One of the fastest growing markets in consumer markets today are camera phones. During past few years total volume has been growing fast and today millions of mobile phones with camera will be sold. At the same time resolution and functionality of the cameras has been growing from CIF towards DSC level. From camera point of view the mobile world is an extremely challenging field. Cameras should have good image quality but in small size. They also need to be reliable and their construction should be suitable for mass manufacturing. All components of the imaging chain should be well optimized in this environment. Image quality and usability are the most important parameters to user. The current trend of adding more megapixels to cameras and at the same time using smaller pixels is affecting both. On the other hand reliability and miniaturization are key drivers for product development as well as the cost. In optimized solution all parameters are in balance but the process of finding the right trade-offs is not an easy task. In this paper trade-offs related to optics and their effects to image quality and usability of cameras are discussed. Key development areas from mobile phone camera point of view are also listed.

Date Published: 12 May 2006
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 6196, Photonics in Multimedia, 61960B (12 May 2006);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6196:
Photonics in Multimedia
Ari Tervonen; Malgorzata Kujawinska; Wilbert IJzerman; Herbert De Smet, Editor(s)