There's a constant debate between OnePlus 5T, its camera.. vs. Google Pixel 2 XL. For myself - I can't justify nearly double the price for the lower megapixel camera and subpar display.
There were also a few camera related enhancements in recent firmwares leading to 4.7.6. Also, for me there was no interest in social media crap - beautifying, etc. I also couldn't make GCam work with back camera on 4.7.6.
All of the photos were made using intentionally difficult conditions.. dim light, photo taken at an angle, etc.
Camera FV5: Creates very noisy pictures, even with optimal lighting
Better Camera - HDR: Too artificial colors with slight red shift, textures are not uniform
Better Camera - Single Shot: Textures are much better, colors are greyed out, some noise still present
Better Camera - Best mode: This seems the most optimal, least amount of blur due to lack of optical image stabilization, as this mode takes 3 shots, and selects the one with the highest focus.
Fotej Camera - HDR: Very poor, spilled ink like effect instead of slight glow
Fotej Camera - HDR off: Also very poor, lack of clarity or details, noise.
Open Camera - Using Camera 2 API, 95% JPEG quality: too much sharpen, textures are not even uneven, but grainy, with blackish dots, loss of texture details
Open Camera - Using Camera 2 API, 97% JPEG quality: same - too much sharpen, but textures are more even, grainy blackish dots are still present but a lot less
Open Camera - Using Camera 2 API, 97% JPEG quality, HDR Mode Always On: Too significant loss of details, loss of texture details
In summary, I think 5T stock camera and Better Camera with Best mode wins. 5T works a bit better with color, textures, does not abuse the image taken, while Better Camera in the Best Mode takes 3 photos, and selects least blurry one - which seems to be the only way to compensate for the lack of optical image stabilization.
Other conclusions:
- HRR still doesn't seem to work well on 3rd party camera apps
- Stock Camera HQ mode still doesn't work, blur and loss of details is significant
What are your findings?
I really don`t satisfy with the camera
Related
I've seen threads saying you don't buy a phone for its camera, but the noise from the Touch Pro 2's camera is unbelievable! Attached are 3 pictures, one from the Touch Pro 2, one from the Touch HD, and one from the Touch Diamond 2.
All were shot at default settings, at 3m pixels, in well lit indoor light, then selectively cropped and magnified by 200% to highlight the noise levels. The Pro 2 even shows an enormous amount of noise outside in bright light!?
try to set the ISO as low as possible.. 100 for example
Does anyone know if the problem with the camera is hardware or just a poorly made camera driver? as I have had a 3.2 mp phone camera before and it seemed to take better pics.... Strange dont you think?
digicams
well, without going too much into the physics of camera sensors, some rule of thumbs:
- the smaller the CCD sensor (for same resolution), the smaller the pixels, the greater the noise!
- you cannot build a good camera without good optics / lenses. usually, mobile phone cams have very poor lens quality - don't expect anything
- you can correct noisy pictures to some extent by post-processing (can be done by the cam HW itself or by SW) but you'll loose details.
consequences:
- if you want to shoot nice photos, buy a digital camera
- if you still want to shoot photos with your mobile, make sure light conditions are bright!
shadixs said:
try to set the ISO as low as possible.. 100 for example
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tried that, and whilst outdoor pictures in good light are ok, indoor ones at 100 ISO come out blurry because a higher ISO speed is needed.
terta said:
well, without going too much into the physics of camera sensors, some rule of thumbs:
- the smaller the CCD sensor (for same resolution), the smaller the pixels, the greater the noise!
- you cannot build a good camera without good optics / lenses. usually, mobile phone cams have very poor lens quality - don't expect anything
- you can correct noisy pictures to some extent by post-processing (can be done by the cam HW itself or by SW) but you'll loose details.
consequences:
- if you want to shoot nice photos, buy a digital camera
- if you still want to shoot photos with your mobile, make sure light conditions are bright!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand all of this, but I'm merely showing the difference between 3 "similar" HTC devices, where two are "acceptable" and one seems to exhibit an enormous amount of noise?
as you also wrote, "similar" in quotemarks...
- we don't know which camera HW is mounted in the devices (there can be cams from different OEM vendors even in the very same type of device depending on production series)
- we don't know what post-processing software (with which settings) is used...
I'm not surprised at all by the miserable quality
/edit: sorrily, I cannot see the so-called EXIF info in the pics (the forum engine cuts this out), from which we could see the parameters with which the images were taken (eg. which ISO sensitivity was applied, etc.)
