Go to Smartphones

r/Smartphones•5 mo. ago

TheresJustNoMoney

Why haven't movie cameras gotten smaller and lighter while so many other electronics have throughout the years?

As we continue to innovate while the years pass, electronic components become smaller and more powerful at the same time. So why do motion picture cameras remain pretty large and pretty heavy?

And when will components get so small and good that smartphones can be used to film full-on movies?

Crossposts:

r/FilmMakers: r/Filmmakers/s/v8BeqtWbru

r/movies: r/movies/s/c6zbEL28FZ

r/Film: r/FIlm/s/9JKz4JQzLx

r/AskTechnology: r/AskTechnology/s/FHjQKrmGNI

r/Smartphones: r/Smartphones/s/OEcAXy8Pgo

 

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[–]DM_ME_KUL_TIRAN_FEET 4 points 5 months ago 

Physics.

Light will do what light does, and when you get small enough light starts behaving in extremely inconvenient ways. Electronics can be miniturised, but optics run into physical limits at comparatively large sizes.

We will never have a studio movie camera in our phones, but we will get better at faking it with digital processing

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[–]malakish 2 points 5 months ago 

Same with sound quality.

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[–]Icy_Cheesecake_5682 2 points 5 months ago 

How come a cat can see so well even in the dark with 1cm round eyes but we need much bigger sensors to match that for video recording?

Sounds me that is possible, we are just not there yet

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[–]DM_ME_KUL_TIRAN_FEET 1 point 5 months ago 

The fovea where eyes actually get sharp vision is tiny. Like the equivalent of a 128x128 pixel square in a 4K frame.

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[–]szank 2 points 5 months ago 

Because people using these cameras have other priorities than small and light.

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[–]Jealous-Proposal-334 2 points 5 months ago 

Because if you get a 4mm lens and zoom in 10x, you don't get a 40mm lens equivalent. Light does what light does.

You can only do so much before you run into the problem with the fact that humans are human-sized and therefore our eyeballs are a certain size; and therefore lenses need to be a certain size.

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[–]Icy_Cheesecake_5682 2 points 5 months ago 

Well look at graphics cards, they got much bigger but also more powerful, they could have stayed the same with better performance but not this big

Same as cameras, if you compare a sensor from 10 years ago with today at the same size is clearly better but if we want significant better results we need to go bigger

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[–]didiboy 2 points 5 months ago 

Physics, phone cameras are still not as good as professional cameras, tho they have gotten pretty close. But manufacturers of professional video cameras don’t care about competing with phones.

Indie projects might use phone cameras, but the truth is most products don’t care if the camera is big and heavy as long as they can afford it within their budget. It’s not like the cameraman has to go around carrying the camera on his hand.

The movie industry would prefer to keep the same sizes but improve in quality, better light capture at dark scenes, better motion, better colors.

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