How hard is it to plug an optical zoom into a smartphone?

The most popular time in the photography industry is when the grandfather and aunt in the park show their long guns and short guns. Even though the smartphones in the scenic area are light and easy to use, the quality is not bad. The most important thing is to share the circle of friends. It's hard to see that there is a difference between the SLRs in their hands, but once the theme of the family rises to the far-reaching bird, you can only take a plane. You can only hide far away... Yes, despite the phone It has taken over the functions of countless digital products and even cameras, but the existence of telephoto lenses is still the more hurried.

Fever School: How difficult is it to put the optical zoom into the phone? It is necessary to distinguish the following concepts for the less-photographing friends, zoom and focus, optical zoom and digital zoom; there is no more focus on the focal plane. This is a more embarrassing concept. Simply speaking, “zoom” (taking the lens far away, that is, telephoto as an example) is the tube far and near, that is, the small objects in the distance can be shot as clearly as the near, and “focus” It is the process of making the picture clear.

Both involve the movement of the lens group, the more obvious is the zooming process, and even if it is for zooming, the strategy of moving the lenses is not the same. Specific to the photographer's operation, the zoom needs a more obvious "twisting zoom ring" action, and the focus process, in addition to the old driver, manual lens and deliberate pursuit of the full effect of the effect, now almost no need for people The operation is automatically achieved by the focus motor driving the lens module to move slightly.

Zoom process and lens module

Optical zoom achieves the same level of image quality at different focal lengths

Focusing process

The main camera on the smartphone, that is, the rear camera in most cases, has already realized the function of "autofocus". The "focus motor" like the SLR camera is also embedded in the camera module of the mobile phone, according to recent years. The difference in focusing technology that appears on mobile phones, such as laser, phase assist, dual pixels, etc., the focus motor also has a common VCM voice coil motor, closed loop motor, center motor and other types.

Voice coil motor

Samsung Galaxy Nexus lens module decomposition (Voice Coil is a voice coil motor)

Therefore, the problem left for the mobile phone is only "zoom". However, simply look at the disassembly diagram of the above Leica lens and the existing structure of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus lens, you can probably guess, the reason why the optical zoom function can not be achieved, mostly because of the size of the phone, after all, Compared with the focusing process, the range of lens movement involved in zooming is very large, and the current mainstream mobile phone thickness is only 6~7mm. Even if the lens module protrudes out of the body like the iPhone 6, it is not easy. Plug such a complex structure into a volume that is not half-finger.

70-200mm F2.8 lens section

Moreover, at present, functions such as OIS optical image stabilization have become more and more important and popular, and the already limited volume needs to accommodate more mechanical structures for this purpose; secondly, the main camera of the mobile phone generally has about 6 lenses. This is probably the least simple lens composition among the SLR lenses; the contradiction between the large aperture or the constant aperture and the zoom range on the third SLR is equally unsolvable for smartphones that are increasingly seeking large apertures...

Sony external lens

Of course, do you think this will block the enthusiasm of the photographers of mobile phone manufacturers? Of course not, we have not seen all kinds of fantastic products launched for this purpose, such as the Samsung Galaxy Zoom series with 10x optical zoom, such as the ASUS ZenFone Zoom series of periscope lenses, such as the external lens such as Sony QX100. There is also a Hasselblad zoom camera module like Moto Z...

Whether it's plug-in or integrated into a mobile phone, they never jump out of the shackles that must be increased in size. Sony's telescopic lens, Moto Z's Hasselblad module and Samsung Zoom simply use the most direct zoom lens zoom, zoom ratio Up to 10 times the volume is also very significant at the same time, and the Asus ZenFone Zoom is not so radically used is a periscope lens structure similar to the Sony classic T series card machine, although the body size is not obvious, but the zoom ratio is only three Times, reality is so cruel.

Unlike the "optical zoom" mobile phone with such a large size, there are also telephoto lenses specially produced by ZEISS and other lens manufacturers for mobile phones. Two or three times more reliable, more than 10 times...hehe


Even the OPPO's "5x optical zoom" introduced at the beginning of this year, the telephoto lens is implemented in a horizontal way similar to the periscope, and the renderings do not show the existence of the mechanical structure, we have to guess 1~5 times The optical zoom between the two is also achieved by algorithm and cutting rather than mechanical lens movement.

In addition to hardware implementations such as optical structures, many manufacturers are also using software algorithms to achieve zoom functions that are better than "digital zoom" but are actually not "optical zoom". In order to promote their own way, they usually do not. Directly advertised with optical zoom, but dual-camera zoom, ultra-clear image quality or nominally 20 million pixels and light change can only use 12 million pixels and so on.

2 times double shot imaging principle

As for the 12 million-pixel and 20-megapixel-sized photos without zoom, you can see that the former is 12 million colors and 20 million black and white "super-sampling" compression to 12 million black and white (such as Nokia 808's 8 pixels compressed into one After the pure pixel) synthesis, the latter is a direct synthesis of 12 million colors and 20 million black and white.

Theoretically, when the size of a 20-megapixel photo is selected, since the color lens has only 12 million pixels, the final synthesized sample may lose part of the color information, and the selection of the 12-megapixel photo size does not have such a problem, and is also the three types of the above figure. The best picture quality in the situation.

The future trends of thin and large apertures are all on the opposite side of optical zoom, so don't expect the mobile phone to achieve several times the optical zoom function in the real sense in a short time, while the dual zoom and OPPO's 5x zoom is a soft A good idea of ​​hard combination, although the process of deep pursuit will still have different degrees of image quality loss, but at least there will be algorithms to make up, more than the digital interpolation brought by simple interpolation, the pursuit of image quality obsessive-compulsive disorder .

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