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Comment by nawitus | Hacker News Reader

It'll be interesting to see if they can compete with cameraphones. GoPro does have a few differentation strategies. First is that they'll offer higher quality video than phones. However, the video quality on phones will get better all the time, and the difference in quality will become smaller every year.

Another strategy is that they can compete with price. Consumers can always buy a case and a strap to house their smartphone in, but if you're filming sports there's a quite high risk to destroy the phone. The price of GoPro-style video cameras will go down over time (if they won't constantly add new features in), but the cost of phones will probably stay high in the future.

Consumers will likely choose the $79 camera instead of risking their $500 phone to film sports.

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A GoPro doesn't have the same pressures placed on its thickness that a smartphone has. It can afford to have a lens that is deeper than 5 mm while people expect phones to get thinner and thinner. A deeper lens can afford you better optical quality.

There is always going to be a significant low light advantage to having a larger lense and sensor. Add a mourning bracket / wrist strap, improved noise reduction and there is only so close a camera phone can get.

Yes, that's true, but when camera phones will be as good as e.g. Canon 5D Mark iii (and they will, relatively soon even) then that quality will be good enough for practically everyone. At that point only professionals need better quality.

How does this prediction jibe with the statement that a larger sensor will always be beneficial, especially in low light?

Will smartphones be able to include much larger sensors in the future?

Is there some new physics that obviates the need for a large sensor?

The 5D Mark III has > 24x the sensor area of an iPhone 5, and most smartphones are even worse off [0] [1]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sensor_interchang... [1] http://www.chipworks.com/blog/recentteardowns/2012/09/21/app...

>How does this prediction jibe with the statement that a larger sensor will always be beneficial, especially in low light?

Even though larger sensors will be beneficial, at some point the small sensor will be good enoug for 99% of consumers, though professionals will still prefer the larger sensor.

>Will smartphones be able to include much larger sensors in the future?

Perhaps, like Nokia pureview did - however that phone is slightly larger than the average smartphone.

>Is there some new physics that obviates the need for a large sensor?

No, but technology will advance so that small sensors will be sufficiently good to 99% of consumers. There's progress in sensor technology ever year. There's also progress on the processor side, which has been/is apparently a bottleneck, as new processors in DSLR cameras enable better image quality (take for example DIGIC processors).

Sensors are getting better, but the optical characteristics of a lens that fits in a cellphone are limited by physics (namely diffraction).

The Sony RX1 shows how small you can get today for a full frame sensor, but the size of the lens is pretty big, because of the physical limitations of optics.

I have a 5D Mark III and there is a huge difference in quality with my iPhone 5. I can put on a f1.2 lens on the 5D and get amazing autofocus accuracy with a depth of field (DOF) of millimeters in low light and get an amazing shot at ISO 10,000. The phone is impressive for what it is but the autofocus doesn't have to do much because the DOF is so big. If you have a bigger sensor and more megapixels you need a good quality lens and good autofocus.

On the other hand GoPro have a pretty good quality output where big DOF is a good thing and they focus on high frame rate video for action. I would love if my phone had better image stabilization (e.g. Luma app) and went up to 120fps at full HD. That would be achievable soon.

I don't see how a camera phone will be as good as a 5D Mark3 anytime soon. I mean, phones don't have focusing! Not to mention a sensor that is maybe a tenth the size?

I love me my iPhone 5 but unless you want a phone the size of a 1980s one, there are physical limitations. Try photographing a soccer play from the sideline or getting a shallow depth of field with a phone, things you pay thousands for a full frame SLR for.

Now, as good as a good point and shoot soon? And better because its Always in your pocket and connected? I'll buy that.

iPhone 5's camera is probably comparable to a 10-year-old DSLR.

It's true that DSLR cameras have many advantages compared to smart phones, but I was talking about image quality. Professionals and hobbyists will buy the DSLR instead of shooting with a camera phone, but this doesn't apply to your average consumer.

The quality difference isn't super far off, but I don't think the main target audience for GoPro is going to disappear to using camera phones. There's just too much of an industry built round them now, they can survive a huge chunk of damage and keep rolling, there's all sorts of mounts and and attachments and so on.

In the foreseeable future, the form factor of a phone makes it impractical to e.g. strap on your helmet, while the more cubical gopro would be a very impractical handset.

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