quality? Because the "automatic" of the camera is constantly mistaken with the selection of settings for shooting, and the stock of "clarity and vigilance" of the camera is spoiled by the number of megapixels - they piled 19 in these models instead of the standard 12-13 MP for new flagships, and a fly in the ointment crossed out the advantages of a huge matrix.

Are there smartphones in nature with a good camera and less harsh characteristics? Yes - take a look at the Apple iPhone 7 with its 1/3" at 12 megapixels. On the Honor 8, which is enough 1/2.9" with the same number of megapixels. Magic? No - just good optics and perfectly "licked" automation, which takes into account the potential of the camera as well as tailored trousers take into account the amount of cellulite on the thighs.

But there is a problem - manufacturers almost never indicate the size of the sensor in the specifications, because these are not megapixels, and you can be embarrassed if the sensor is cheap. And in reviews or descriptions of smartphones in online stores, such camera characteristics are even less common. Even if you have chosen a smartphone with an adequate number of megapixels and a promising aperture value, there is a chance that you will never know the size of the rear sensor. In this case, pay attention to the last characteristic of smartphone cameras, which directly affects the quality.

Few large pixels are better than many small ones.

Imagine a sandwich with red caviar, or take a look at it if you don’t remember well what such delicacies look like. Just as eggs in a sandwich are distributed over a piece of loaf, the area of ​​​​the camera sensor (camera matrix) in a smartphone is occupied by light-sensitive elements - pixels. These pixels in smartphones, to put it mildly, are not a dozen, or even a dozen. One megapixel is 1 million pixels, in typical cameras of smartphones produced in 2015-2017, there are 12-20 such megapixels.

As we have already figured out, containing an excessive number of "blanks" on the smartphone's matrix is ​​detrimental to pictures. The effectiveness of such a pandemonium comes out like that of specialized detachments of people to replace a light bulb. Therefore, it is better to observe a smaller number of smart pixels in a camera than a large number of stupid ones. The larger each of the pixels in the camera, the less “dirty” the photos turn out, and the video becomes less “jumpy”.

Large pixels in the camera (photo below) make evening and night shots better

An ideal smartphone camera consists of a large "foundation" (matrix / sensor) with large pixels on it. Only now no one is going to make smartphones thicker or allocate half of the case at the back for the camera. Therefore, the "building" will be such that the camera does not stick out of the body and does not take up much space, the megapixels are large, even if there are only 12-13 of them, and the matrix is ​​as large as possible to accommodate them all.

The pixel size in a camera is measured in micrometers and is denoted as micron in Russian or mm in Latin. Before you buy a smartphone, make sure that the pixels in it are large enough - this is an indirect sign that the camera is shooting well. Type in the search, for example, "Xiaomi Mi 5S µm" or "Xiaomi Mi 5S µm" - and enjoy the camera characteristics of the smartphone that you have noticed. Or upset - depends on the numbers that you see as a result.

How big should a pixel be in a good camera phone?

In the “newest” time, it was especially famous for its pixel sizes ... Google Pixel is a smartphone that was released in 2016 and “showed Kuzkin’s mother” to competitors due to the combination of a huge (1 / 2.3”) matrix and very large pixels of the order of 1.55 microns. With such a set, he almost always produced the most detailed photographs even in cloudy weather or at night.

Why don't manufacturers "cut" the megapixels in the camera to a minimum and place a minimum of pixels on the matrix? There has already been such an experiment - HTC in the flagship One M8 (2014) made the pixels so huge that they fit in the rear camera ... four on a 1/3 ”matrix! Thus, One M8 received pixels as large as 2 microns! As a result, in terms of the quality of images in the dark, the smartphone “broke” almost all competitors. Yes, and photos in a resolution of 2688 × 1520 pixels were enough for Full HD monitors of that time. But the HTC camera did not become an all-round champion, because the Taiwanese were let down by HTC's color accuracy and "stupid" shooting algorithms that did not know how to "correctly prepare" settings for a sensor with unusual potential.

