Sony’s next-generation camera sensor will greatly improve the focus accuracy of smartphones. Sony just introduced its 2 × 2 chip lens solution (OCL) for future mobile image sensors. Sony first revealed its 2 × 2 OCL mobile camera technology on December 9, 2019. The new system is described as follows:
“The 2 × 2 chip lens (OCL) solution is a new image sensor technology for high-speed focusing, high resolution, high sensitivity, and high dynamic range.”
The Sony Quad Bayer flagship sensor has an on-chip lens on each pixel. However, the new solution uses an on-chip lens on each of the four adjacent pixel groups. At present, the most modern way of mobile phone phase detection focus is horizontal pixel separation. This system is difficult to handle objects that have no pattern change in the horizontal direction.
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Therefore, if you try to focus on the edge of the table, you will encounter some difficulties. If you focus on the legs of the table, you will find that the focus is much faster than the desktop. In most cases, this problem is not large, because most of the objects we shoot are not completely horizontal. Nevertheless, in the near future, we will not have to worry about this problem using 2 × 2 OCL technology.
In addition to horizontal and vertical detection, the Sony 2 × 2 OCL system achieves high-speed autofocus. In the past, the “traditional method” for phase detection requires dedicated pixels without imaging capabilities. This limits the area where the camera can see the phase change and decides where to focus. The 2 × 2 OCL system allows all pixels to be used as imaging pixels and detection pixels. Therefore, the camera uses the entire space, not just the dot matrix. This ensures that the system can focus anywhere.
