What is the point when the pictures will be all weird. To get 21x zoom on that sized camera, you need a horribly small sensor. The sensor on this is a bigger than iPhone's, but they also crammed in 16mp. Now, that screwed them to limit the fstop value to f/2.8 widest open. Note that widest open will happen at the time when you're zoomed out completely. You will most likely end up using the f/5.5+ fstop value on this camera on most images.
Any image this can produce would be way worse than an iPhone. Usually, you are shooting at f/2.4 on an iPhone. Notice that blurring smooth creaminess you get on off focus areas on iPhone? You will never get it from this camera. Things will either be focussed, or bluntly blurred.
They don't care about image quality at all with those specs. This is a marketing gig.
I don't think it's fair to compare the aperture of this lens when zoomed in to the aperture of an iPhone lens. Without using it, my first guess is that having an optical zoom is going to do more for general purpose image quality than what is lost by cramming 16mp into a small sensor. Obviously it depends on the use case, but in general, people like to zoom.
On a less speculative note, I disagree that image quality = narrow DOF. There's more than one style of picture in the world.
That said, I agree with the overall point of it being mostly a marketing gimmick (16MP on a tiny sensor? app store access? yawn). But then I'm a guy who's not happy without at least an APS-C size sensor, preferably with interchangeable lenses. And even then, it does drive me crazy that this can have GPS built in and my SLR requires an obtrusive, reportedly-very-slow add-on.
People like to zoom, but I'm not entirely sure if a 480mm effective focal length is what most people zoom to. When I used a point and shoot, 6x zoom seemed enough, but that's only one man's opinion.
GPS and wireless access pisses me off too, just for the cost alone. GPS unit for my DSLR is like $250. This is nuts.
Comments
What is the point when the pictures will be all weird. To get 21x zoom on that sized camera, you need a horribly small sensor. The sensor on this is a bigger than iPhone's, but they also crammed in 16mp. Now, that screwed them to limit the fstop value to f/2.8 widest open. Note that widest open will happen at the time when you're zoomed out completely. You will most likely end up using the f/5.5+ fstop value on this camera on most images.
Any image this can produce would be way worse than an iPhone. Usually, you are shooting at f/2.4 on an iPhone. Notice that blurring smooth creaminess you get on off focus areas on iPhone? You will never get it from this camera. Things will either be focussed, or bluntly blurred.
They don't care about image quality at all with those specs. This is a marketing gig.
I don't think it's fair to compare the aperture of this lens when zoomed in to the aperture of an iPhone lens. Without using it, my first guess is that having an optical zoom is going to do more for general purpose image quality than what is lost by cramming 16mp into a small sensor. Obviously it depends on the use case, but in general, people like to zoom.
On a less speculative note, I disagree that image quality = narrow DOF. There's more than one style of picture in the world.
That said, I agree with the overall point of it being mostly a marketing gimmick (16MP on a tiny sensor? app store access? yawn). But then I'm a guy who's not happy without at least an APS-C size sensor, preferably with interchangeable lenses. And even then, it does drive me crazy that this can have GPS built in and my SLR requires an obtrusive, reportedly-very-slow add-on.
People like to zoom, but I'm not entirely sure if a 480mm effective focal length is what most people zoom to. When I used a point and shoot, 6x zoom seemed enough, but that's only one man's opinion.
GPS and wireless access pisses me off too, just for the cost alone. GPS unit for my DSLR is like $250. This is nuts.