The Six Blades and the Four Stops: Physical Optics in the Palm of Your Hand

180.1 Lesson 01 of 08 3 quiz questions 1 assignment

For more than fifteen years, whenever a student sat across from me in my office and asked whether a smartphone could serve as their primary camera for serious university study, I gave them the same reluctant answer. I told them that a smartphone was an extraordinary notebook for human memory, but that it was not yet a camera in the truest optical sense. I did not say this out of nostalgia for heavy metal bodies or darkrooms smelling of acetic acid. I said it because of a single missing component: the physical aperture diaphragm. Until now, every smartphone lens in the world was locked wide open, relying on computational software to fake the falloff of light. The phone was guessing where your subject ended and where the world began.

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