Essential revealed why its smartphone camera will rival the Galaxy S8

The Essential Phone features a dual-camera set up that work together. The first is the main lens that puts the focus on color; the second is a monochrome lens. Differentiating the two is the need to assign color to the pixels, which the main lens needs to do while the monochrome just assigns a white or black value.

“The lack of a color filter means that no interpretation is necessary—every pixel is assigned a true black or white value, which enables the camera to produce images with much less noise and much higher resolution, no matter the lighting conditions,” writes Essential image quality engineer Yazhu Ling.

Taking a picture with the Essential Phone uses both cameras, fusing the images into a final version. This is where Ling’s real work takes place. To make sure the fusion of images stays as rich with detail and quality, it must use a complex Image Signal Processing (ISP) that Ling is responsible for tuning to the most accurate level possible. Otherwise the images don’t come out looking as good.

The first level of tuning starts with choosing the right golden and limit samples. From here, thousands of pictures have to be taken to find the right modules. This essentially teaches the ISP to read certain characteristics the engineers are looking for.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2017/07/28/essential-revealed-why-its-smartphone-camera-will-rival-the-galaxy-s8/