The Challenges of Mirrorless Cameras: A Physics Problem to Solve

As we continue to shrink camera technology down to fit inside smartphones, one of the biggest challenges that remains is how to pack high-quality optics into such small spaces. This is a physics problem that has been ongoing for years, and it's one that mirrorless cameras are still struggling to solve. With their large sensors and impressive zoom capabilities, these cameras offer a level of flexibility and creative freedom that was previously impossible with traditional point-and-shoot cameras.

However, as we've seen with the Zenfone Zoom camera, even the most advanced technology can sometimes fall short in terms of image quality. The phone's single camera, which did 28 to 84 millimeters of zoom, was praised for its impressive optics, but ultimately failed to deliver high-quality images as a result. It's clear that there's still much work to be done in this area, and companies like Sony are taking the lead in addressing these challenges.

Sony is one company that has been making significant strides in this area, particularly with their recent development of a phone featuring a periscope zoom lens. By using magnets to move around optical elements inside the camera, they've managed to create a system that's both technically impressive and remarkably compact. This technology allows for incredibly high levels of zoom flexibility, without sacrificing image quality.

The Sony phone in question features an 8-800mm lens, which is equivalent to a massive 1-800mm telephoto lens on a traditional camera body. While it's clear that this level of zoom capability comes with significant practical limitations – the lens weighs over 53 pounds and costs $165,000 – it also highlights the incredible progress that companies are making in terms of optical design.

But what about smartphones? Can they be designed to handle high-quality optics without sacrificing usability or size? Sony seems to think so, and their recent phone release demonstrates this commitment. The new phone features a periscope zoom lens, similar to the one used on the recent smartphone camera we mentioned earlier. However, while that camera was impressive in its own right, it ultimately failed to deliver high-quality images.

Sony's approach is different, however. By using advanced optical design and clever software processing, they've managed to create a system that can produce high-quality images even at extreme zoom levels. The phone features a 12-megapixel selfie camera, as well as three cameras on the back that can shoot 4K video at 120fps. It also boasts a bright, 6.5-inch OLED display, as well as a large 5000mAh battery and a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip.

But what about the design? While Sony is known for its sleek, minimalist designs, this phone takes things to a new level. The case is still tall and matte black, but it's slightly thinner than before. You might barely be able to tell it apart from its predecessor, the Xperia One Mark III, which we reviewed just last year.

Underneath the surface, however, Sony has made some significant changes. The phone boasts a brighter display, with peak brightness of 1000 nits – significantly higher than the previous model's 600 nits. It also features updated loudspeakers and a new 12-megapixel selfie camera. But perhaps most notable is the addition of advanced software features, including support for gaming and live streaming.

These features are designed to take full advantage of the phone's capabilities, particularly when it comes to capturing high-quality video content. With their extensive experience in creating high-end cameras, Sony has managed to develop a system that feels both intuitive and powerful – all while maintaining its trademark sleek design.

One thing that stands out about this phone is its pricing. At $1599, it's significantly more expensive than most smartphones on the market. However, for those who are willing to pay top dollar for high-quality optics, Sony is certainly delivering.

But what about the future? Can we expect even more advanced technology from Sony in the coming months and years? The answer, based on their track record, is almost certainly yes. Whether it's 4K video capture or advanced AI-powered features, Sony has a reputation for pushing the boundaries of what's possible with smartphone cameras.

And that's exactly what they've done again with this latest phone. With its impressive periscope zoom lens and advanced software features, it's clear that Sony is committed to delivering the best possible experience for enthusiasts and professionals alike. Whether you're looking to capture stunning landscapes or intimate portraits, this phone has something to offer.

But at the same time, there are also some classic Sony downsides that come with this design. For one thing, there's no headphone jack – a feature that many fans will miss dearly. The phone is also being launched today, but it won't be available in the US until September. And if you look around the packaging, you'll notice something strange: just the phone itself, with no charging brick or USB-C cable in sight.

That's certainly an unusual approach to the box, and one that will likely leave some customers scratching their heads. But for fans of Sony, who are willing to pay top dollar for high-quality optics and advanced software features, this phone is a must-have.

