Apple is continuous to develop expertise for a folded camera system that would allow using extra different focal lengths and scale back the camera bump on a future iPhones whereas sustaining picture high quality.
The firm has been engaged on a “folded camera” for years. That folded system might permit Apple to scale back the bodily bulk of an iPhone’s camera with out compromising on options like telescopic zoom or optical picture stabilization.
In its most up-to-date patent protecting comparable expertise, granted on July 13 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple continues to element how a folded or periscope-like camera system might work.
The patent, merely titled “Folded camera,” particulars a system that features “two gentle folding parts corresponding to prisms and an unbiased lens system, positioned between the 2 prisms, which incorporates an aperture cease and a lens stack.”
Although the camera does not point out bodily bulk, such a system might assist scale back the scale of the camera bump. Apple seems to be putting particular emphasis on permitting high-resolution photos and complicated camera applied sciences corresponding to autofocus or optical picture stabilization (OIS).
“The lens system could also be moved on a number of axes independently of the prisms to offer autofocus and/or optical picture stabilization for the camera. The shapes, supplies, and preparations of the refractive lens parts within the lens stack could also be chosen to seize excessive decision, prime quality photos whereas offering a sufficiently lengthy again focal size to accommodate the second prism,” the patent reads.
According to the patent, standard small cameras utilized in cellular gadgets “are inclined to seize photos at decrease resolutions and/or with decrease picture high quality than may be achieved with bigger, increased high quality cameras.”
Additionally, there are shopper expectations for smaller cameras to be geared up with increased pixel counts, bigger pixel measurement picture sensors, and extra highly effective photosensors. The problem is to create a system that may “present an imaging lens system that’s able to capturing excessive brightness, excessive decision photos underneath the bodily constraints imposed by small kind issue cameras.”
To that finish, the Apple patent particulars a system that would embody folded parts like prisms and an unbiased lens system. The system might also embody a lens stack with as much as 4 or 5 lens parts with refractive energy. In some embodiments of the expertise, the lens system might transfer on a number of axes independently of the prisms, permitting for autofocus or OIS capabilities.
The patent lists Yuhong Yao and Miodrag Scepanovic. Yao has been named on a number of patents associated to camera expertise and folded camera programs, together with a patent utility from earlier in 2021.
Apple recordsdata for quite a few patents weekly, so they are a poor indication of the corporate’s future product plans. However, well-connected Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has mentioned that Apple might debut a “periscope lens” setup by 2022.
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Apple evolving periscope camera tech for possible iPhone integration
