Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Why camera bumps are getting HUGE”.
It’S no secret that smartphone camera bumps have become increasingly ginormous over the past three or four years. The iphone 6’s camera bump is a spec in the ocean compared to the iphone 12 pros. The same goes for the pixel 2 and the pixel 5., although thankfully we’re starting to see new ways to implement huge camera bumps into sleek designs like the galaxy s21 series, as it turns out, the phones with these bigger camera bumps tend to actually take better photos. But why is this well today? That’S what we’re going to talk about before we can get to the main reasons. We need to understand a few things about cameras that apply to everything from smartphone cameras all the way to big professional dslrs.
Let’S start with focal length, every camera lens focuses light from the outside of the camera to a focal point. The focal length defines the distance from the lens to the point of focus measured in millimeters. You can kind of think of a lens focal length as its magnification or field of view. A 10 millimeter lens is going to be very wide and 100 millimeter lens is going to be quite zoomed in, however, the longer the focal length the longer the distance needs to be from the lens to the sensor, making the actual camera stack a lot larger focal Length also affects perspective.
Here are a couple of examples that show that perceived distance between objects changes as you zoom in you will also notice that the longer the focal length the shallower the plane of focus is in photography. This is called image compression not to be confused with file compression, which is something entirely different. Crop factor is also massively important in the field of view of a camera. Crop factor isn’t the same as focal length.
Instead, it’s all to do with the sensors physical size and its comparative size to the lens being used. Hence the term crop factor all other factors. The same. A smaller sensor has a tighter crop factor which has the effect of appearing more zoomed in than the larger sensor. Some smartphone makers use this trick with their telephoto cameras, as it allows the whole camera assembly to be smaller at the cost of low light performance and dynamic range due to the smaller sensor. Now that we understand the basics, we can turn our attention to.
The big reasons why smartphone camera bumps have grown so much. Firstly, you’ll notice that a fair few flagship devices of late have implemented long zoom lenses, sometimes periscope lenses first introduced to the mainstream with huawei’s p30 pro now, while adding elements and increasing the complexity of lens structures can give a lens more reach. The distance between the lens and the sensor is ultimately the deciding factor when it comes to zoom the further the distance, the more zoom you get. Periscope lenses are interesting and rather clever because they increase that distance by reflecting light into lens elements oriented in such a way to make use of space inside the device so that you don’t have a camera bump. That sticks out an inch. However, even with this clever lens setup, camera bumps are still necessary, given the periscope setup and the front element needing to be quite large. The second reason why camera bumps have become so huge is the desire for bigger camera. Sensors. Larger sensors are placed further away from the lens to retain a consistent crop factor, and so the whole stack needs to be larger. To accommodate the larger sensor. Remember the lumia 1020, with its huge sensor and naturally the huge camera bump that came with it yeah. That’S no coincidence, that’s just plain physics, as you can imagine, for telephoto cameras, this increase in size can be very dramatic, and so the camera bump as a whole would need to be huge.
Finally, distortion is one of the most important factors because it ultimately affects image. Quality in a pretty big way, lenses tend to have a sweet spot where the sensor is cropping in very slightly to minimize distortion at the edges. This tends to be more of a problem with smaller, wider aperture lenses, like the ones used in smartphones. A way around. This is to use a slightly wider lens and crop in ever so slightly, but this still means a bigger camera bump due to the bigger distance needed between the lens and the sensor more expensive, higher quality camera lenses can help, but it’s notoriously hard to build compact Smartphone camera lenses due to their small size and increased complexity. So there’s no one definitive explanation for the increasing camera bump thickness. But there is a common theme. It really does come down to smartphone camera designers, fighting against the laws of physics to improve camera capabilities and image quality simply put, we want bigger camera characteristics without the bigger cameras, whether it be the large sensors or longer zooms. Space is at a premium in modern flagship smartphones, as well as the camera systems.
There needs to be room for plenty of memory and storage modules, huge batteries, 5g antennas and, of course, wireless charging coils. When there’s no more room in the phone, smartphone makers need to build out resulting in these huge camera bumps huge thanks to robert triggs for writing the original article which you can find on android authority via the link in the video description. Please do check it out. It’S a great read and whilst you’re down there please do hit like and subscribe to never miss a video like this one and let us know if you learned something today in the comment section: i’ve been ryan thomas with android authority and i’ll catch. You later .