Looking at the redesign (and the APK breakdown).... looks to me that Google hired themselves a few optical engineers recently. heh....
The previous camera app seemed to me to be just a camera app... something they put together to have a stock application for Android... Sure, it had photosphere, which put out really slick pics if you had the right conditions, but it was never feature rich... and it didn't seem as though Google put much stock in it.
But this app seems different. Granted, it is missing a lot of the advanced features (at least initially Re: apk breakdown), but what it DID add is telling. From my personal use, it is focusing quicker and 'hunting' for focus less. I only did a quick comparison, but I compared a pic taken with this and one with "A Better Camera" and the new Google Cam produced a better overall photo... colors looked better and when zoomed in, there was less noise and better detail with the Google app.
And then there is the new lens blur feature. That's a pretty nifty bit of kit right there.... It might now seem like it to the untrained eye, but that function is doing some pretty advanced optical processing in the background to get you that effect.... If some don't understand how it works, think of it this way:
Close one eye. See how you lose depth perception? You may figure depth out through sheer force of the visual processing of your brain.. but just sitting there, you can't perceive true depth. Now move your head side to side. The effect you are experiencing is called 'parallax'. Your brain is taking in 2D information and using the difference in parallax to 'fill in' depth. This is how the new lens blur of the camera works... it takes a picture, then asks you to move the camera while it takes in more visual data. It uses this visual data to piece together depth... then BLUR!!
Now, it might sound simple, but there's some fancy-schmancy computing going on there...
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