In short, the challenges of mirrorless cameras are far from over – but with companies like Sony leading the charge, it's clear that we're on the cusp of something truly remarkable. As we continue to push the boundaries of what's possible with smartphone cameras, one thing is certain: the future is bright, and it's full of endless possibilities for creative expression.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's up mkbhd here so this is the back of the iphone 8. one camera then this is the back of the iphone 10. two cameras this is the iphone 13 pro three cameras this is the back of the galaxy s22 ultra four cameras and you better believe there are some phones out now with five cameras we've just gotten very used to the idea of smartphones having lots of cameras on the back it's even become a little bit of a status thing like when you see that phone with several cameras on the back you kind of know that that's one of the more premium ones so this sony phone may look like a bunch of the other ones that we've talked about and kind of just like a lot of other sony phones and it has all the sony stuff that we've come to expect over the years but it has one really key feature up its sleeve that makes it very different see there's other types of phones when they have three cameras for example they have three native focal lengths typically it's an ultra wide a standard and a telephoto so that's awesome if you just hit the 0.5 x button for an ultra wide or just hit the 3x button for that telephoto shot those are basically native optical zoom but everything in between is just going to be digitally zooming between them so if you zoom into 3.5x that's basically the same as you cropping in slightly to a photo from the 3x camera after you take it if you zoom in to 2.5x that's just zooming way into the 1x lens with digital zoom you're not getting more detail the photo won't necessarily look better it's just purely for convenience so that's why you notice that little snap that happens when you get to the 3x and it switches to the next camera that's how you can tell your photo will be better but this sony xperia 1 mark 4 brings back the legendary continuous optical zoom through this telephoto camera so last time we saw this was in this the asus zenfone zoom back in 2015 which was a much worse camera and that kind of fell on its face so the tech has come a long way since then so there's still a 1x camera yes there's still a 0.7 x for your ultra wide shots but the telephoto camera is now behaving kind of like a full-size zoom lens with a focal length range of 85 millimeters to 125 millimeters so now lets you smoothly zoom between 3.5 x and 5.2 x with real optical zoom and yes that means there are moving parts inside the phone to make this happen so sony's been working on this for a little while you might remember the xperia 1 mark iii that i also reviewed which is this one which also had a pretty wild telephoto camera set up this one with magnets snapped between 70 and 105 millimeters so that was technically variable optical zoom which is still super cool it's like having two cameras in one in that telephoto camera this one with continuous zoom is like having dozens of different focal lengths and dozens of cameras in one just in that telephoto now any focal length between 85 and 125 millimeters will be perfectly native optical zoom but again it's more like having a real continuous zoom built into the back of a phone now in practice you can see here the zoom range is relatively small 3.5 x to 5.2 x is not a huge zoom but it does actually achieve its goal this was the xperia one mark iii at 70 millimeters then snapped to 105 millimeters both of these are optical then this was when it was right in between so just digital zoom now this is the xperia 1 mark iv first at 85 millimeters then all the way in at 125 millimeters and then here it is right in between it's subtle but it maintains better sharpness throughout this whole range while behaving just like a regular camera and that is why i think this is or at least logically should be the future of smartphone cameras we've been trying to get good variables different focal lengths on the back of smartphone cameras for a while now like i said we've just accepted a bunch of different cameras on the back so galaxy s 22 ultra right now what does that have that has a regular camera an ultra wide a 3x telephoto and a 10x telephoto so that it can balance between a variety of different focal lengths of course 3x will be perfectly optical and then 10x will sharpen again but again it's still going to be a little bit blurry in between that's why this is ideal this is literal perfect optical zoom throughout the whole range you just can't beat physics now of course the tech has a lot to improve on probably the most obvious piece being it's got to cover a wider and wider focal range as it gets better like i said 3.5 x to 5.2 x turns out isn't a whole lot of zoom right now but imagine a version that goes all the way from 2x to 8x and then maybe something does all the way from 1x to 10x you know suddenly you don't need a separate primary and telephoto camera anymore and so i was just kind of logically extrapolating it seems like it would be such a cool idea if we went from one camera on the back to two to three and then as the tech gets better and better we go from three back to two and then back to one but but the more i think about it i don't actually think that we can expect to reduce all of the cameras on the back of the phones now all down to one just because the physics problem is incredibly hard like if you look at a mirrorless camera you have one sensor but you still need to change lenses to go from ultra wide to a normal field of view to a telephoto even if they all can zoom you really don't see often some casual lens that can do everything like an 18 to 400 millimeter lens actually i take that back i just looked it up there there are some that exist i just found on b h there is an 8 to 800 millimeter lens but it's the size of like a microwave it's 53 pounds and costs 165 000 and that is the point here this is a physics problem basically and all of the pain points of trying to solve that problem get magnified when you shrink it all down into like a tiny smartphone camera like this with these little itty bitty sensors that don't gather that much light and where there's not a lot of room for high quality optics but high quality optics really is the key here so that zenfone zoom that we talked about earlier that phone had a single camera that did 28 to 84 millimeters so it's about 1x to 3x zoom and i never owned that camera or that phone