I'm thinking to buy a Neo this week and it will be my first Android phone. In a few reviews I've seen some complaints about the .jpg's being over compressed using the stock camera app. If you use a different camera app are you able to set it for less compression and better pictures?
Hi mattarse
The jpg compression is fine as it is, I believe the discussion on the compression has been started due to very high expectations of the camera in the new xperia phones. The camera IS very good I think considering it is a mobile phone with a very small camera sensor.
Pictures will when you magnify them on your pc never look as good as a dslr or newer compact camera with bigger sensors and better optics. This is probable what started the jpg compression discussion as it would have been nice to just change the jpg compression level and have super sharp pictures even when you zoom in.
The Camera Advance app will give you the option to change the compression but my own tests show no visual difference from the xperia camera app and the picture from camera advance. File size differences was 1MB from xperia camera and 2.2MB from camera advance app.
Camera360 Ultimate will give pictures at the same sizes as the xperia camera app even when you select the finest compression level.
I personally prefer to use the xperia camera app compared to camera360 and camera advance.
I have allways enjoyed photography and normally use a dslr. This is actually the first mobile phone where I have started to use the camera as I have allways disliked the picture quality from my older mobiles. It is amazing to see pictures at iso 1600-2000 being useable from this small camera, the low light performance is very good and the dynamic range under sunlight is also very good.
I have the xperia arc and not neo, but I belive the camera is the same on both mobiles. Have seen some samples from neo where it actually looks like it is producing better pictures, could be due to different optics in the slightly bigger mobile or just differences in firmware.
Well I've bought a Neo for my wife recently. But was surprised also to see the size of the files for an 8mp camera. I was also surprised there is no option for the level of compression.
What is more important that the camera does not produce good quality for darker rooms.(in a room with 15*10W halogen light bulbs). The pictures have a visible yellow-greenish tint and a lot of noise. I haven't tried on outside just yet.
May be my expectation are too high. But I still think this is a marketing trick. They could have easily put a sensor with less density (5mp or 6mp) which is supposed to produce less noise.
valqka said:
Well I've bought a Neo for my wife recently. But was surprised also to see the size of the files for an 8mp camera. I was also surprised there is no option for the level of compression.
What is more important that the camera does not produce good quality for darker rooms.(in a room with 15*10W halogen light bulbs). The pictures have a visible yellow-greenish tint and a lot of noise. I haven't tried on outside just yet.
May be my expectation are too high. But I still think this is a marketing trick. They could have easily put a sensor with less density (5mp or 6mp) which is supposed to produce less noise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do believe the exmoor sensor has improved low light performance compared to a regular mobile camera sensor. But this is still only a small camera and even my dslr would struggle indoor with only artificial lighting unless flash is added.
Have only shot a couple of low light pictures with my arc both outside and inside and agree that pictures especially at iso1600-2000 contain a larger amount of noise. I would say the pictures are very good compared to my old mobile which was useless in low light and good compared to my compact camera.
You can change the scene mode to make the xperia use slower shutter speeds and lower iso, that will give you some very nice scenery shots in low light with little noise. I have to my surprised shot a few sharp fotos at 1/4 shutter speed in low light, that would not be possible without fixed mounting on my dslr or an extremely steady hand.
You will ever only be able to archive good low light pictures with expensive slr and optics. One thing I have learned using slr is that light is king, you can not get enough light if you want sharp, good looking, strong colors etc.
Now you got me interested in doing some tests to compare the low light performance with my dslr and compact camera
Well hygge, I am quite an amateur in shooting but I also know from my extended zoom camera that noise in low light is a nightmare (at least I use Program mode and not automatic ).
I really got the phone form several days and did not had the time try it good. I've just changed settings from 6mp 16:9 (strange for default settings) to 8mp.
Then the LED flash came on automatically. But the result was not good. (3 from 4 shots were with yellow-green tint and one was too bright (or is more correct over-exposed). But I must confess the scene was complicated if this matters at all: my baby in the bathing tub. So there is water, reflection.....
But anyway I put my bet on the dslr with a huge distnace
valqka said:
Well hygge, I am quite an amateur in shooting but I also know from my extended zoom camera that noise in low light is a nightmare (at least I use Program mode and not automatic ).
I really got the phone form several days and did not had the time try it good. I've just changed settings from 6mp 16:9 (strange for default settings) to 8mp.
Then the LED flash came on automatically. But the result was not good. (3 from 4 shots were with yellow-green tint and one was too bright (or is more correct over-exposed). But I must confess the scene was complicated if this matters at all: my baby in the bathing tub. So there is water, reflection.....
