This Demo Shows the Power of Having Dual Cameras on Smartphones

One of the exciting new trends in smartphone photography is the emergence of the dual camera. LG just launched it in the new G5, and Apple will reportedly include it in the upcoming iPhone 7.

If you want to see what the dual camera hype is all about, check out the 2-minute video above by CNET. It’s a dual camera demo being given by a company called Corephotonics at the Mobile World Congress 2016 over in Barcelona.

Corephotonics says its dual camera system is capable of 5x optical zoom with sharpness that trounces the image quality of existing smartphones on the market today.

Instead of the mechanical optical zoom found in traditional zoom systems, Corephotonics’ technology zooms using just the two cameras and no moving parts. One of the cameras has a telephoto lens and the other has a wide angle one. By combining the images from the two cameras together, Corephotonics is able to achieve both optical zoom and better image quality.

Benefits of this “computational camera” system include better resolution, less noise in low light, more dynamic range, and the ability to capture depth.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison image by Corephotonics that shows how its camera’s image quality compares to the camera in the iPhone 6 Plus:

iPhone 6 Plus photo (left) and a Corephotonics camera photo (right)
iPhone 6 Plus photo (left) and a Corephotonics camera photo (right)

“2016 will be dual cameras,” writes CNET. “[…] this is where phones will be this year because its advantages are readily apparent, and avid phone photographers will have something to catch their eye once more.”

(via CNET via BGR)

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