Pelican Imaging's 16-lens camera module is designed for next-generation mobile devices coming in 2014. It contains a 16-lens array that allows for computational photography, capturing more information than a traditional camera and enabling features like refocusing photos after they are taken. The technology aims to bring DSLR-level photography to smartphones.

1. Rough History of Photography
Digital Sensors and Lenses
Zoom, Stabilization, Compression
Smartphone Camera Technology
Pelican Imaging's 16-lens camera
module is designed for next-gen
mobile devices coming in 2014.

2. Rough History of Photography
• Mid 1800s Silver nitrate glass plates
• Early 1900s B&W silent “movies”
Colour “talkies”
• Mid 1900s
B&W TVs
• Late 1900s LCD TV’s
Digital photography
Cellular phones
Internet
• Early 2000s Digital movie making
Smartphone cameras

3. About Photographic Film
•
•
Plastic coated with photosensitive emulsion.
When light strikes the chemical it causes a
reaction. Different formulas have different
sensitivities to light. Film has a resolution of ~20
Megapixels.
Film speed is a measure of how much light is
required to cause the photochemical reaction.
Slower, less reactive, film has finer grain
(resolution) and better color fidelity. The
camera shutter speed and aperture needs to be
set within narrow range for successful
photography.

4. Digital Sensors
•
•
•
•
Electronics control exposure time (shutter sound is
artificial)
Photons (light) energize electrons in CMOS
(Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) which
can be collected by picture elements (pixels).
There are colour filters on each pixel to allow only Red,
Blue, or Green (RGB) light to pass to the
semiconductor element.
Smaller sensor chips have physically smaller pixels =
more light is required to form an image.

5. CMOS Sensor Chip
Sony Image Sensor

6. Apertures and Pixels
Small aperture/lens = limited light, large
depth of field
Large aperture/lens = large amount light,
small depth of field
Small Sensor (slow film) needs more light
Many pixels on small sensor = light spillage

7. Basic
Optics
Object, aperture,
Lens, shutter,
sensor/film
Small aperture
gives
greater depth of
field

8. Format Sensor size Pixel Pitch Camera
1/2.5” 5.76x4.29mm <1 micron Camera Phone
1/1.7” 7.6x5.7mm 1.7 microns Compact camera
5.7 microns Consumer DSLR
APS-C22.2x14.8-
23.6x15.7mm
Full Frame 36x24mm 8.4 microns Pro DSLR
Basic Optics

9. Lenses

10. Lenses
Five element “Optical glass” lenses (with
scratch resistant sapphire lens cover)
Limited (no) anti-reflective coatings
Purple haze on iPhone
Digital (not optical) zoom

11. Noise
Sensors are made up of many tiny receptors, pixels,
which record light.
•Large pixels are more sensitive to light.
– Camera makers boost the gain in small sensors to
capture a usable image.
•On large sensors, each pixel is walled off to
prevent light from spilling over to adjacent pixels.
– Small chips with high megapixel counts have light
spillage (flares).
– Transistors under each CMOS pixel generate noise.

12. Digital Zoom
• Smartphone cameras do not have optical
zoom - digital zoom crops a region and
expands the pixel size. No increase in
resolution or number of pixels.

13. Compression
• Image is compressed to reduce storage
requirements.
• 8x8 blocks are averaged
• Static areas (from frame to frame) copied.
– Moving objects produce ghosts and blurring
– Samsung allows editing of unwanted moving objects
• Dedicated microprocessors in cameras can
compress on-the-fly

14. Infrared Sensitivity
• Camera sensors “see” a broader
spectrum of light than the human eye.
(Shine a TV remote control into your
camera). The sensitivity to infrared may
cause some color distortion.

15. Image Stabilization
• Larger cameras may have “optical”
stabilization where the sensor is mechanically
moved to compensate for camera shake.
Smaller cameras typically do not have
mechanical stabilization and use “digital”
stabilization that takes multiple shots and
averages the pixels.
• Digital stabilization does NOT work for video

16. Thank You
.