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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
In the future, camera lenses could be thousands of times thinner and significantly less resource-intensive to manufacture. Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, now present a new technology for making artificial materials known as metasurfaces, which consist of a multitude of interacting nanoparticles that, together, can control light. They could have great use in the optical technology of tomorrow.
Metasurfaces can be used for optical components in portable electronics, sensors, cameras or space satellites. The Chalmers researchers' new technology for making such planar surfaces is based on a plastic that is already used today to create other microstructures.
"We put a thin layer of this plastic on a glass plate and, using a well-established technique called electron-beam lithography, we can draw detailed patterns in the plastic film, which, after development, will form the metasurface. The resulting device can focus light just like a normal camera lens, but it is thousands of times thinner—and can be flexible too," says Daniel Andrén, a Ph.D. student at the Department of Physics at Chalmers and first author of the scientific article recently published in the journal ACS Photonics.
[...] "Our method could be a step toward large-scale production of metasurfaces. That is the goal we are already working toward today. Metasurfaces can help us create different effects and offer various technological possibilities. The best is yet to come," says Ruggero Verre, a researcher at the Department of Physics at Chalmers and co-author of the scientific article.
Journal Reference:
Daniel Andrén, et al. Large-Scale Metasurfaces Made by an Exposed Resist [open], ACS Photonics (2020). (DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.9b01809)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @02:29AM (5 children)
All smartphones, all the time.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Friday June 12 2020, @08:09AM
Get back to me when people are happy if the professional photographer takes their wedding photos with his smartphone.
In other news, Swiss Army knives have replaced all other tools.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday June 12 2020, @03:44PM (3 children)
You try cramming a bunch of photos onto a device, I have to hookup to my computer / e-mail my self the pictures from. Yeah, no, just about every new phone comes without an external card. So, much more inconvenient to "swap out cards", or just get my pictures onto my computer. There's OTG adapters and flash drives, so you could drop pictures onto a flash drive, but that's tedious.
Also, no matter how "good" your fixed lens phone camera is, it will be overshadowed by the optical zoom you can get on a point and shoot. Even so, I got a pretty nice mirrorless. I'm quite happy with my Olympus mirrorless, with interchangeable lenses. I believe this is the one I've been using for the last 5 years or so: https://www.amazon.com/Olympus-Mirrorless-Digital-Camera-14-42mm/dp/B0096WDMGC [amazon.com]
How old is your smartphone? I have multiple phones that have gone bad due to the battery in the same time period, iPhone and LG.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by jman on Saturday June 13 2020, @11:09AM (1 child)
Actually, my honey's S20 Ultra takes pretty good photos, and does have a 30x optical zoom. She's been in the lab side of the business for years, now retired, and has shot exactly one wedding in her life. The word is, Never Again. ;)
She doesn't even break out the Nikon or Canon bodies anymore. Am thinking we're reaching the age of a traditional analog or DLSR being considered "big iron". Still necessary in society, but those little gnat-like machines are doing quite well for a lot of tasks.
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To Freeman: So far as phone transfer issues, it's not as convenient, but any modern phone can email, and for bulk xfer there are numerous FTP/SFTP clients out there, so no need for swapping out a card or even hooking up a cable. Of course, I do have to remind her almost every single time how to connect via FileZilla on her Mac. ;)
Using such apps on the phone assumes it can run apps from Play Store, F-Droid, etc., but if it doesn't, it probably also doesn't have a camera worth using. If you're on Apple, they don't make flip-phones, so you should have the capability.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday June 15 2020, @02:33PM
Call me when a $300 smartphone can take good enough pictures not to warrant a $300 camera. I'm not going to be affording a $1,399 phone, so I can have a pretty good camera.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @01:37PM
Lack of zoom is not a problem for most photography. I do 95% of the shooting on my Nikon D750 with primes. The thing I miss on my phone is not zoom but sensor/aperture size, dynamic range and non-hideous processing.
Also my phone is 3 years old, I expect to use it for 5 like I always do. Buy nice or buy twice.