Two months ago, the debut of Huawei's latest generation of mobile phone products, the P9, was like giving many mobile phone photography parties a strong "Viagra" after the passion. Major forums and websites have begun to hype up topics such as "mobile phone camera function is comparable to SLR". Many people believe that since the iPhone 4, Apple has brought a lot of pressure to digital cameras with its excellent imaging algorithms. And this time, the dual camera of Huawei P9's Leica certification halo has completely turned camera manufacturers into a "capitalized ignorance".
Originally, there was no comparison between the two digital products, because one was a belief in the pursuit of art and life, and the other was like a handiwork at best a necessity. But it is such a simple thing, but some people like to hype it, and what is even more ridiculous is that there are many people who believe in it. It's like a person driving a car for tens of thousands of dollars, saying that his horsepower can be comparable to a supercar like Ferrari and Lamborghini, and many people around him have even believed in TM! Of course, if you drive a divine car like Wuling Hongguang, I didn't say anything.
So, when did the camera and the mobile phone, two products that were not originally in a parallel line, begin to intersect? And for what reasons has these two products that should not have been compared have been pushed to the cusp of the war of words one at a time? Next, please follow my article and walk into the "grudges" about cameras and mobile phones.
The evolutionary history of photography
Whether or not you think that the camera function of the mobile phone has caught up with the camera at this moment, you must admit that photography was originally a unique function of the camera, and the camera function that appeared on the mobile phone later was also developed by borrowing from the camera. Therefore, before we understand the "grudge" of these two digital products, please allow me to briefly introduce the history of the development of cameras.
The first camera in history, developed in 1826 by the Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce, was the first permanent photograph in human history, "Outside the Window" (although it is rumored that the first camera was designed by Joseph Nisephor Niebs, the first photograph "Outside the Window" was not taken by himself).
Although the camera was invented as early as 1826, the prototype of the modern camera was not defined until nearly 100 years later. In 1913, The founder of Leica's legendary camera brand, German camera designer Oskar Barnack, designed a small camera in his studio that used 35mm film, which could shoot 36mm × 24mm film, and named it Ur-Leica. It was also the world's first true "full-frame" camera, and Ur-Leica was also called a "prototype" by all photography enthusiasts.
The advent of the "prototype" Ur-Leica seems to be like a needle catalyst, only 40 years later, the Japanese camera brand represented by Minolta began to rise rapidly, and after 1958, manufacturers such as Canon and Nikon, which we are now very familiar with, also began to fully enter the field of SLR cameras.
The trajectory of time has been pushed backwards for nearly a decade, and in 1969 two bell lab developers, George E. Smith and Willard S. Boyle, developed a sensor called CCD for the aerospace and military industries of the time. However, because the cost of the CCD sensor is very high, people did not associate this sensor with the civilian camera at the beginning. It wasn't until 1975 that Kodak's Steven J. Sasson and two of his other engineering colleagues developed the world's first true digital camera using CCD sensors. This digital camera has only 10,000 pixels and the size of the camera is particularly large. But despite its many shortcomings, it is still a pivotal development direction for the development of the camera.
Even if a digital camera with a CCD sensor has been developed, its original use is still in the military and aerospace industries. I believe that everyone understands that ordinary people who want to use such high-tech products generally can only wait until these two "big brothers" are tired of playing before they will be decentralized. So, although the concept of "digital camera" was already available as early as 1975, it was not until 1991 that Kodak officially launched the first mass-produced digital camera that was truly produced for ordinary users, named "Kodak Professional Digital Camera System", with an effective pixel of only 1.3 million pixels. Since then, the door of digital cameras has officially opened, and camera brands represented by Kodak at that time include: Nikon, Minolta, Fujifilm and other camera brands have also launched their own CCD sensor digital cameras.
It wasn't until 2000 that Canon introduced a DSLR camera with CMOS sensor at its press conference in May and designated it the EOS D30. This product is equipped with our common APS-C specification CMOS sensor, with an effective pixel of about 3.25 million pixels, and once the product was released, it was favored by photography enthusiasts, photojournalists and professional photographers.
Since then, with the competition for the market by many digital camera manufacturers, digital camera technology has also been fully developed. More and more photojournalists and professional photographers are starting to use digital cameras at work, and with the official release of the first low-cost digital camera, the Canon EOS 300D, the prelude to the democratization of digital SLR cameras has officially begun.
Just when Canon released the EOS D30, a digital SLR camera with CMOS photosensitive elements, the world's first camera phone was born in 2000. As the first mobile phone with a camera function, the Sharp Sharp J-SH04 only had a shooting function of 110,000 pixels at that time.
Although the first camera phone appeared in 2000, a digital product with only 110,000 pixels did not attract the attention of camera manufacturers who could already cope with "up to" 3 million effective pixels at that time. The two products are still on their own paths, and there are few events in between that can change history.
