Why do Smartphones have multiple cameras??

Almost every higher-end smartphone comes with a triple or quad camera setup to the back of its design. With the rising importance of smartphone camera performance, each and every brand has worked hard to bring in all the advanced features to their camera setup not only to improve the image quality but to bring versatility to mobile photography. I am pretty sure the smartphone you are using right now has at least two camera sensors to its back (unless you’re holding an old iPhone or a pixel device 🙃). But why?? Do these extra camera modules have any advantages and if yes what are those added benefits?  

The Types

    Every smartphone has a main rear camera sensor and this acts as the primary sensor for the device. Other camera modules that we see in most of the smartphones are a wide-angle sensor, telephoto sensor, depth sensor, time of flight sensor, and macro lenses. Each of these camera sensors has its own unique advantage. But we cannot say all of these sensors are really useful, the wide-angle and telephoto sensors, yes, they can be very much helpful, but it is not quite the thing with other depth and macro sensors. They can be good but most of the time the brand just adds these extra depth and macro sensors just to advertise that their smartphone has got multiple camera modules.

Telephoto lens

    Until the introduction of these telephoto lenses, zooming in on a smartphone was always done digitally, which means when you zoom in, the main sensor captures the image or video whatever and it crops in to produce the zoom effect. This is called ‘digital zoom’. With the telephoto lens coming into action, our smartphones have become capable of zooming ‘optically’. These lenses are specifically designed to produce a clearer image at long focal lengths (when zoomed in). With the periscope telephoto lenses, which increases the optical zoom capability, there are some smartphones that can go up to 100x zoom, though the output image wouldn’t be of any use it can go 100x. So, basically, the telephoto lens is for zooming in.

Wide-angle lens

    As the name suggests, wide-angle sensors are one which has a wider angle of view than a typical camera sensor, so it allows you to fit more and more things in a single frame. Basically, it is the opposite of telephoto lenses, where, in telephoto you zoom in and with wide-angle you zoom out from the normal image. It has many use case scenarios, like when capturing an expansive landscape, or while shooting a tall building in a closer range or even for selfies, the front-facing wide-angle camera lens allows us to take good group selfies where you can fit more of your friends. The main sensor, the telephoto lens, and the wide-angle lens is the golden trio for any good smartphone camera array.

Depth Sensor

    With the presence of the depth sensor, again as the name suggests, it can calculate the depth and say how far the objects in the scene are placed with respect to each other. This depth estimation is very useful while capturing portrait shots. For example, let’s say you are taking a portrait shot of your beautiful dog with a beautiful background, here the main sensor and the depth sensor in your smartphone works together and finds the depth among various objects present in the scene, it estimates the distance between those objects, and as a result we can keep only the subject sharp, in this case, your dog and produce a pleasant blur to the background, which is called Bokeh. Well, this process can also be done with a single camera sensor with aggressive AI image processing. 

Macro and Time of Flight sensors

    The macro lens is used to take close-up photographs of very minute objects like water drops, an insect, or maybe a small flower or leaf. These macro lenses are designed in such a way that even if the subject is too close to the sensor, it can keep the subject in focus and can take sharp, detailed images of the subject. The Time of Flight (ToF) sensor is used to find the distance between the camera and the object. Kinda like the depth sensor, but a ToF sensor uses infrared light, it transmits the infrared light which bounces back due to any object, the sensor receives those light and analyze the depth information, pretty much like a Bat analyzing its surrounding. 

So these are basically the types of camera sensors, that today’s smartphones are equipped with and their functions. The next you buy a smartphone and come across phrases like ‘Triple camera setup’ or ‘quad-camera setup’, you’ll know what are those extra sensors and what are they capable of.

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