Today, all manufacturers have gone berserk in the race for the largest possible pixels, therefore:

• In good budget camera phones, the pixel size should be 1.22 microns or more.
• In flagships, pixels ranging in size from 1.25 microns to 1.4 or 1.5 microns are considered good form. More is better.

There are few smartphones with a good camera and relatively small pixels, but they exist in nature. This, of course, is the Apple iPhone 7 with its 1.22 microns and OnePlus 5 with 1.12 microns - they “leave” due to very high-quality sensors, very good optics and “smart” automation.

Without these terms, small pixels ruin photo quality in flagship smartphones. For example, in the LG G6, the algorithms create lewdness when shooting at night, and the sensor, although ennobled with good “glasses”, is itself cheap. IN

as a result, 1.12 microns always spoil night shots, except when you enter the battle with “manual mode” instead of stupid automation and correct its flaws yourself. The same picture prevails when shooting with the Sony Xperia XZ Premium or XZ1. And in the masterpiece, “on paper”, the Xiaomi Mi 5S camera, the lack of optical stabilization and the same “crooked hands” of the algorithm developers prevent it from competing with the flagships of the iPhone and Samsung, which is why the smartphone copes well with shooting only during the day, and at night it is no longer very impressive.

In order to make it clear how much to weigh in grams, take a look at the characteristics of the cameras in some of the best camera phones of our time.

What type of autofocus is the best

Autofocus is when a mobile phone “focuses” on its own while taking photos and videos. It is needed in order not to twist the settings “for every sneeze”, like a gunner in a tank.

In older smartphones and in modern Chinese "state employees", manufacturers use contrast autofocus. This is the most primitive way of focusing, which focuses on how light or dark it is “straight ahead” in front of the camera, like a half-blind person. That is why it takes about a couple of seconds for cheap smartphones to focus, during which it is easy to “miss” a moving object, or not want to shoot what they were going to, because “the train has left”.

Phase autofocus “catches light” over the entire area of ​​the camera sensor, calculates at what angle the rays enter the camera and draws conclusions about what is in front of the smartphone’s nose or a little further. Due to its "intelligence" and calculations, it works very quickly during the day and does not annoy anything at all. It is common in all modern smartphones, except for the very budget ones. The only drawback is the work at night, when the light enters the narrow hole in the aperture of the mobile phone in such small portions that the smartphone “tears the roof” and it constantly fidgets with focus due to a sharp change in information.

Laser autofocus - the most chic! Laser rangefinders have always been used to "throw" a beam over a long distance and calculate the distance for an object. LG in the smartphone G3 (2014) taught such a "scan" to help the camera quickly focus.

Laser autofocus is amazingly fast even indoors or in semi-darkness

Take a look at your wristwatch... well, what am I talking about... okay, turn on the stopwatch on your smartphone and appreciate how fast one second goes by. And now mentally divide it by 3.5 - in 0.276 seconds, the smartphone receives information about the distance to the subject and reports this to the camera. And it does not lose speed either at night or in bad weather. If you plan to shoot photos and videos up close or at a short distance in low light, a smartphone with laser autofocus will help you out a lot.

But keep in mind that mobile phones are not Star Wars guns, so the range of the laser in the camera barely exceeds a couple of meters. Everything that is further, the mobile phone considers with the help of the same phase detection autofocus. In other words, to shoot objects from afar, it is not necessary to look for a smartphone with “laser guidance” in the camera - you will not get any use from such a function in general terms for photos and videos.

Optical stabilization. Why is it needed and how does it work

Have you ever driven a car with a leaf spring suspension? On army UAZ vehicles, for example, or an ambulance with the same design? In addition to the fact that in such cars you can “beat off the fifth point”, they are incredibly shaking - the suspension is as rigid as possible so as not to fall apart on the roads, and therefore it tells passengers everything that it thinks about the road surface, frankly and not a “spring” (because that there is nothing to spring).

Now you know how a smartphone camera without optical stabilization feels when you are trying to take a photo.