It wasn't until 2005 that mobile phones and cameras really intersected for the first time. Speaking of the name Carl Zeiss, I believe that whether you have worked or are working on optics, you will not be unfamiliar with it. If you're not a photography enthusiast or working in the optics industry, there's only one way to know the name for 80 percent of people, which is the Nokia phone that was equipped with Carl Zeiss lenses.
The story is roughly: Carl Zeiss in 2005, aimed at the mobile phone market that was fully popularized at that time, and it was Nokia, the "king of the past", who drove this popularity boom. Therefore, Carl Zeiss, the leading brand of Ashkenazi lenses, began to walk off the altar and became particularly close to ordinary people. From the first Nokia N90 with only 2 million pixels and a lens provided by Carl Zeiss, to the Nokia "rejuvenation" Lumia1020 with 41 million pixels in previous years, Carl Zeiss has accompanied Nokia for 10 years.
It is precisely because of the cooperation in 2005 that the concept and direction of mobile phone shooting high-quality photos have been laid. It also laid the fuse for the "war" of digital cameras and smartphones in taking pictures a few years later.
From the official decline of the veteran smartphone manufacturer Nokia in 2010 to today, in just 6 years, the new smartphone products led by Apple and Google have swept almost all mobile phone users in a surging situation. Of course, although Nokia and the once-proud Symbian system have launched the historical stage, and the Carl Zeiss mobile phone lens that helped Nokia ascend to the throne has long been forgotten by everyone, the product concept they left behind and the mobile phone camera function that everyone talks about has not ended.
The mobile phone revolution was in full swing
Let's freeze the time to around 2010, and the real battle between camera and mobile phone seems to have officially begun in this period. During this period, a number of "divine machines" represented by the Nikon D90, Nikon D300s, Canon 5D Mark II, and Nikon D700 have been launched, and the transformation of cameras from the film age to the digital age has finally been recognized by users at this time.
It was also at this time that the "mobile phone revolution" led by the iPhone4 and many Android phones also began to refresh users' consumption concepts. Since I am not engaged in mobile phone-related work, I can't go into a lot of insight into what cross-era technologies were brought about by the advent of these smartphones. But it is certain that many of the friends around me who started iPhone 4 or Android mobile phones at that time were 80% because the smartphones at that time had a qualitative leap in the camera function compared with the previous mobile phone products and the ultra-high scalability of these smartphones.
Camera and mobile phone several tricks
Since the camera and mobile phone have attracted their respective product explosions, these two products that have not intersected have finally met together in the camera function.
The first confrontation between digital cameras and smart phones should be around 2010, when the digital camera is in the early stage of rapid development, although it protects a group of users in professionalism, but after all, it was the initial stage of the development of shooting equipment, and the price of many professional equipment is still difficult to accept. At that time, the new generation of smart phones was also in the early stages of development, although it was also in its infancy, but its advantage in price was obvious to all. In addition to these, portability is also a big drawback of camera products, and mobile phones, which can be put in the pocket of digital products, have become the first choice for most people. It is precisely for this reason that we can see from the market analysis over the years that the performance of the camera market is declining year by year.
Of course, camera manufacturers are not waiting, but the fate is not good. Due to factors such as price and convenience, mobile phones began to gradually erode the market share of cameras, and camera manufacturers began to develop a wide range of low-cost, small-scale portable camera products to try to regain the market. But Lady Luck does not seem to be standing on the side of the camera, just when the camera is catching up with the market with a small camera, the social platform has also begun to quickly enter people's lives, mobile phone QQ, WeChat, Renren, Weibo, etc. These applications that need to be shared in time appear in front of people. And with it comes the failure of small cameras again, after all, it is better to shoot and pass away in most cases than "everything will wait until you go home".
Just when camera manufacturers were exploring the next way out, the 80s and 90s, a group of young people who grew up in the process of reform and opening up and the digital era, rose up on the Internet to "recall 80 and 90" activities. Many young people have begun to use the help of filters on their mobile phones to take some retro photos as a memory of the past. Interestingly, this time the camera manufacturers did not choose too many frontal confrontation but played the "routine", so we can see that the camera manufacturers represented by Fujifilm began to produce retro-shaped camera products, which also just meets the young people's retro fashion concept. Because when everyone takes photos, the camera is not a tool to take these photos, but when the "model" frequently appears in these retro tonal photos. It is precisely because of this trend influence that we will see retro-shaped cameras such as Fujifilm X30, Fujifilm X100s, Nikon DF and so on in camera products. The frequent appearance of these cameras not only satisfies the retro feelings of young people, but also puts the camera as a product in front of people who have been overwhelmed by smartphones.
After this confrontation, the mobile phone manufacturer seems to be disgusted by the camera manufacturer. Therefore, mobile phone manufacturers began to use various publicity means to indicate that their products can already be compared with SLR cameras in terms of camera function. I have to admit that the current conference of mobile phone manufacturers is really no different from the MLM scene, talking about feelings, talking about ideals, and talking about the future is not talking about actual products. This also makes camera manufacturers unable to focus, because the tradition of camera manufacturers' conferences is basically equivalent to academic lectures, and a professional camera practitioner can fall asleep at the conference, not to mention ordinary users.