but from all the reviews i read they all killed it for having really poor quality optics and really bad images as a result and so that means the technology has definitely gotten significantly better since then and hopefully that trend can continue so i love that sony is working on this they stay really clever with it obviously starting with turning everything sideways within the phone for the periscope zoom and then using magnets to move around the optical elements inside in a super precise way that is very impressive what they've achieved so far so file this down as yet another sony phone with a super impressive technically well executed enthusiast feature and then the rest of the phone built around it is exactly what you'd expect from sony it's an upgrade from the xperia one mark iii that i reviewed less than a year ago it's the same tall matte black shape and design you can barely tell the difference from the outside between the phones but they do have some year-over-year upgrades thrown in they've still got their incredibly overkill six and a half inch 4k 120 hertz oled display but this one's even brighter up to a thousand nits so it's more visible outdoors and even more of a battery hog uh the battery though is also bigger it's up to 5000 milliamp hours now and they've bumped it up to a snapdragon 8 gen 1 chip with 12 gigs of ram half a terabyte of storage there's updated loudspeakers and a new 12 megapixel selfie camera all three cameras on the back can shoot 4k 120 frames per second videos and 20 photos per second in bursts with sony's awesome eye tracking autofocus and hey i gotta hand it to sony i was gonna say i think they're the only smartphone brand that's never had a notch in any of their phones but i did look it up there was actually once a sony phone that had a notch and it was pretty brutal but they've been remarkably consistent with this design they're also one of the only ones keeping a headphone jack around despite being one of the companies selling tons of wireless earbuds too so they've added a bunch of new software features around this phone centered around gaming and live streaming but at the same time with all those pluses there are definitely also still some classic sony downsides first starting with the fact that it's being unveiled now but isn't coming to the u.s till september so you can sort of map out the hype curve dropping between now and then and they very much still lean into the enthusiasts sony alpha camera-like shooting experience which is an upside for some people but that also means there is no simple point-and-shoot portrait mode or night mode and you do have to dive straight into sony's camera app which obviously isn't for everybody also fun fact the box it comes in uh just has a phone yeah just the phone no charging brick also no usbc cable no paperwork just the phone that's it and it's going to retail when it does land in the u.s for 1 599 so yeah not for everybody but hey i got to give sony props because this this is one of those things like i really enjoy using these sony phones the software experience on them has kind of quietly become one of my favorite near stock android experiences on any android phone they get their updates they're smooth all the time and they consistently deliver some innovative new stuff in every new phone they drop and they refuse to be notched or headphone jack dropping like kind of the rest of the phones out so i'm glad it exists all right that's been it thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peacehey what's up mkbhd here so this is the back of the iphone 8. one camera then this is the back of the iphone 10. two cameras this is the iphone 13 pro three cameras this is the back of the galaxy s22 ultra four cameras and you better believe there are some phones out now with five cameras we've just gotten very used to the idea of smartphones having lots of cameras on the back it's even become a little bit of a status thing like when you see that phone with several cameras on the back you kind of know that that's one of the more premium ones so this sony phone may look like a bunch of the other ones that we've talked about and kind of just like a lot of other sony phones and it has all the sony stuff that we've come to expect over the years but it has one really key feature up its sleeve that makes it very different see there's other types of phones when they have three cameras for example they have three native focal lengths typically it's an ultra wide a standard and a telephoto so that's awesome if you just hit the 0.5 x button for an ultra wide or just hit the 3x button for that telephoto shot those are basically native optical zoom but everything in between is just going to be digitally zooming between them so if you zoom into 3.5x that's basically the same as you cropping in slightly to a photo from the 3x camera after you take it if you zoom in to 2.5x that's just zooming way into the 1x lens with digital zoom you're not getting more detail the photo won't necessarily look better it's just purely for convenience so that's why you notice that little snap that happens when you get to the 3x and it switches to the next camera that's how you can tell your photo will be better but this sony xperia 1 mark 4 brings back the legendary continuous optical zoom through this telephoto camera so last time we saw this was in this the asus zenfone zoom back in 2015 which was a much worse camera and that kind of fell on its face so the tech has come a long way since then so there's still a 1x camera yes there's still a 0.7 x for your ultra wide shots but the telephoto camera is now behaving kind of like a full-size zoom lens with a focal length range of 85 millimeters to 125 millimeters so now lets you smoothly zoom between 3.5 x and 5.2 x with real optical zoom and yes that means there are moving parts inside the phone to make this happen so sony's been working on this for a little while you might remember the xperia 1 mark iii that i also reviewed which is this one which also had a pretty wild telephoto camera set up this one with magnets snapped between 70 and 105 millimeters so that was technically variable optical zoom which is still super cool it's like having two cameras in one in that telephoto camera this one with continuous zoom is like having dozens of different focal lengths and dozens of cameras in one just in that telephoto now any focal length between 85 and 125 millimeters will be perfectly native optical zoom but again it's more like having a real continuous zoom built into the back of a phone now in practice you can see here the zoom range is relatively small 3.5 x to 5.2 