New ‘Metalenses’ Will Finally Allow Smartphone Cameras to Compete with DSLRs

Since we’ve started putting cameras on smartphones, there’s always been a divide between how we think about photographic equipment. Professionals use DSLRs and other professional-grade equipment, while hobbyists and selfie-shooters use their camera phone.

But research being done at Harvard is hoping to change all of that.

Most camera lenses are made out of layers of thick glass lenses that focus incoming light onto a sensor. The sensor then translates that light into a recognizable image, but Harvard is experimenting with a new form of photography that replaces those glass lenses with a thin layer of quartz crystal covered in microscopic “towers” of titanium dioxide, according to the study.

Those tiny tower arrays can focus light like a traditional camera lens does. But they are significantly smaller, and weigh nearly nothing.

The result? Unlike the bulky heft of traditional glass lenses, a metalens would be about the width of a human hair.

Historically, it’s been the case that more precise, expensive lenses produce better-quality images, and glass lenses are expensive because of the amount of precision that goes into perfectly grinding, polishing and producing them — not to mention that glass is an inherently difficult medium to work with.

But these metalenses could be made using the same processes that manufacturers use to make microchips. So they can be produced much quicker — and much more cheaply.

And these cheaper metalenses can focus light even more precisely than state-of-the-art DSLR camera lenses, according to the Harvard Gazette.

That means that these lenses could be added to smartphones — allowing phone cameras to take professional-quality images without a significant price increase.

The authors of the Harvard study are currently in the process of filing patents and seeking commercial partnerships. But this new tech could mean that, soon enough, our smartphones could have the only camera anyone would ever need.