It's officially spring here in Australia. Soon we will change to summer time and the evenings will be lighter-and the early mornings darker. The weather has warmed up although as is often the case at this time of year it is somewhat fickle. Last week it was distinctly cool by our standards. This week it is back to average and warming up.
On Wednesday night a severe storm hit the coast here at Terrigal, Very suddenly there were strong wind gusts, heavy rain and thunder and lightning. My home has a Colorbond -steel- roof and exterior cladding so heavy rain sounds like gravel being fired at the house. It certainly woke both of us up although I suspect that Phoebe, the wonder cat, probably slept through the commotion. The storm soon passed and despite all the noise little rain fell.
By the time I went for my usual early morning walk the storm had passed way out to sea as can be seen from this photo taken from the Haven at Terrigal looking south towards North Avoca and Avoca Beach.
It's been my habit until the last couple of years to take my Leica X1 out with me on my early morning walk and this practice has yielded some good photos over the years. However about two years ago 'subject fatigue" set in and recently I have only taken the Leica with me very occasionally.
Four weeks ago I acquired a new smartphone-a second generation iPhoneSE. I've used my previous iPhones to take photos but have very much regarded them as toys when it came to photography. The new phone has changed my opinion.
On Tuesday I used it to photograph the Austin A30 in Terrigal -see previous post-and this morning I took it on my early morning walk and came back with the above photo. I am really surprised at the image quality (IQ). The photo above is straight out of the phone apart from a small crop to straighten it. The tonality and colour rendition is very acceptable as is the resolution.
The lens on the iPhone is tiny and probably moulded. It may not even be glass and the sensor is equally tiny. The technical data for the photo is 1/180th second at f1.8 ISO 20 on a 3.99mm lens.
The interesting thing about this photo is that it is not the result of superior optics or a big sensor. It is the product of computational photography-for an explantion see Computational Photography also known as computational imaging see Computational imaging.
Computational photography uses algorithms to create photos. The software determines the image quality-not the lens. The lens is almost secondary-it is merely a portal for the light rays to enter the phone.
Huawei phones promote that they have Leica optics but I wonder is this real or is it just marketing hype? Anyway how many potential buyers of Huawei phones know or even care who Leica is? As Apple and Samsung have proved who makes the optics is totally irrelevant.
Apparently before their partnership with Huwaei Leica approached Apple looking for a technical/marketing link and Apple turned them away. I remember reading at the time that Leica's chairman, Dr Kauffmann, thought that Apple was arrogant in declining to tango with highly esteemed Leica. We now know why-Apple didn't need Leica's optical expertise-Apple already had a veritable army of the experts they needed-software engineers.
If computational photography is so clever why haven't any established camera manufacturers adopted it and built pro/am cameras using the technology? Well, the Light Co-a newcomer to the market, tried and failed. The Light cameras were very clever-but they were too unconventional, expensive and were probably too far ahead of their time. Light walked away from the amateur photography market in 2018 to concentrate on their special application cameras using their technology.
However many conventional digital cameras do use elements of computational photography in their image processing in HDR, panorama stitching and other functions. Perhaps it's only a matter of time before a traditional camera manufacturer launches a fully computational camera. But would it sell or have the smartphone manufacturers with their massive IT expertise changed the game forever and the camera manufacturers have no chance of matching them?
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