But anyway I put my bet on the dslr with a huge distnace
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would have been a nice picture, but it do sounds like a challenging picture with the reflecting. Remember to record movies of your baby in the bathing tub. My daughters now 3 og 5 years really enjoy looking at short movie clips of them as babies splashing in their bathing tub
(they love playing games on the xperia, mostly drawing apps )
What I have seen so far is that the xperia tend to prefer low shutter speeds in low light situations. I still only have a handfull of shots to base my conclusions but with flash on it was using 1/25 sec shutter. This is too slow taking pictures of moving kids, you will need 1/60 or even 1/120 which is normally only available on slr's. Without flash it has been 1/8 and high iso, must admit it was under circumstances I would never have used my dslr without flash and maybe a bit unfair to judge the xperias camera capabilities.
I agree that the wrong color balance will totally screw up the pictures, have you tried setting the white balance manually in the camera? A setting I have not yet changed on my xperia and are not aware what options are available.
I have now made some quick comparisons of my three cameraes under low light conditions.
Might upload test pictures later when I have the time, for now you will have to trust me
Camera 1. Xperia Arc 8MegaPixel
Camera 2. Olympus u Tough 12MegaPixel
Camera 3. Konica Minolta 5D dslr 6MegaPixel
Test 1 without flash
Xperia 1. Kamera advance app with lowest compression, no flash
ISO: 1000
Exposure: 1/8
Olympus 2. Default settings with disable flash
ISO: 400
Exposure: 1/4
KM 5D 3. Full auto, no flash
Could not focus, too little light, camera suggested 3-4 sec shutter speed
(was using OEM lense with bad aperture which gave it problems focussing, could have used a better lense but decided to use OEM lense to keep the comparisons fairly)
Results:
Olympus had only a tiny bit more details and allot more noise, picture was looking very bad up close.
Xperia Arc, even at iso 1000 the noise was lower than my Olympus and the picture looked more clean with nicer colors. I definitely prefered the Xperia result.
The olympus will not go lower than 1/4 shutter speed and iso 400. I selected night scenery on the Arc and got a picture with iso 160 and shutterspeed 1/2. This picture had even less noise but was slightly blurred at 1/2, need a more steady hand but still a very useable result.
My DSLR would not take a picture without focus.
Winner:
Xperia Arc, higher shutter speeds and a cleaner picture with less noise. I was surprised to see the loss of details on my 12MP Olympus at ISO 400 compared to the Xperia Arc.
Test 2
With Flash:
Xperia 1. ISO 400, shutter 1/24
Olympus 2. ISO 100, shutter 1/30
KM 5D 3. ISO 100, shutter 1/60
Result:
The Olympus with flash and ISO 100 gave a sharp, low noise picture and the 12MP provided better details than the xperia could show. The flash on the xperia is not very strong and it was not possible for me to configure it to use lower ISO than 400. The xperia arc picture did give a nice result with low noise.
The 6MP DSLR with flash give the same amount of details as the 12MP Olympus, my old DSLR is still going strong and a better lense will give an even sharper picture
Winner:
KonicaMinolta 5D wins, followed by Olympus. Xperia Arc still gave a nice result but with less details and more noise than the other two devices.
One last test at a really dark area without flash also proved xperia arc to be the winner. My Olympus would not go lower than 1/4 iso400 while xperia used 1/8 iso2000. The motive was only visible on xperia arc and even a fairly noisy picture at iso2000 is better than no picture at all
My own conclusion is that the xperia arc/neo is really good at low light performance and even outperforms many compact cameras, but the the weak flash give some serious limitations. The low shutter speeds will probably also be an issue taking pictures of moving motives in low light.
(did shoot a couple of shoots with sony camera app and did not notice any difference from Camera Advance, I used the 3PP camera to use as little jpg compression as possible but I doubt the pictures visually differ much)
It would be interesting to do some tests during daylight as well, it will not benefit from the improved low light performance compared to other camera sensors. I am curious to see how the dynamic range of this sensor is, can it compare to my Olympus compact camera then it would be a serious contender as my primary point and shoot camera as long as flash is not needed.
Thanks forthe replies - I'm not expecting amazing things from camera on a phone Just want to make sure that software isn't unnecessarily hindering the hardware.
It also looks like it will be a couple of weeks before I pick one up...Unless i opt for something else in that time, but for a smallish screen size Android phone this currently looks the best. I do wish it had gorilla glass - but you can't have it all
Now I've found a confusing thread about in line remotes on the headphones that I need to figure out (yes I do seem to put way too much thought into these things!).
valqka said:
I really got the phone form several days and did not had the time try it good. I've just changed settings from 6mp 16:9 (strange for default settings) to 8mp.
