RAW Format Comes to the Smartphone

[dodger501]

Starting with the Lumia 1520, I guess folks have been asking for it:

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57608671-94/nokias-lumia-1520-the-first-phone-thatll-take-raw-photos/

 

[pierces]

The windows phone OS has quietly been ramping up to the point where it is now a robust platform that offers some real nice integration with the desktop. Windows 8 and 8.1 have impressed me with their stability and speed to the point that I may have to let my Droid sit on the bench when the next upgrade rolls around and try out one of them thar new-fangled Nokias!

 

Dave

[ikirumata]

I cant imagine how big a 41 megapixel raw image would be!

[chipmaster]

ROFL, I guess you might as well leverage all that computational power for something, 14bit raw with in phone conversion / processing. Squeeze a little more DR, correct that WB from that very very tiny sensor and small lense...

 

This is truely a feature chasing sales versus feature addressing a need :D

[awboater]

I cant imagine how big a 41 megapixel raw image would be!

 

Actually it would not be as large as you might think. Those 41 megapixel sensors are a bit of a marketing gimmick. A technique called "Binning" is used that actually results an effective 6~8Mp sensor, depending on the phone model. So to market the camera as having 41Mp is a bit dis-ingenious.

 

While there may be 41 Mp worth of photosites, what happens is that groups of photosites are clumped together to form a smaller sensor , the effective output is much smaller. This brings up the low light performance to what would be typical of a 6~8Mp sensor.

 

The primary advantage of Binning (clumping) is that when you digitally zoom in, the photosites become unclumped. This maintains resolution under digital zoom, but at the expense of low light capability as the photosites become "unbound" from another during zooming.

 

At any rate, the RAW file would be equivalent to an 6~8Mp sensor.

[pierces]

Actually it would not be as large as you might think. Those 41 megapixel sensors are a bit of a marketing gimmick. A technique called "Binning" is used that actually results an effective 6~8Mp sensor, depending on the phone model. So to market the camera as having 41Mp is a bit dis-ingenious.

 

While there may be 41 Mp worth of photosites, what happens is that groups of photosites are clumped together to form a smaller sensor , the effective output is much smaller. This brings up the low light performance to what would be typical of a 6~8Mp sensor.

 

The primary advantage of Binning (clumping) is that when you digitally zoom in, the photosites become unclumped. This maintains resolution under digital zoom, but at the expense of low light capability as the photosites become "unbound" from another during zooming.

 

At any rate, the RAW file would be equivalent to an 6~8Mp sensor.

 

 

If they only took the 5MP binned result it wouldn't really a "RAW" file since RAW should carry all of the data from each of the sensels.

 

Nokia states that there will be three options:

 

"The Lumia 1020 and 1520 will have three options: 5MP (JPEG), Dual Capture (JPEG 5MP + JPEG full resolution), and Dual Capture RAW (JPEG 5MP + DNG full resolution)."

 

So it looks like there will be a 38MP 4:3 or 34MP 16:9 actual raw file.

 

Time to hunt for a sale on 64GB micro SD cards!

 

Dave