The problem with shooting on a smartphone is this:

• The camera needs a lot of light to take good pictures. Not the direct rays of the sun in the "face", but diffused, ubiquitous light around.
• The longer the camera "views" the image during the photo, the more light it snatches = the higher the quality of the picture.
• At the time of shooting and these “peepers” of the camera, the smartphone must be motionless so that the picture is not “smeared”. Leave at least a fraction of a millimeter - the frame will be spoiled.

And human hands are shaking. This is very noticeable if you raise your arms outstretched and try to hold the bar, and less noticeable when you hold a mobile phone in front of you to take a photo or video. The difference is that the bar can “float” in your hands within wide limits - just not to put it against the wall, a neighbor, or drop it on your feet. And the smartphone needs to have time to "grab" the light in order for the photo to come out well, and do it before it deviates by a fraction of a millimeter in your hands.

Therefore, the algorithms try to please the camera and not put forward increased requirements for your hands. That is, they tell the camera, for example, “so, 1/250 of a second you can shoot, this is enough for the photo to be more or less successful, and taking a picture before the camera moves to the side is also enough.” This thing is called endurance.

How optical stabilization works

What's with the optostab? So after all, he is that “shock absorption” with which the camera does not shake, like the body of army trucks, but “floats” within small boundaries. In the case of smartphones, it does not float in water, but is held by magnets and “fidgets” at a short distance from them.

That is, if the smartphone “leaves” a little or trembles during shooting, the camera will shake much weaker. With such insurance, the smartphone will be able to:

• Increase shutter speed (guaranteed time "to see the picture before the photo is ready") for the camera. The camera receives more light, sees more image details = the quality of the photo during the day is even higher.
• Take clear pictures on the move. Not while sprinting off-road, but while walking or out of the window of a shaking bus, for example.
• Compensate for shaky video. Even if you stomp your feet very sharply or sway a little under the weight of the bag in your second hand, this will not be as noticeable on the video as in smartphones without optical stabilizer.

Therefore, the optostab (OIS, as it is called in English) is an extremely useful thing in a smartphone camera. It’s also possible without it, but it’s sad - the camera must be of high quality “with a margin”, and the automation will have to shorten (degrade) the shutter speed, because there is no insurance against shaking in the smartphone. When shooting a video, you have to “move” the picture on the fly so that the jitter is not visible. This is akin to how in old movies they imitated the speed of a moving car, when it actually stood still. With the difference that in films these scenes were shot in one take, and smartphones have to calculate the shaking and deal with it on the fly.

Smartphones with a good camera, which without stabilization shoots no worse than competitors with stabilization, are vanishingly few - for example, the Apple iPhone 6s, the first generation of Google Pixel, OnePlus 5, Xiaomi Mi 5s and, with some stretch, Honor 8 / Honor 9.

What not to pay attention to

• Flash. Useful only when shooting in pitch darkness, when you need to take a photo at any cost. As a result, you observe the pale faces of people in the frame (and all of them, because the flash is low-power), eyes closed from bright light, or a very strange color of buildings / trees - photographs with a smartphone flash definitely do not carry artistic value. In the role of a flashlight, the LED near the camera is much more useful.
• Number of lenses in the camera. “Before, when I had 5 Mbps Internet, I wrote an essay in a day, and now, when I have 100 Mbps, I write it in 4 seconds.” No, guys, that's not how it works. It doesn’t matter how many lenses a smartphone has, it doesn’t matter who made them (Carl Zeiss, judging by the quality of Nokia’s new cameras, too). Lenses are either high-quality or not, and you can only check this with real photos.

The quality of the "glasses" (lenses) affects the quality of the camera. Quantity is not

• Shooting in RAW. If you do not know what RAW is, I explain:

JPEG is the standard format in which smartphones record photos, this is a "ready-to-use" picture. Like Olivier salad on a festive table - it is possible to disassemble it “into components” in order to remake it into another salad, but it will not work out very well.

RAW is a hefty file on a "flash drive" in which all options for brightness, clarity and color for a photograph are sewn in its pure form, in separate "lines". That is, the photo will not be “covered with small dots” (digital noise) if you decide to make it not as dark as it turned out in JPEG, but a little brighter, as if you had correctly set the brightness at the time of shooting.

