At TECNO’s “Future Lens” occasion we acquired to listen to about some very fascinating expertise that TECNO hopes to sometime combine with their cell phone cameras. There are not any prototypes to evaluate or consider but, and we form of have extra questions than solutions at this level, however nonetheless, will probably be very thrilling to see what comes out of those revolutionary ventures TECNO is engaged on. Personally, I am very a lot wanting ahead to seeing how this stuff will truly work in actual life when TECNO will get them working in prototypes. Their earlier technological first from TECNO within the smartphone digicam area was final yr’s wide-aperture increasing telephoto lens, which you’ll be able to be taught extra about in our TECNO Phantom X2 Professional 5G Assessment. The longer term has much more fascinating issues in retailer!
Liquid Telephoto Macro Lens
Firstly, there’s the “liquid lens” expertise in a macro telephoto digicam module that TECNO is engaged on. When you have a present telephone with a 5x or 10x telephoto digicam lens, you’ll have seen that it doesn’t have a really shut minimal focus distance. In different phrases, for those who place the digicam too near your topic, it most likely will not be capable to focus to be able to get a pointy image. The lens isn’t capable of regulate its focus level sufficient to get close-up macro photographs like that. Usually, you would want a construction for the glass components within the lens to maneuver longer distances to be able to change the point of interest correctly, however that is tough to construct into such a small smartphone digicam module.
So TECNO’s resolution is a lens whose form can truly be modified like the best way a drop of water can form because it falls. An excellent analogy is our personal human eyeballs. These are full of liquid, and we’ve muscular tissues that may pull and squeeze the form a bit to be able to allow us to deal with the issues we need to see.
TECNO’s liquid lens would most likely be mixed with a periscope-shaped telephoto lens so that you will have lengthy focal size, after which the liquid lens would deal with the main focus level changes by warping to suit.
I’ve by no means heard of anybody attempting to do this sort of factor earlier than, so it is new territory, and there are many unknowns nonetheless… How briskly will it focus? How will this have an effect on the sunshine absorption pace? Will stabilization be applied on the lens or the sensor? Will gravity trigger liquid lens distortions? Once more, the effectiveness is unknown at this level, however I’m extraordinarily excited by seeing what comes of this.
W formed aperture
This one is the second most fascinating innovation TECNO is saying. After I first heard “W-shaped” aperture, I used to be fairly confused. Often, the digicam apertures are hexagonal and centered over the lens. Some have extra blades to be able to make for a smoother circle to let the sunshine in, in fact, however the level of the aperture is to vary the quantity of sunshine hitting the sensor by means of the lens to be able to have extra management over the publicity than what you’ll get by merely altering the sunshine sensor’s sensitivity or achieve (normally labeled as “ISO” setting).
Different smartphones that do have variable apertures (uncommon) normally solely have two choices: full open and 1 cease down at some pre-determined F-stop. These normally have solely two blades that flip in to cowl a sure proportion of the sensor and go away a smaller round gap to let the sunshine in. Actual digicam lenses nearly all the time have a number of aperture f-stops that you may regulate as wanted.
So what the heck is that this W-shaped aperture about?
Nicely, there’s a precedent for this W-shaped aperture in nature; the cuttlefish.
TECNO tells us {that a} fastened aperture is unable to stability sturdy and weak mild, thus giving us a decrease dynamic vary within the ensuing photograph the place shadow areas could also be too darkish or shiny areas could also be too shiny. The W-shaped aperture is meant to scale back glare and extra exactly handle the quantity of sunshine. We do not actually have particulars on how precisely that can work, nevertheless, I used to be capable of finding this scientific paper from 2013 known as The W-shaped pupil in cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis): Capabilities for bettering horizontal imaginative and prescient – ScienceDirect, which says, “Computing a retinal illumination map exhibits that the W-shaped pupil is efficient in balancing a vertically uneven mild area: The constricted pupil reduces mild from the dorsal a part of the visible area considerably greater than it reduces mild from the horizontal band.”
So with that in thoughts, it appears like this aperture form will truly scale back mild from the highest a part of a picture… so long as the aperture is oriented accurately. What occurs if I rotate the telephone 90 levels or 180 levels? Does the aperture need to rotate, too? Maybe sure.
Common Tone Computation
The third innovation that TECNO introduced was their Common Tone computational pictures system, which makes use of synthetic intelligence imaging fashions to vary the pores and skin tones of individuals in your photographs to hopefully make the colour extra correct.
Once more, it is unclear how precisely this can work and the way effectively it should modify pores and skin tones. Hopefully, it may be adjusted manually as I do know loads of fashions who don’t truly need their pores and skin to be too correct in some photographs. Nevertheless, the power to intelligently choose and modify pores and skin tone colours is definitely very helpful. I did one thing related manually within the lead photograph of this text as the sunshine coloration temperatures on sure folks had been drastically completely different from the colour temperatures on others. This made the girl on the left seem very orange as a result of the digicam can solely apply one white stability setting to your complete picture versus what I can do in put up processing software program (altering white stability on particular areas of a picture.) I used AI mannequin pores and skin choice instruments for this perform already within the post-processing software program, but when TECNO can add computerized pores and skin tone choice and multi-person particular person white stability settings, that may very well be fairly wonderful.
Conclusion
I am truthfully very impressed with these smartphone pictures improvements being introduced by TECNO. All of them appear probably very helpful and probably trade altering. The one drawback is that none of them are practical simply but and we do not have an actual time-table of when they are going to be. Personally, I need to begin utilizing them proper now.