The new ‘Clear Sight’ technology from Qualcomm is available on Snapdragon 820 and 821 chipsets. It will take advantage of dual camera setups to offer better low light photography, while improving sharpness and dynamic range.
Dual camera smartphones are in rage these days. All leading smartphone manufacturers from Apple and Xiaomi to LG and HTC have released their respective smartphones with dual camera setups. Looking at the growing popularity and to capitalize on the trend, Qualcomm has introduced its Clear Sight dual camera processing technology powered by Spectra (Image Signal Processor) ISP. The new technology is engineered to offer improved dynamic range, sharpness and less noise while capturing photos in low light. Qualcomm says the setup also allows for faster focus.
“The human eye is a great analogy because your eyes contain cells called “cones” and “rods.” Cones are great at capturing color, but require well-lit environments, while rods excel in capturing light in low-light conditions, but don’t capture as much color. Clear Sight is designed to mimic cones and rods to give you the best of both worlds, producing an image that has optimal contrast and brightness. This technology is designed to mimic the attributes of the human eye and will give your photos improved dynamic range, sharpness, and less noise in low light,” Qualcomm says.
Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets have supported dual camera setups for the past couple of years, ever since HTC introduced the One M8 in 2014. However, the new technology is now made available on Snapdragon 820 and 821 processors, and it relies on Spectra ISP, which is built right into these chips. The HTC One M8 features a 4-UltraPixel camera (for capturing photos), and a 2-megapixel secondary camera for capturing depth information. The Xiaomi Redmi Pro also uses a similar setup with a 13-megapixel camera to capture photos, and a 5-megapixel camera to capture depth. The setup allows you to click photos and refocus later by adding DSLR-like bokeh effects.
The LG G5 uses a telephoto lens and a wide-angle lens, which is a completely different implementation altogether. Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus also uses two lenses of 12-megapixel each – a standard lens and a telephoto lens. It is designed to capture photos with 2X optical zoom, and software based algorithm to add live bokeh effects in portrait shots.
However, the working of Clear Sight technology is completely different. It will allow manufacturers to use one color sensor and one monochrome sensor, just like the one on the Huawei P9. The monochrome (or black and white) sensor allows it to capture up to three times more light, which can be processed in software along with regular color image.
The Spectra ISP also allows merging and processing data from two different image sensors using Qualcomm’s dedicated algorithms. As this will not cause any load on the main processor cores, it can improve battery life too, Qualcomm says. As of now, Qualcomm hasn’t announced anything about the camera specifications, hardware partners or examples of current and forthcoming devices that will take advantage of the technology. But looking at Qualcomm’s efforts, it does seem that dual cameras are here to stay, and we may see more smartphones utilizing the technology going forward.
Source: bgr.in
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