In short, RAW allows you to "photoshop" a frame much more conveniently than JPEG. But the catch is that flagship smartphones almost always select the settings correctly, therefore, apart from the memory of the smartphone polluted by “heavy” photos in RAW, there will be little use from “photoshop” files. And in cheap smartphones, the camera quality is so bad that you will see poor quality in JPEG, and just as bad source in RAW. Don't bother.

• Camera sensor name. Once upon a time, they were super important because they were the “quality mark” of a camera. The sensor model (module) of the camera determines the size of the matrix, the number of megapixels and the pixel size, minor "family signs" of shooting algorithms.

Of the “big three” manufacturers of camera modules for smartphones, Sony produces the highest quality modules (we don’t take into account individual examples, we are talking about the average temperature in a hospital), followed by Samsung (Samsung sensors in Samsung Galaxy smartphones are even better than the coolest Sony sensors, but "on the side" the Koreans sell something awkward), and, finally, closes the list of OmniVision, which releases "consumer goods, but tolerable." Intolerant consumer goods are produced by all the other basement Chinese offices, whose names in the characteristics of smartphones are ashamed to mention even the manufacturers themselves.

8 - execution option. Do you know how it happens in cars? The minimum equipment with a "cloth" on the seats and a "wooden" interior, the maximum - with artificial suede seats and a leather dashboard. For buyers, the difference in this figure means little.

Why, after all this, should we not pay attention to the sensor model? Because things are the same with them as with megapixels - Chinese "alternatively gifted" manufacturers are actively buying expensive Sony sensors, trumpeting at every corner "our smartphone has a super-quality camera!" ... and the camera is disgusting.

Because the “glasses” (lenses) in such mobile phones are of terrible quality and transmit light a little better than a plastic soda bottle. The camera aperture due to the same bastard "glasses" is far from ideal (f / 2.2 or even higher), and no one is engaged in setting up the sensor so that the camera correctly selects colors, works well with the processor and does not disfigure the pictures. Here is a clear example of the fact that the sensor model has little effect on anything:

As you can see, smartphones with the same camera sensor can shoot in completely different ways. So don't think that a cheap Moto G5 Plus with an IMX362 module will shoot as well as the HTC U11 does with its amazingly cool camera.

Even more annoying is the “noodles on the ears” that Xiaomi hangs on the ears of buyers when it says that “the camera in the Mi Max 2 is very similar to the camera in the flagship Mi 6 - they have the same IMX386 sensors! They are the same, only smartphones shoot very differently, the aperture (and therefore the ability to shoot in poor lighting) is different in them, and Mi Max 2 cannot compete with the flagship Mi6.

1. An additional camera "helps" to take photos at night of the main one and can shoot b/w photos. The most famous smartphones with such camera implementations are Huawei P9, Honor 8, Honor 9, Huawei P10.
2. The secondary camera allows you to "shove the unpushed", that is, it takes pictures with an almost panoramic viewing angle. The only supporter of this type of camera was and remains LG - starting with the LG G5, continuing with the V20, G6, X Cam and now the V30.
3. Two cameras are needed for optical zoom (zoom without loss of quality). Most often, this effect is achieved by the simultaneous operation of two cameras at once (Apple iPhone 7 Plus, Samsung Galaxy Note 8), although there are models that, when zoomed in, simply switch to a separate “long-range” camera - ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom, for example.

How to choose a high-quality selfie camera in a smartphone?

Best of all - based on examples of real photos. And, both during the day and at night. During the day, almost all selfie cameras produce good photos, but only high-quality front cameras are able to shoot something legible in the dark.

It is not necessary to study the vocabulary of photographers and go deep into what this or that characteristic is responsible for - you can simply memorize the numbers “so much is good, but if the number is larger, it’s bad” and pick up a smartphone much faster. For clarification of terms, welcome to the beginning of the article, and here we will try to derive a formula for a high-quality camera in smartphones.

I do not want to understand the characteristics! Which smartphone to buy with good cameras?

Manufacturers produce countless smartphones, but among them there are very few models that can take good pictures and shoot videos.

