Apple patent introduces simultaneous photo capture with multiple cameras

The latest patent filed by Apple details the idea of using two cameras to simultaneously capture two different fields of view in the same direction. By taking two photos with different focal lengths, a device like a phone could have an effective optical zoom without an actual moving lens.

The patent, first picked up by by Patently Apple, shows diagrams of two cameras side by side, the first with a larger field of view and the second with a smaller field of view that is a subset of the larger one, with their visual axes aligned. The device can then store the two photo data structures separately. Read more...