Then the LED flash came on automatically. But the result was not good. (3 from 4 shots were with yellow-green tint and one was too bright (or is more correct over-exposed). But I must confess the scene was complicated if this matters at all: my baby in the bathing tub. So there is water, reflection.....
But anyway I put my bet on the dslr with a huge distnace
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the yellow green tint you're seeing will be from the lights in the room - you see this on most cameras of any quality, if you have a white balance setting you should have one for indoor/halogen lights. It's also normally easy to fix in Photoshop.
Anyone have camera picture samples, daylight and low light.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
I've got some.
Low light.
https://goo.gl/photos/Uxi7idDFtidD7M7n8
Outdoors.
https://goo.gl/photos/VQqyRV9JbGag9u7M7
Lights on and lights off.
https://goo.gl/photos/LHgQdT6fyFfoJnaf9
Overexposed HDR mode.
https://goo.gl/photos/L34PDv76i7qKdH6Y6
Various Moto Z Play camera tests on YouTube
Does the Z Play support full RAW mode?
How does the camera compare to the original moto z any better or worse, who ever has both devices .
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
Daylight
Here some images at full Resolution. Most of them were shot under not so ideal conditions but I think they are good especially with the given conditions. They were all shot with the Snap Camera App, denoise filter disabled, sharpness filter decreased a little. Just click on the links below:
A lot of small details in this image which come out really well. Also the dynamic range and the colors are great I think.
Denoise disabled too, maybe a little to much sharpening. Therefore noise came out a little to much but nice details if you look at the meadow, trees and roof.
Optimized the sharpening filter a little.
A shot against the rising sun. You could still see details of the plants in the foreground.
Very dark - actually it was darker than it appears on the image:
iphone 7 plus vs z play camera
https://youtu.be/9l2EaJuW7zw
Jack Sparrow xda said:
Does the Z Play support full RAW mode?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the Hasselblad True Zoom Moto mod supports shooting in RAW.
RAW isn't supported on stock though
You can't really see why the cam is kind of crap in image samples.
Images look allright, but the terrible autofocus make quickly snapping a picture, or scanning a barcode you hold close to the camera, or tapping somewhere to focus on that part of the image a major pain.
Coming from a Nexus 5X the camera image quality does not really bother me, the terrible handling does
No filters used in any images.
Daylight. Taken in Val Badia, Italy.
Recently I got my Nokia 6.1, well first thing I did was download Arnova's Google camera and Potter's Night Sight Google Camera.
Maybe it's me buy I wasn't able to find RAW capture in default camera app. Need help with this because I liked stock camera features.
as for Google camera, both cameras with Super photo settings, I noticed high amount of noise. Check photo corners
Both in night sight and HDR+ modes, so I'm sticking with stock camera, and using Gcam HDR+ only for selfies. Disappointed.
In poor light conditions, dslr-s also have noise in the final image, so you can't expect miracles from a sensor, that is as big as needle pin, compared to APS-C or FF sensors, which have way more area for gathering light. Combine that with the poorer high ISO performance, the lack of long exposure time, and the lack of variable aperture - I'm really amazed what the computational technology of GCam ports are capable of doing in low light, HANDHELD!!! Today I made some tests, and with nightmode I got results, that would require a tripod for my camera to make an image with comparable quality.
Stock camera doesn't have RAW support and RAW doesn't "eliminate" noise - on the contrary - in some situations, GCAM copes better than me in editing the noise out and preserving the detail (I do it in lightroom).
So for now, GCam with nightmode is quite a thing, given the limited hardware of every smartphone camera.
bo6o said:
In poor light conditions, dslr-s also have noise in the final image, so you can't expect miracles from a sensor, that is as big as needle pin, compared to APS-C or FF sensors, which have way more area for gathering light. Combine that with the poorer high ISO performance, the lack of long exposure time, and the lack of variable aperture - I'm really amazed what the computational technology of GCam ports are capable of doing in low light, HANDHELD!!! Today I made some tests, and with nightmode I got results, that would require a tripod for my camera to make an image with comparable quality.
Stock camera doesn't have RAW support and RAW doesn't "eliminate" noise - on the contrary - in some situations, GCAM copes better than me in editing the noise out and preserving the detail (I do it in lightroom).
So for now, GCam with nightmode is quite a thing, given the limited hardware of every smartphone camera.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I am photographer myself and I understand what you said, but in my case even with ISO100 and 3 sec shutter with tripod final image has artifacts not noise. I noticed that even in daylight, somehow after phone
restart I got less of that, so possibly it was software bug.