To be a good photographer, it is not enough to have a good camera. Of course, the level of technology is even more important! This is especially true of the "new" class of photo devices, which is already ten years old as our faithful friend - a smartphone.

It is logical to ask, what affects the quality of photography in a smartphone? To tell you the truth, not all of your questions will be solved by a couple of apps or tweaks. You need to arm yourself with solid knowledge to get the most out of your smartphone camera.

How to get high quality photos on your smartphone: basic tips and tricks

1. Select the highest resolution and image quality in the smartphone settings

If you ask your child what affects the quality of a photo in a smartphone, you will get an unequivocal answer - you need to “climb” into the camera settings. And they will be right. Indeed, very often the factory settings of the camera are not optimal. Sometimes, in the settings, a low image resolution is set. Why? Low resolution is "good" for digital zoom. We will talk about this option separately.

It will not be superfluous to draw your attention to the aspect ratio of the image. This is important in order to get the maximum image size. For example, the following screenshot was taken in 16:9 format, since 4:3 format crops the picture. But! On other smartphone models, you can get the opposite effect, that is, in 4:3 you will get a full frame, and in 16:9 you will crop it. It depends on the characteristics of the photomatrix.

Last note. Since high-resolution images require more space on your phone, you should get a large microSD card. If you own an old phone without a memory card slot, make sure to clear the phone's internal memory of junk before shooting.

2. Keep your smartphone camera lens clean

If you ask me again what affects the quality of a photo in a smartphone, then I will answer the question with a question? When was the last time you cleaned your smartphone camera lenses? A? Imagine that very often this is the main reason for getting poor quality pictures. It's easy to explain. Constantly being in a pants pocket or in a handbag, the smartphone camera lens comes into contact with the fingers of its owner, with dirty handkerchiefs, lipstick and just dust. Therefore, before shooting, be sure to wipe the camera lens with a clean cloth. Microfiber is best suited for this - a special cloth that does not leave dust particles after wiping the lens. Love to shoot - let this fabric be always at hand. You can use special kits with a cleaning spray, but this is inconvenient. In the end - erase your fingerprints on the camera with a clean handkerchief, the result of the shooting will still be better.

How else to get high quality photos on a smartphone: technology and focus

1. Choose the right exposure in the settings

In the theory of professional photography, there are three main parameters that affect the quality of a photograph: exposure time, aperture value (degree of aperture openness) and ISO value (camera light sensitivity level). Together, these settings determine how bright the shot will be, how clear background objects will be, and how blurry moving objects will be.

Aperture value (Aperture):

For most smartphones, you cannot change the aperture value as it is a fixed value. However, smartphone photography enthusiasts need to choose the correct value for the other two parameters - exposure time and ISO sensitivity. By the way, if you are not ready for such complex terms, just turn on the automatic mode of the camera. In it, the camera will independently determine all the necessary values. But keep in mind, most often it is the manual mode that gives a better and more accurate result of photography.

Shutter speed, exposure time (Exposure time):

Longer exposure times or shutter speeds result in better lighting for your photo, especially in poor light conditions. But at the same time, you will encounter another problem - objects in motion will create a blurry trail behind them. However, this effect can be effectively used when shooting on a fast river or in a city at night.

A shorter exposure time, on the other hand, allows you to clearly capture all subjects in the same place, at the same time.

ISO sensitivity (ISO values):

The second parameter that you need to understand well is the ISO sensitivity level. This parameter determines the current sensitivity of the camera's sensor. The higher the ISO value, the greater the sensitivity to light. By setting a high ISO value, you can, for example, reduce the exposure time and get a sharper picture as a result. In general, in low-light conditions on subjects, it is best to use high ISO and shutter speeds at the same time.

Then why not use high ISO settings all the time? The explanation is simple: high ISO greatly increases the noise in the resulting image. Here I note that each smartphone has its own characteristics. Some models produce a lot of image noise at ISO 400 or 800. In other models, such problems may occur even earlier. My advice to you is to evaluate what affects the quality of a smartphone photo, take a series of shots in different situations with different ISO and choose the best value for your camera. As practice shows, in most cases, an ISO value up to 200 is the ideal choice.

