Just wondering what the camera specs might be, it’s actually pretty important to me. I’m hoping…hoping for a 20mp camera (with a large sensor size). That and having full control of the camera like: shutter speed, iso, white balance, focus, etc. Even saving in DNG format and having a dedicated hardware button for snapping pictures would be awesome.
Quick background story, I’m coming from Windows 10 mobile (Lumia 950) and one of the things I loved about that smartphone was the camera, the quality and details that camera would capture were and still are amazing (sensor size matters). Hoping for something similar or better with Librem 5. And now that Windows 10 Mobile is dead…I’m currently been looking for an alternative to iOS and Android… found you guys and I’m really impressed with Purism. Very excited, and hoping to purchase a Librem 5!
I don’t want to be rude but 20MP seems unrealistic, even the GoPro Hero 4 takes photos of 12MP. More megapixels != better photo, it just defines how much space does the photo takes.
I know they will make the right decisions, they have experience creating good devices. Remember they will be using the Librem5 too, that should be enough to know they will try to make the best device as possible.
I understand this is exciting and everybody want to have the best specs. But let’s keep realistic. Let them know that there are people loving taking good photos among the backers is nice, but we should try to be objective and understand there are other areas where they have to spend the money.
I’m not against having a good camera sensor in the Librem5, I just want to point out that Purism have specific resources for this project and they have to be able to create a working hardware with free drivers and in budget.
I remember having an iPhone 4 w/ “only” a 5MP camera that took way nicer pics than phones sporting 8 and 12, etc. My understanding is the pixels themselves were larger, letting in more light and thus a better image.
I think in the case of the mentioned Lumia, it doesn’t actually use all 20MP, but does some sort of cropping jujitsu and maybe oversampling to get its nice pics. I don’t recall anymore.
But I agree with @dharkael I don’t think the Purism people will give us a dog of a camera sensor. I do hope for a mixed LED like the iPhone has (if it’s possible) for a flash, though.
Thank you, maybe I was not enough clear. I mean, does somebody know if this camera is already implemented on a well-known product ? Then we could have an idea about the image quality it can produce (even if we know that software can adjust this).
Reluctant iPhone user here. The camera and photo management and synching tools will be the most important factors that determine whether or not I switch to the Librem 5.
I update to the top iPhone model available at the end of each year specifically because I want better camera and computational photography capabilities. For me, even an incremental improvement can save me a lot of time in having to edit my photos later.
If Google weren’t such a privacy nightmare, I’d be tempted to switch to the top Pixel because its camera and AI is significantly better - especially for night photography - light sensitivity and removing noise, etc.
I guess the librem 5 will not be the right phone for you / provide what you want. I understand your demands on the camera as high-end / cutting edge technology. This is will be in most cases quiet expensive. It has to be developed in-house or closely with the camera module companies to achieve . Both i think is out of scope for purism. No way they do cutting edge camera tech in-house. That would leave to work closely with a to camera module producer. But i’m pretty shure all of them are keeping their new tech closed source and to the top paying companies like apple, samsung, google.
Also i think it’s not in line with purism goal as i understand it. Their goal is to produce a phone that is as open and privacy protecting as possible, which is expensive. So every part which doesn’t help this goal has to be optimised to a best value for the money, while still make the phone competitive. Which means satisfying “normal” every day needs. Not high end use cases like i would describe yours.
But let’s hope i’m worng an pursim just source a new unknown super camera module with open source drivers and someone form the community throws in a top notch camera app with AI.
@dlkr if it’s just for snapping easy eye-catchy photos on the phone just use Apple or Google or whatever phone has those “desirable” features you were talking about without using it for anything else and use your librem 5 as a daily driver (when you feel up for it).
or if it’s for high-quality RAW and post-procesing then use a high-end DSLR with your laptop/workstation.
remember how the iphone was when it first released in 2007 - and it was after all Apple. it had experience and a user base allready and still can you compare that to what Purism a young SPC today achieves ? i think you’re hoping for to much for a phone that didn’t even release yet.
There might be scope for us customers to experiment with that at our own risk, IF the camera is a module with a standard form factor and disconnectable interface AND there are better modules available with the same form factor and interface. (Not something I’ll be doing. It just crossed my mind.) I’m sure the Librem 5 will be easier to disassemble and modify than your typical iPhone.
These are all great ideas. However, imho, I hope Librem engineers don’t spend much time on modular parts. There is to much other work that needs to be done. Modular parts could be implemented in version 2.
The camera will not be a user-interchangeable module in the sense of Project Ara or other modular phone concepts, but it will most likely be an internal module of some description, because that’s the least time consuming and least difficult way to provide a camera.
Is there already some more information about the camera (specifications)?
Currently, the Librem5 hardware specification page still states for the front camera and back camera: TBD.
