Ricoh officially discontinues Pentax K-series DSLRs after 23 years, ending production as the last major DSLR maker pivots to an entirely new concept. K-mount stays.
Zoom is better than what it used to be and not outright a lie. I still have a dual camera phone (pixel 7, standard camera and superwide), and the picture is reasonable at 2.5x. It’s a 50mp sensor that, by default, only takes ~16mp pictures by only using certain sensor cells. Zooming uses a tighter group of those cells while still making a 16mp picture. But yes, zoomed pictures absolutely lose quality as the cropping starts hitting the limits of a tiny piece of do-all glass. My phone goes to 8x. Meanwhile, the flagship phones with an additional mild-zoom cameras bump up the baseline further. Still, only equivalent to like 40-50mm on a DSLR full frame sensor. Not enough for me, not for the price, so I still lug my DSLR around occasionally, as my eye tends to prefer framing with my phone above 3x - or about 50-85mm on a crop sensor.
The limiting factor with zoom is often stability. There’s no way to hold a phone steady enough for a long zoom, and I don’t think any phone has proper optical image stabilisation.
I’m not sure what you mean by “proper” image stabilisation, but they certainly have at least so.me optical stabilisation. The lens slides around. If you turn it on and look at the camera while tilting it, you can see it move a bit inside the cover. It’s minor movement and was much more obvious when I had the outer lens off, but it’s a tiny camera. From experience with how it tracks objects when zoomed, I beleive it also slides around the active pixel region for digital stabilisation, if you will.
It does depend on the type of sensor, the comment above was close but a bit incomplete/imprecise. Many modern sensors use a technique called binning where the final image’s pixels are calculated by combining a 2x2 grid of sensor pixels via some signal processing, halving resolution in both dimensions but improving sensitivity and allowing for many DSP-based capabilities; whether they are actual improvements over the raw image is implementation-dependent and partially subjective. When shooting at 2x digital zoom though, you bypass the binning and use the sensor pixels directly, resulting in an image with the same “true” (non-upscaled) resolution as a 1x shot, minus the signal processing. Any other digital zoom, whether between 1x and 2x or above, is indeed a crop of a larger image.
Well, it’s why we distinguish “optical zoom” and “digital zoom”. In its broader meaning, “zoom” means magnification and nothing more. I do agree with you that optical zoom is superior in every way, but if you shoot a 2x digital zoom image on a binning sensor its resolution will not be an upscaled “lie” as is the case for digital zoom generally.
I am not trying to defend marketing deceptions or pretend that optical and digital zoom are alike. I just wanted to mention this piece of technical information so that someone that cares can know that if you do want to zoom beyond the optical capabilities of your phone (provided it has a binning sensor, basically every “50MP” phone does*), exactly 2x is the way to go, as it is indeed higher quality than shooting at 1x and cropping to 2x afterwards.
*Admittedly this point is kind of moot because most phones have a dedicated telephoto camera that uses a different, smaller sensor when you switch to 2x. This only applies if your tele is 3x or higher or you have a single lens with a sensor >>12.5MP
It’s pretty hard to read something that was never written, all your arguments seem to remain in your head. You’ve yet to articulate anything at all, what exactly did I not read? If you did explain to some length how and why you think that posting anything that is not OC is harmful, then I do admit to missing it and would appreciate a link. But that’s fully besides this discussion.
I am actually serious, I am curious and eager to read the argument for digital zoom not being zoom at all you said you’re going to make and will read it with full attention. I commented because I like photography and sharing accurate information, not because I have a bone to pick with you.
Zoom is better than what it used to be and not outright a lie. I still have a dual camera phone (pixel 7, standard camera and superwide), and the picture is reasonable at 2.5x. It’s a 50mp sensor that, by default, only takes ~16mp pictures by only using certain sensor cells. Zooming uses a tighter group of those cells while still making a 16mp picture. But yes, zoomed pictures absolutely lose quality as the cropping starts hitting the limits of a tiny piece of do-all glass. My phone goes to 8x. Meanwhile, the flagship phones with an additional mild-zoom cameras bump up the baseline further. Still, only equivalent to like 40-50mm on a DSLR full frame sensor. Not enough for me, not for the price, so I still lug my DSLR around occasionally, as my eye tends to prefer framing with my phone above 3x - or about 50-85mm on a crop sensor.
The limiting factor with zoom is often stability. There’s no way to hold a phone steady enough for a long zoom, and I don’t think any phone has proper optical image stabilisation.
I’m not sure what you mean by “proper” image stabilisation, but they certainly have at least so.me optical stabilisation. The lens slides around. If you turn it on and look at the camera while tilting it, you can see it move a bit inside the cover. It’s minor movement and was much more obvious when I had the outer lens off, but it’s a tiny camera. From experience with how it tracks objects when zoomed, I beleive it also slides around the active pixel region for digital stabilisation, if you will.
Using less of the sensor to take a picture and calling it zoom is a lie. That’s just cropping the picture to be smaller not zooming.
It is a clear step above cropping a 16mp sensor to 2mp for zoom
The lie is the same regardless of the resolution.
It does depend on the type of sensor, the comment above was close but a bit incomplete/imprecise. Many modern sensors use a technique called binning where the final image’s pixels are calculated by combining a 2x2 grid of sensor pixels via some signal processing, halving resolution in both dimensions but improving sensitivity and allowing for many DSP-based capabilities; whether they are actual improvements over the raw image is implementation-dependent and partially subjective. When shooting at 2x digital zoom though, you bypass the binning and use the sensor pixels directly, resulting in an image with the same “true” (non-upscaled) resolution as a 1x shot, minus the signal processing. Any other digital zoom, whether between 1x and 2x or above, is indeed a crop of a larger image.
I get what you are saying but zoom is a function of the lens. Calling anything else zoom is a lie.
Well, it’s why we distinguish “optical zoom” and “digital zoom”. In its broader meaning, “zoom” means magnification and nothing more. I do agree with you that optical zoom is superior in every way, but if you shoot a 2x digital zoom image on a binning sensor its resolution will not be an upscaled “lie” as is the case for digital zoom generally.
I am not trying to defend marketing deceptions or pretend that optical and digital zoom are alike. I just wanted to mention this piece of technical information so that someone that cares can know that if you do want to zoom beyond the optical capabilities of your phone (provided it has a binning sensor, basically every “50MP” phone does*), exactly 2x is the way to go, as it is indeed higher quality than shooting at 1x and cropping to 2x afterwards.
*Admittedly this point is kind of moot because most phones have a dedicated telephoto camera that uses a different, smaller sensor when you switch to 2x. This only applies if your tele is 3x or higher or you have a single lens with a sensor >>12.5MP
If you are going to split hairs on it not being a lie then I am going to split hairs on it not being magnification.
Please do, I’ll gladly read your argument.
No you won’t. Just like you didn’t read it in the other thread.
It’s pretty hard to read something that was never written, all your arguments seem to remain in your head. You’ve yet to articulate anything at all, what exactly did I not read? If you did explain to some length how and why you think that posting anything that is not OC is harmful, then I do admit to missing it and would appreciate a link. But that’s fully besides this discussion.
I am actually serious, I am curious and eager to read the argument for digital zoom not being zoom at all you said you’re going to make and will read it with full attention. I commented because I like photography and sharing accurate information, not because I have a bone to pick with you.