So far I tested Footej Camera and Momento Pro Camera both of same allow saving in RAW , however they don't support long shutter speed above 1 sec.
FV-5 camera also is good, saves RAW format and also is pretty well.
As for Google Cam, I use it for selfies, they are a lot detailed, for video I recommend Cinema 4K , you get decent quality with 200mbps bitrate (sample)
And software stabilisation in that software is quite decent, make sure you shoot in 1080p for stabilisation to work.
I tested with lightroom camera, and sadly, I should agree with you, but I don't think it's a software bug. It's either the capability of the sensor (reason one for the short maximum long exposure time), or just fast overheating of the sensor (less plausible).
I've seen a comparison between pixel 3 night mode vs a7riii camera - it's amazing, and has nothing in common with the noise in 6.1. And this makes me think of a third reason - as this program is a port, it might have special algorithm for cleaning the noise of the pixel sensor, which doesn't work for ours. This theory can be checked by asking someone to take a comparable long exposure with pixel 3 in dng, with a third party program.
I left my cameras at home during my summer vacations and only took my brand new Xperia 1 II.
Since it costs a lot (as you all know) I wanted to see if it could really replace a real camera as the marketing hype suggests.
I'm a kind of lazy guy so this is not a detailed review with shoot examples and comparisons (by the way, I recommend you to take a look at this one by @stsdema28 ).
I'm just focusing to the Photography Pro app features, its pros and cons on my opinion.
I own a Sony mirrorless camera (DSC-R1) it's quite old and here you can see why I'm still in love with it. But it's not an Alpha camera so I have no experience on the interface that should have inspired the Photography Pro app. Anyway I'm using smartphones since 2011, I used a few "pro" camera apps, (Camera FV-5 was my favorite one, I used it on my Oneplus devices)
I found the Photography Pro app a step in the right direction, with many perks but also with several flaws.
PROS
3:2 aspect ratio. This is a most welcome and unexpected feature in a smartphone, I always shot 3:2 pictures, beginning with reflex cameras in the 80's, then with Sony mirrorless cameras and even my small Canon S120 is set to 3:2 ratio. It's great for consistency with all those photos I took before and because it is a better, more "photographic" and slightly panoramic format.
Great WB control. Shade option is here and 3 custom options too: uncommon to find such granularity in some pro cameras too.
Big EV +/- slider, I used it a lot.
All those controls right at the fingertips
Grid and virtual horizon line, great to shoot straight pictures
CONS
HDR settings buried in the menu and missing visual clues. I forgot so many times when it was in auto mode or off, so I took many pictures with an unwanted HDR feature turned on and viceversa. It seems to me there is plenty of room for such setting in the main screen.
It would be great a setting to force max brightness to better see the screen where there is too much light in the environment. Camera FV-5 has it and it worked great on my Oneplus devices. I shoot many pictures in blind mode.
Timeout too short and not adjustable. Screen is dimming after 20s sec and app closing after 10 more secs: many times app closed in my face if I forgot to periodically touch the screen while looking for the right framing or waiting for the right moment to take a picture. I understand that this setting and the previous one are probably meant to reduce battery consumption. Thank you very much but I prefer to be in control of such details.
Jpeg quality maybe too low? Sometimes it seems to me to see some jagging due to jpeg compression artifact, most cameras and many pro-like camera apps have settings to increase jpeg quality (and size), it would be great to have such a feature. A recent firmware upgrade enabled RAW+jpeg shots so it should be easy to check if my fears are true (but, again, I'm too lazy to do it).
Changing focal length requires two tap, it would be an improvement to select the desired lens without having to use a submenu (as you can do in the standard camera app).
A sharpness control would be nice, even if the default applied sharpness does not seem to strong.
A feature to save custom settings profiles would be great too.
App icon is ugly (and not following material design guidelines, I guess).
Other thoughts
The dedicated key is great!
Default 24mm lens is wider than most other smartphone default lens and too wide for me. The short focal length combined with the minimum focusing distance does not allow to make macros as close as I would have liked (and to which I was used to on the oneplus 3t) but maybe it is a side effect of the sensor size.
Switching from traditional zoom camera with a 24mm to 120mm range to 3 fixed focal lengths it was not easy for image composition but I thought it would be worse, most of times you can just fix it by moving closer to or away from the subject. Again, having a 26 or 28 mm instead of a 24mm would have been better.
I would also like to let Sony know what I think (with an app like FV-5 I could have written to the developer) but I'm afraid there is no way, unless any of them read XDA