How the iPhone 7 Plus Apple combines two cameras in one – CNET in Spanish

The iPhone 7 Plus has a wide-angle lens equivalent to 28 mm and a telephoto equivalent to 56 mm that work together.

Apple

it Is possible to think that the two cameras of the iPhone 7 Plus Apple are not as complicated. It’s like having two cameras hanging to the shoulder, one for shots of wide angle and another with a telephoto for taking pictures of objects more distant, isn’t it?

that’s nothing.

The case is that Apple uses both cameras at the same time. The iPhone 7 Plus combines two cameras in one, taking advantage of the virtues of each, and obviating the disadvantages to try to get the best possible image.

That enables the telephoto lens to give more sharpness to some photos taken with the wide angle. But it also means limitations that you might not expect, as the actual loss of that second camera when taking photos in conditions with low light.

In moments in which the size of the screen and the speed of the processors is allowed, in these times it is more difficult to convince users that the latest phone is a great leap forward. But one area that continues to provoke interest is the camera of the phone, because it captures your most personal moments and lets you share them with family and friends. To discard some traditional aspects of the design of the digital cameras, the approach of double Apple camera shows that there is still room for significant improvements in the field of photography.

Apple spent 15 minutes at the cameras in the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus-an-eighth part of his two-hour presentation – up to launch the new iPhone and the Apple Watch Series 2. Phil Schiller, vice president of global marketing for Apple, not tortilla: “This is the best camera in any smartphone“.

Take a look at the comparison photos of the iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6S Plus, and Samsung Galaxy S7 of CNET in Spanish to be able to make a decision.

When your iPhone 7 Plus works as a iPhone 7

The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus come the two with a wide-angle lens, equivalent to a focal length of 28 mm on a traditional film camera slr interchangeable lenses. But the iPhone 7 Plus adds another lens equivalent to 56 mm for objects more distant, and portraits. (The sensors of the two cameras are the same size, but much smaller than a camera sensor full. The focal length real lens are 3.3 mm and 6.6 mm).

When there is enough light, the camera 56 mm of the iPhone 7 Plus (right) that exceeds the increase in 2x digital camera 28 mm (left). This image has been cropped and enlarged three times to show better the differences.

Ian Sherr/CNET

The choice of the telephoto it is suitable for anyone frustrated by the many years that any phone offered an alternative to the wide angle. The cameras have a digital zoom, but it uses software to increase the central part of the image, which is why it generally has much grain or blur.

But this is what happens: the telephoto lens of 56 mm of the iPhone 7 Plus is not always active.

In many circumstances, the telephoto lens is activated when you decide to photograph with a magnification of 2x. But the tests done by CNET show that the images taken with zoom and low light, the iPhone 7 ignores the telephoto and use only the wide angle lens. In other words, with a zoom of 2x you could take the same type of image with the iPhone 7 and its great camera angle. The phone creates the additional pixels with digital zoom, not optical.

What reason is there to obviate the precisely characteristic that makes the iPhone 7 Plus stand out above the iPhone 7? First, because only the camera with the wide-angle lens has image stabilization, which in fact prevents blur during long exposures in dimly lit. (Apple says that this feature allows you to take sharp images with an exposure three times longer).

The camera’s wide angle lens also has a maximum aperture of f1.8, which contains more than two times more light than the telephoto lens of f2.8. In low-light conditions, the aperture of the telephoto means less light, and therefore more noise and the image, these points can subtract quality to the image.

A telephoto to improve the images of the wide-angle

But in other circumstances, the camera with the telephoto lends a hand to improve images taken with the wide angle.

When you take photos with a close-up of between 1.5 x and 1.99 x zoom, the iPhone 7 Plus is not limited to, increasing the size of the pixels of the wide-angle lens. You can also combine areas of greater resolution of the image of the telephoto in the centre of the frame, an approach that Apple qualifies internally “fusion”.

This image with a zoom of 5x taken with an iPhone 7 Plus is the kind of photo that would benefit from the approach of a telephoto lens, but the phone used a part of digitally enhanced image of a wide angle lens. The wide angle lens lets in more light and has image stabilization to counteract the movement of the hands of the photographer. (Click to see the full image).

James Martin/CNET

anyway, the image is of 12 megapixels, but the second camera can provide a greater level of detail in order to avoid the loss of sharpness of the digital zoom.

It’s the kind of trick that is unthinkable with digital cameras, traditional, models, whose sensor is technologically similar to the days of film photography. But computational photography, in which the computer processing and not only the optical component is key to capturing a photo, is maturing.

But Apple is not the only company that does this. The Huawei P9 combines images from two cameras to get better photos, for example. But the iPhone is among the most popular phones on the market year after year, so that the decisions Apple have a great influence.

computational Photography

The computational photography because it combines multiple photos into a single image of high dynamic range (HDR, for its acronym in English) that can capture a scene with all of the details in the dark areas and lots of light. And can compensate for problems the lens, as the distortion that affects the straight lines and makes them look curvy. You can expect more developments in this field.

The focus of the two lenses opens up new options. Apple plans to release in October an upgrade to allow the iPhone 7 to reduce the sharpness of the seconds flat in the portraits. It is a simulation of the effect they get of course cameras with lenses of large aperture to concentrate the attention on the face of the person photographed. Apple makes it using the two lenses to calculate a map of depth-of-field” in 3D and subtract sharpening only to the areas further away from the camera.

Apple was not the first company to offer two cameras in a phone, nor is it the only one to lay hand to the computational photography. But has shown an advanced understanding of how to use the new technology to which people will take advantage.