Our smartphones have a digital camera in it and you might have noticed that whenever you use zoom before clicking an image, the quality deteriorates. However, if you do the zoom from a DSLR, the quality of image retains.
The reason is that your smartphone does digital zooming that reduces the image quality while your DSLR use optical zooming.
Why digital zooming reduces image quality?
The quality reduces because the camera actually crops a portion of the image and then, it simply enlarges that cropped image to fill the screen.
Optical Zoom vs. Digital Zoom
You can find optical zooming in camcorders and DSLR like cameras. These cameras have lens that can move in and out while performing zoom. That’s why they retain the original image quality. On contrary, in a smart phone, lens can’t move in the same way as they do in DSLRs and camcorders.
Now to solve this problem Sony introduces super resolution digital zooming as a new feature in their upcoming smartphones’ cameras.
This feature will let you zoom digitally without compromising with the quality of the image. In fact, in other words, you will be enjoying optical zooming through your digital camera.
The patent for this feature has granted to Sony by USPTO. We have provided the summary of the patent in next paragraph. Moreover, the patent can be accessed from here.
How Sony’s Super Resolution Digital Zoom Function Works
Whenever you will zoom while clicking a picture, the camera will capture multiple images.
In next step, these multiple images are overlapped on each other to produce a single image. The overlapping or superimposing of these images is done by a technique called super-resolution.
As a result, the image that you will get after using superimposing multiple images will be having a high-resolution in comparison to any of the images from which it is has been derived.
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Aaah, thats pretty interesting. I knew that the optical zoom was cos of the lenses moving, but the idea of super resolution is damn cool :). Hope they come with that soon. For now, I am still sticking to my Iphone 🙂
Yes wait for them to implement it. The patent is granted and hence we think that soon they can provide this feature in their smart phones. It depends on the company only that whether they will or will not going to use these features. We are predicting only. However, me too looking for the same feature. 🙂 For the time being you can stick to your iPhone.
Dear Nitin,
I read your excellent articles on new products of big companies, it means you are promoting their products at no cost. As per my knowledge companies pay for such articles some thing between $25-00 to 250 per article.
Ma’am, this blog is non-profitable. 🙂
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You’re most welcome. 🙂 Do visit us again.