Sony Alpha engineers explain how they developed the Xperia 1 III camera

19 April 2021
The team had a similar philosophy when working on the Xperia flagship as it did when developing the Alpha cameras.

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YUKI93, 20 Apr 2021I actually doubt if computational photography and AI is the... moreThat's because many computational imaging techniques involve frame stacking. Image processors (and of course other components as well) on dedicated cameras focus how quickly they can take photos and save them onto the storage drive, not how many frames it can accurately stack after clicking the shutter. Bionz XR allows a1 to read out all of the sensor's 50 million pixels under 5ms (although the embedded DRAM is also playing the big part of it), but it won't be able to merge burst of 15 frames, apply global and local alignments and save the final image within a second or two like Google's Pixel Visual Core or Qualcomm's Hexagon DSP do. If you want to do the same with any dedicated cameras, you'll end up mounting them on a tripod, shooting the photos and then combining the RAW files manually on Lightroom on a desktop. Their sensors are certainly ready for the era of advanced computational photography, but the chips are not.

Also, Nokia 950 series DID indeed showed that this is the way forward. Their PureView and Rich Capture are the primary examples of computational image processing that revolutionised the smartphone photography, along with Google's HDR+.

    Anonymous, 20 Apr 2021Cheaping out? Exmor costs much more than Isocell. S... moreI think what he means is that Sony putting same old tiny sensor as it would be cheaper compared to the bigger sensors they have.

    It's not Exymor vs Isocell he is referring to....it's tiny sensor from Exymor(cheap) vs big sensor from Exymor (more expensive).
    But you had to bring your Samsung hatred in there didn't you???

      Anonymous, 20 Apr 2021Sony does not make DSLR, just compact and mirrorless. C... moreThe ZV1 already got humiliated by the MI 11 Ultra

        Anonymous, 20 Apr 2021every single sony article and review are always filled with... moreReally? One of avid Sony fans I conversed with yesterday was foolishly bragging about how (Sony's) smartphones can take DSLR-like photos. It's kind of ironic because they sometimes show that they really don't know how photographers actually do their work using their dedicated cameras.

          You people are hilarious.
          I myself can't wait for a review of the phone itself, the camera will be good enough for most people plus it has a true Pro mode unlike other brands claims.
          Kudos to Sony as most of us (not only the brand loyal fans) hope this phone is a success.

            Anonymous, 20 Apr 2021every single sony article and review are always filled with... moreLol please, only Sony haters would write everything that you said there.

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              • Anonymous
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              • 20 Apr 2021

              ae86, 19 Apr 2021Sony related articles is a common sight right now here in G... moreevery single sony article and review are always filled with children "tech experts" writing essays about how inferior a smartphone camera is to a mirrorless camera.
              basically they love sony and will always write essays about anything about them. like sony controls their breathing, and every single muscular movements of their body. all those people you see with verified names, lots of upvotes and lots of comments, they're probably children that kept battling here on every single gsmarena article/review about sony. B)

                No Notch Life, 20 Apr 2021They are stubborn and still refuse to develop an acceptable... moreI actually doubt if computational photography and AI is the way forward. Nokia and Microsoft have shown it before with the Lumia-branded PureView camera. Here's something to wonder about: Why DSLR camera brands still don't embrace them despite having the latest sensor with modern features and improvements? It does show that software still has its limitations no matter how much work Google has done for it. No amount of software work can change hardware physics, that's a fact! That is why even a five-year-old M43 or APS-C camera can still produce far better quality than a smartphone camera with mountainous computational photography and AI work.

                  As long as Sony keeps improving the camera software, that would be more than good enough for me. It is about time we should see a true modern-day replacement of Nokia/Microsoft's PureView camera.

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                    • 20 Apr 2021

                    Exyvia, 20 Apr 2021What I was trying to say is bigger the sensor with have a s... moreBigger sensor results in longer focal lengths for the same angle of view as smaller sensors.

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                      • 20 Apr 2021

                      AlyK89, 20 Apr 2021They forgot to explain us how they put the same shitty fron... moreEasy, it does the job for visio call.
                      Also doing portrait with a front camera is always shitty anyway due to the wide angle, most people will use it with social media app to apply filters which will degrade the quality and on top of that will compress the image to send it. So for most people it doesn't change anything.

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                        JS, 20 Apr 2021Xperia cameras have been surprisingly bad considering Sony&... moreRather than bad I would say not in tune with the crowd demands. Back when I looked for a phone 2 years ago, I bought a P30Pro, an oppo reno 10x, a nokia 9, a S10+ and then a Xperia1 thanks to the review here (I don't like Sony as a brand due to their playstation/gaming politics), since in EU we can just send back the product we don't like before 14 days when we buy a product on the internet.
                        Says what you want, be only the xperia gave, and still give me what I wanted with photo. Sure the dynamic range is not as good, and lights at night are burnt easily, but that was the only one that did not use an overly agressive post process that I highly dislike (I like noisy photo far more than washed-out one). And P30pro raws needed far too much work with the blue vignetting from the lenses.
                        It's different and I'm glad we still have some choice.
                        I don't really get why you get mad because there is no point and shoot AI assisted mode (in fact there is but whatever) on this phone, just move on and look for another brand? What's the gain for Sony to have a copy phone from the huawei/samsung group?

                          Deckimbal, 20 Apr 2021Good auto mode/AI for spontaneous and unplanned snapshots a... moreYou hit the nail on the head. If Sony doesn't address exactly this, the elephant in the room, they will rarely appeal to the mainstream. They could be the leader, outright, with a normal point-and-shoot app (available on every other brand), used by 99% of people, that smashes the Galaxy, iPhone and Pixel.

                            JS, 20 Apr 2021Xperia cameras have been surprisingly bad considering Sony&... moreThey are stubborn and still refuse to develop an acceptable point-and-shoot mode using computational photography and AI to actually automatically process shots. The slowing sales should've been a wake up call for Sony, they're shooting themselves in the foot by not appealing to the mainstream enough.

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                              • PIE
                              • 20 Apr 2021

                              Xperia cameras have been surprisingly bad considering Sony's camera game is strong. Why they can't just combine those camera and mobile technology?

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                                • JS
                                • PIE
                                • 20 Apr 2021

                                There always has been a fuss about Sony Xperia cameras, but they all turned out to be flops. I would rather wait and see if they have actually stepped their game up before hopping on the hype.

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                                  • Betli
                                  • L1w
                                  • 20 Apr 2021

                                  Will Sony overcome it's whit balance and camera heating issue this time or they'll leave it as they did with all experias!

                                  I don't trust Sony ads, only comparison will show who's good Camera.

                                    Nick Tegrataker, 20 Apr 2021I'm fairly certain that Sony's engineers also kno... moreWhat I was trying to say is bigger the sensor with have a smaller focal length and hence a shallower depth of field. Keeping the sensor small will maintain that distance and keep the look the engineers want.

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                                      Anonymous, 20 Apr 2021Still best to wait a few months for price to drop atleast $... moreSweden has small price drops. The shops are to greedy here. Xperia 1 ii is Still 1350$ here

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                                        • Anonymous
                                        • 7X4
                                        • 20 Apr 2021

                                        Still best to wait a few months for price to drop atleast $200-300 or more cheaper than the current price.

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