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cell phone camera's performance in low light condition

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PG1995

Active Member
Hi

The result of my cell phone camera really sucks in low light condition; the picture is not clear and is also too much grainy. It's Moto Droid 2. I'm planning to replace it with this. What specification would help to know that in general how the camera would perform under different light intensities? Please let me know. Thanks.

Regards
PG
 
My phone has a 2 Megapixel camera, and I consider it an okay quality photo. 8 megs would probably be a good quality, at least for a phone. I think that if your problem has to do with lighting, then having an LED flash on the phone should help a bit.
 
What specification would help to know that in general how the camera would perform under different light intensities?
The size of the image sensor is important. For a given technology and number of pixels the greater the sensor size the greater the sensitivity to light. However, I think it unlikely that sensor size will be quoted for phone cameras (more likely for surveillance cameras).
 
A cell phone have a very small lens. Obviously, that will let a much smaller amount of light into the sensor. That, combined with small a sensor will cause the phone camera to perform bad in poor light conditions.
 
The key factor is whether the chip is CMOS or CCD. CDDs are much better and have much lower noise, but I have never seen one in a cell phone. Usually with cell phone cameras the rule is the more pixels you have the worse noise you get, because there are only so many photons hitting the chip, so if you parcel the chip into more pixels and then increase the signal with an amplifier you get more noise amplified as well. So basically what Grossel said, better-larger lens will usually have a larger chip behind it. But with larger chip you need larger focal distance, so the phone would get too thick, so basic advice is not to think of a phone camera as a camera. It is like comparing a pocket voice recorder to a studio recording setup, so if you want a camera go get a camera, not a cell phone with a camera add-on.
 
What I use cell phone camera for

My opinion about use of cell phones camera:
* Party environoment - where damage or thieft of an expensive camera is imminent.
* Car crash (or any incidents) - where you just NEED to document any damage, no matter about camera quality.
 
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