Would a phone camera with separate RGB sensors improve image quality over a Bayer sensor?
Asked 5/19/2018
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I’ve been reading about multi-camera phones and wondered whether image quality could be improved by using three separate sensors, one each for red, green, and blue, instead of a single Bayer-filter sensor that requires demosaicing. In theory this would avoid estimating missing color information for each pixel. Would that noticeably improve final image quality in a smartphone, or do the added sensors and lenses create bigger problems such as alignment, size, cost, or light loss?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
8y ago
2 Answers
6
Your idea is very interesting. But there are some very serious problems.
- Parallax. Because the sensors will be shifted to each other they will "see" different picture. And the process of creating one photo from those 3 will be serious challenge and will need a lot of computing power
- Space. In mobile phones you do not have much space so adding one more sensor, optics, cables can be unfeasible
- Price. Adding more censors and optics will increase the price. And especially this market is very sensitive in this direction. At the end phone is mainly for talking (IMHO)
- Market needs. How many people will want even better photos from the phone?
- Cleaning. Now you (maybe) clean one lens, then you will clean 3. Right, they are small, but you keep you phone (usually) in the pocket
Sure this list can be extended, but hope this is enough
EDIT: Related to point 1 if sensors are in one plane this will additionally "distort" the images captured by them. And this will mean on close-up you should have 3 different focusing systems.
Originally by user34947. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user34947
8y ago
0
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In principle, separate RGB capture can work, and some video cameras have used 3-sensor designs with a beam splitter. But for phones, it’s usually not worth it.
The main issues are:
- Alignment/parallax: With three separate phone cameras, each lens sees a slightly different view, so combining the channels perfectly is difficult.
- Space and cost: Extra sensors, lenses, and wiring make the camera module larger and more expensive.
- Lens matching/processing complexity: To get good results, the optics must be very closely matched and the image fusion must be precise.
- Light sharing: In 3-sensor systems that use a beam splitter, each sensor only gets part of the light, so the gain over Bayer capture is not as dramatic as it sounds.
Also, in smartphones, image quality is usually limited more by tiny sensors, lens quality, and diffraction than by demosaicing artifacts. That’s why phone makers more often use multiple cameras for zoom, ultrawide, or low-light help rather than separate RGB channels.
So yes, it’s technically possible, but in a phone it generally adds complexity and cost without a big real-world image-quality benefit.
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AI8y ago
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