2. Focus manually

For a successful shot, a lot depends on the correct focus. Usually auto focus is enough for an amateur, but it is important to understand that it works far from flawlessly. Moreover, the "automaton" may simply not guess what exactly you want to focus on. The solution is to point your finger on the viewfinder image (on the touch screen) exactly where you want to focus. Just turn on the appropriate mode. Well, best of all - put the camera application in manual focus mode, and control the focus yourself. It's not fast, but the pictures will be much better. Although if your hands are shaking - better go back to automatic mode!

3. Use continuous shooting, take several shots in a row

My next advice will be of interest to those who have already understood what affects the quality of photography in a smartphone, but want to understand it thoroughly. Instead of taking endless shots waiting for the perfect one, just use burst shooting in a short amount of time. Justify. If you take only one picture of your romantic kiss with the Eiffel Tower in the background, you may later regret it, as it may be the only one, but the most disgusting in quality.

Therefore, I recommend that you always take a few pictures of important events in your life, while trusting the autofocus mode. Do not spare your phone's memory, shoot again and again, because it can be an invaluable shot. Moreover, modern smartphone models have a built-in burst mode, which is activated by a “long” press on the button assigned by you to activate the camera.

4. Hold your smartphone in two hands, use a tripod or natural support

You know perfectly well in what poses and situations you have to shoot on a smartphone. As a result, hand shaking with a mobile camera results in blurry shots. Even if you are still and seem to be in control, holding your smartphone in one hand cannot guarantee you a high quality photo. I recommend that you hold your smartphone with both hands. So you stabilize the position of the camera lens in space. Shooting with a tripod would be ideal. If you are not ready to purchase such a “luxury”, look around, maybe you can rest your hands with a camera on a railing or a tree branch?

Well, the last thing that affects the quality of photography in a smartphone. Hold your smartphone at arm's length when shooting, fully straighten them. Keep in mind, the less you pull your smartphone, the clearer the pictures come out.

Camera characteristics that affect photo quality. The choice of the camera lens and the sensitivity of the matrix. Shutter speed. Photo saving format. Manual adjustment of settings.

You should choose a camera lens with a small optical zoom - from 2 to 4. If there are more steps of modifying the focal length, there will be more optical distortion, as well as a large loss in aperture ratio, which equally affects the deterioration of the photo.

It is also necessary to give preference to a smaller aperture value for the lens. For example, f/2 is better than f/2.8. A smaller number indicates a large open aperture, which will be very useful for shooting in low light.

Note that the aperture number for a zoom lens means the range: a smaller value corresponds to a smaller focus, a larger one corresponds to the “longest” focus.

The high sensitivity of the matrix, designated as ISO, affects the amount of noise that distorts the photo. So, in expensive matrices, minimal noise can appear at ISO 800 and more. In cheap ones - even at 400 ISO, and at a value of 800 ISO it is almost impossible to take a photo.

Matrix noise is reflected in the form of colored snow on the frame. High sensitivity, which is not accompanied by noise, makes it possible to take excellent photos in low light or when the subject is moving.

With a shorter time from pressing the shutter button to taking a picture, which is measured by the shutter speed, you can achieve the most accurate photo if the subject is constantly moving. With a large shutter lag, the picture in the photo is not quite the same as that on the viewfinder when the shutter is pressed.

Photos must be recorded in raw format, which does not compress them. When stored in memory, photos are compressed in JPEG format, which reduces their size and reduces quality. Some camera models provide the ability to set compression parameters. In this case, a lower compression ratio partially compensates for the lack of raw recording.

However, a photo in raw format allows you to achieve better quality also thanks to post-processing using a graphics editor.

With a larger matrix, it is also possible to get a better photo. Manufacturers note this matrix size in the description of the camera as a proportion to the full size of 36 x 24 mm. This proportion is also called the crop factor, which is represented as a decimal fraction. It should be borne in mind here that as the crop factor approaches unity, the size of the matrix will be larger.