It can be said that this "silent" of camera manufacturers has enhanced the credibility of "mobile phone photography is comparable to SLR", but this society is such a group of people, they seem to like to dig up the roots of the wall, the more you are "powerful" The more they have to find some problems in you.
In the middle of last year, the Zhejiang Provincial Consumer Protection Commission and the National Camera Quality Supervision and Inspection Center jointly inspected apple's iPhone 6 (A1586), Samsung's GALAXY S5 (SM-G9008V), Samsung GALAXY Note4 (SM-N9100), Nokia Lumia 930, Lenovo's Sunjian S90 (s90-t), OPPO's R5 (R8107), LG's G3 (D857), and SONY's Xperia Z1 (L39h), TCL's Hero N3 (M2U), Nubia Z7 (NX506J) 9 brands and 10 models were compared. The content detected is the total number of optical effective pixels, visual resolution, dynamic range, color reproduction accuracy, dynamic resolution, noise, and exposure error. The test results show that only 2 main lenses and front lenses all meet the corresponding standards, namely Samsung GALAXY Note4 (SM-N9100) and LG G3 (D857), with a compliance rate of 20%. In addition, other mobile phone products all have situations that do not match the advertisement. Looking at camera products, in addition to the design problems of individual models, we can hardly see relevant reports in imaging. In this recent showdown between camera and mobile phone, the camera successfully used "third-party forces" to hit the face of mobile phone manufacturers.
It can be said that mobile phones can never be compared with cameras in taking pictures
Having said the story behind the product, let us lighten some of my personal views from the perspective of the two types of products themselves. As a photography and camera product practitioner, I personally have a certain "feeling" for camera products, but this "feeling" does not come from working in this area, but from the culture behind the product.
In the culture and development history of these two types of vendors, we can see that they are fundamentally different. First of all, mobile phone manufacturers, the current mobile phone market believes that everyone can see it, and many brands gather here. But if we were to trace the history of their brands, I believe that few could be discussed at length. And only a few can be called "feelings", such as: Nokia, Sharp, Ericsson, etc., have long been "forced to die" by the current mobile phone manufacturers.
Speaking of camera manufacturers, let's not talk about Leica's "creation" camera manufacturers, take Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm and Olympus, which we are familiar with now, each of them is a manufacturer with a history of nearly a hundred years.
Nikon's predecessor "Japan Optical Industry Co., Ltd." was formally established in 1917, to say a little better, the "Japan Optical Industry Co., Ltd." was a Japanese military enterprise, to say a little, when the Japanese invasion of China almost all the Japanese military sights were produced by this enterprise, which is why the imaging quality of Nikon's Nikkor lens once caught up with the Ashkenazi brand. Looking at Canon, although it is decades later than Nikon in the field of cameras, the official production of camera products is also a matter of our "Republic of China".
Camera manufacturers have absolute time accumulation in taking pictures, and mobile phone manufacturers are like an "upstart". My own view is that the really good things need to be accumulated with time, not like some mobile phone brands to engage in hunger marketing, binding some of the accessory functions that are not easy to get on.
In addition to the differences accumulated by the two types of products, the working principle of these two products is also doomed to never be compared with the camera in terms of taking pictures. From the currently known working principle of the sensor, we can see that no matter what sensor you use, its area is the most obvious feature that determines the shooting quality and effective pixels. For a simple example, a bowl for eating can hold a volume, and it can never be compared with a pot for cooking rice.
How phones and cameras will evolve
After five years of competition, we can see that the current camera and mobile phone are more in search of a win-win state. Although one or two "black sheep" will jump out from time to time, more mobile phone manufacturers also default to the fact that the camera function cannot surpass the camera. After all, the camera monopolizes the market of professional photography enthusiasts, and those who do not have too many requirements for photo quality will still use mobile phones as the main camera tool.
With the advent of some mobile phones that use the concept of five-axis stabilization, we can also see that more and more mobile phone manufacturers are now learning the concept of taking pictures from camera manufacturers. Coupled with the recent launch of products such as Leica labeling lenses, mobile phones began to seek breakthroughs with the help of camera manufacturers.
The technology of digital cameras has gradually matured, and all aspects of the parameters of digital cameras have begun to rise exponentially. In recent years, the WiFi function added to the camera has also met the requirements of people using mobile phones to remotely control the camera in the case of timely sharing. Although it is still difficult for the camera to return to the state of "heyday" in a short period of time, it is not a good thing for photography enthusiasts, after all, there is pressure to have a breakthrough.
Of course, with the development of cameras and mobile phones and secret competitions, we may usher in a discussion on topics like "mobile phone camera function is comparable to SLR" tomorrow. But to this day, mobile phones still can't compete with cameras in terms of camera function. At the end of the article, I would like to end with a joke that was very popular in the circle of friends not long ago, the content of the joke is "Q: When can the photos taken by domestic mobile phones exceed the SLR?" A: At the time of the press conference. ”