07/09/2026
Our member Jeff Luhn has provided some useful insight to cell phone photography. We always enjoy learning from him. Thanks Jeff for sharing this!
There's been some interesting exchanges lately about the character of cell phone images. I'd like to chime in.
I was very resistant to cell phone cameras when they first appeared. They were low res and seemed like a gimmick to get people to buy new phone models. In just a few years the phone producers, specifically Nokia, broke new ground with devices that did a good job. Samsung was next, followed by Apple. These days all the companies are delivering cameras of exceptional quality... or are they?
Of course all the images look brilliant on a small bright screen, and darn good on a computer screen. The most remarkable feature of phone cameras is the ability to take great photos in low light. Software is making it easy to emulate short depth of field for good portraits. Everything looks scary good, until we increase the image to presentation size, say 8x10 or 11x14, and then we see Mackie lines from sharpening, increased noise, and the 'grain' from pixelization. These issues will be solved very soon. In fact they have been solved with apps and pluggins on the computer. Very soon, this software will be onboard on phones.
I am speaking specifically of Topaz AI, and other similar apps. Topaz takes any digital image, digests the data from each pixel, and uses existing algorthymns (sp) to create a new image of unparalleled quality. Part of the software comes from the technology developed by the government for enhancing satellite images, part from Pixar software for creating high res animations, and part from AI reinventing itself electronically. The algo-whatever does not increase the size of pixels, it draws new ones between the originals. As the image size increases, so does the pixel count. Genius.
So....every 'grown up' camera we have now will not be top dog for long, unless camera makers include this re-sampling technology on board new camera bodies. That's a lot of processing power needed for large sensors.
For now, we're going to use computer apps like Topaz AI to process our big camera images for higher quality than cell phones provide.
Keep an eye in your rearview mirror because cell phones are moving faster than big cameras for onboard performance.
Jeffery