Ability to set values ​​manually:

white balance

excerpts

diaphragms

matrix sensitivity.

This makes it possible to take a great shot when shooting conditions do not correspond to automatic programs. At the same time, the use of manual settings will require excellent familiarity with them, as well as their mutual influence. It is also necessary to give a correct assessment of the shooting conditions.

Nowadays, it is not necessary to be a professional to create high quality images. To get a good result, a regular “soap box” is also suitable for a novice photographer. A general knowledge of the imaging process will be needed to select the appropriate technique. In this article, you will learn about what 1 megapixel is and how to reduce it. It will also help you understand the main characteristics of the camera that affect the image. Is it true that the clarity of the picture depends on the number of megapixels?

Understanding the concept

A digital photograph is made up of many dots that form an image. They are called pixels. Each of them is an element of building a matrix, the more their number, the better the camera itself. So, 1 megapixel consists of 1,000,000 pixels.

How can this term be succinctly defined? A common abbreviation for megapixel is mpx. The concept comes from the English words pix and element. Perhaps, with a strong increase in the photo received from the device, you have already seen how the image is divided into tiny squares? This is the pixels.

How many units do you need

You can meet the opinion that the more dots and, accordingly, the higher the resolution, the clearer the picture will be. In reality, it is much more important to have good optics and craftsmanship.

The result is affected by aperture settings, shutter speed, ISO (light sensitivity) and many others. Of the external factors, this is exposed light or natural light, weather conditions (in the event that the shooting takes place on the street).

The physical size of the matrix itself has a much stronger effect on the characteristics of the picture than the number of megapixels (or abbreviation - Mp) in the camera. If there are very few of these units, you will get a blurry frame with a lot of noise. This problem is usually faced by owners of inexpensive smartphones and cameras. Even such powerful editors as Adobe Photoshop will not be able to completely get rid of such artifacts. If you want to immediately get great shots, we recommend paying attention to both the availability of the required number of megapixels and the concept of crop matrices.

What determines image quality

In most modern devices, megapixels (or abbreviations - mpx, Mp, Mp) are in excess, while manufacturers are trying to save on other parameters. For example, on the physical size of the matrix.

In the days of film photography, the concept of "full frame" appeared, it is associated with a 35 mm film used as a photosensitive element. With the advent of digital cameras, the latter was replaced by a matrix. But its production is more expensive, so companies began to produce stripped-down versions. This is how the crop coefficient appeared - the ratio of the diameter of a full frame to the diagonal of a smaller matrix.

This parameter affects, first of all, what percentage of the visible image will fall into the frame, and a kind of cropping of the future image. As the coefficient increases, the noise level increases, the viewing angle decreases. The image taken by a camera with a full-frame sensor will be many times clearer and better. Also, when buying a camera, you should pay attention to the focal length, the characteristics of which relate more to the lens.

A little more about matrix resolution

In what cases is a larger number of megapixels (in short, Mp) needed? If you are going to greatly enlarge the future image, for example, for printing photo wallpapers. The greater their number, the stronger the image can be cropped without loss of quality. Additional pixels will come in handy when shooting an object from afar, it will be possible to bring it closer when editing.

Another factor is the increase in the amount of memory occupied on the media and the processing time of the resulting image. In most cases, a novice photographer will have enough resolution of 8-13 megapixels (in short, Mp). When printing street posters, for example, the resolution is not as high as they are located at a height and the viewer looks at them from afar.

Instead of a conclusion

From this article, readers learned what megapixels are (in short, Mp, Mp or mpx), how these elements affect photography. Whether it is worth buying a camera with a large number of these elements depends on the tasks for which you will use photographic equipment. If the goal is to get high-quality images for small printed images (including A4), it is better to pay attention to other, more important characteristics of the camera, which were discussed above.

If you plan to print large posters or greatly enlarge your photos, you should prefer a device with a large number of megapixels. In all other cases, you do not need to pay special attention to this parameter - it is better to purchase a good lens or filters. The clarity of the picture is influenced more by the skill of the photographer and the settings suitable for the shooting conditions than by the number of pixels in the device.