x is not a huge zoom but it does actually achieve its goal this was the xperia one mark iii at 70 millimeters then snapped to 105 millimeters both of these are optical then this was when it was right in between so just digital zoom now this is the xperia 1 mark iv first at 85 millimeters then all the way in at 125 millimeters and then here it is right in between it's subtle but it maintains better sharpness throughout this whole range while behaving just like a regular camera and that is why i think this is or at least logically should be the future of smartphone cameras we've been trying to get good variables different focal lengths on the back of smartphone cameras for a while now like i said we've just accepted a bunch of different cameras on the back so galaxy s 22 ultra right now what does that have that has a regular camera an ultra wide a 3x telephoto and a 10x telephoto so that it can balance between a variety of different focal lengths of course 3x will be perfectly optical and then 10x will sharpen again but again it's still going to be a little bit blurry in between that's why this is ideal this is literal perfect optical zoom throughout the whole range you just can't beat physics now of course the tech has a lot to improve on probably the most obvious piece being it's got to cover a wider and wider focal range as it gets better like i said 3.5 x to 5.2 x turns out isn't a whole lot of zoom right now but imagine a version that goes all the way from 2x to 8x and then maybe something does all the way from 1x to 10x you know suddenly you don't need a separate primary and telephoto camera anymore and so i was just kind of logically extrapolating it seems like it would be such a cool idea if we went from one camera on the back to two to three and then as the tech gets better and better we go from three back to two and then back to one but but the more i think about it i don't actually think that we can expect to reduce all of the cameras on the back of the phones now all down to one just because the physics problem is incredibly hard like if you look at a mirrorless camera you have one sensor but you still need to change lenses to go from ultra wide to a normal field of view to a telephoto even if they all can zoom you really don't see often some casual lens that can do everything like an 18 to 400 millimeter lens actually i take that back i just looked it up there there are some that exist i just found on b h there is an 8 to 800 millimeter lens but it's the size of like a microwave it's 53 pounds and costs 165 000 and that is the point here this is a physics problem basically and all of the pain points of trying to solve that problem get magnified when you shrink it all down into like a tiny smartphone camera like this with these little itty bitty sensors that don't gather that much light and where there's not a lot of room for high quality optics but high quality optics really is the key here so that zenfone zoom that we talked about earlier that phone had a single camera that did 28 to 84 millimeters so it's about 1x to 3x zoom and i never owned that camera or that phone but from all the reviews i read they all killed it for having really poor quality optics and really bad images as a result and so that means the technology has definitely gotten significantly better since then and hopefully that trend can continue so i love that sony is working on this they stay really clever with it obviously starting with turning everything sideways within the phone for the periscope zoom and then using magnets to move around the optical elements inside in a super precise way that is very impressive what they've achieved so far so file this down as yet another sony phone with a super impressive technically well executed enthusiast feature and then the rest of the phone built around it is exactly what you'd expect from sony it's an upgrade from the xperia one mark iii that i reviewed less than a year ago it's the same tall matte black shape and design you can barely tell the difference from the outside between the phones but they do have some year-over-year upgrades thrown in they've still got their incredibly overkill six and a half inch 4k 120 hertz oled display but this one's even brighter up to a thousand nits so it's more visible outdoors and even more of a battery hog uh the battery though is also bigger it's up to 5000 milliamp hours now and they've bumped it up to a snapdragon 8 gen 1 chip with 12 gigs of ram half a terabyte of storage there's updated loudspeakers and a new 12 megapixel selfie camera all three cameras on the back can shoot 4k 120 frames per second videos and 20 photos per second in bursts with sony's awesome eye tracking autofocus and hey i gotta hand it to sony i was gonna say i think they're the only smartphone brand that's never had a notch in any of their phones but i did look it up there was actually once a sony phone that had a notch and it was pretty brutal but they've been remarkably consistent with this design they're also one of the only ones keeping a headphone jack around despite being one of the companies selling tons of wireless earbuds too so they've added a bunch of new software features around this phone centered around gaming and live streaming but at the same time with all those pluses there are definitely also still some classic sony downsides first starting with the fact that it's being unveiled now but isn't coming to the u.s till september so you can sort of map out the hype curve dropping between now and then and they very much still lean into the enthusiasts sony alpha camera-like shooting experience which is an upside for some people but that also means there is no simple point-and-shoot portrait mode or night mode and you do have to dive straight into sony's camera app which obviously isn't for everybody also fun fact the box it comes in uh just has a phone yeah just the phone no charging brick also no usbc cable no paperwork just the phone that's it and it's going to retail when it does land in the u.s for 1 599 so yeah not for everybody but hey i got to give sony props because this this is one of those things like i really enjoy using these sony phones the software experience on them has kind of quietly become one of my favorite near stock android experiences on any android phone they get their updates they're smooth all the time and they consistently deliver some innovative new stuff in every new phone they drop and they refuse to be notched or headphone jack dropping like kind of the rest of the phones out so i'm glad it exists all right that's been it thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peace\n"