I love the Note 10/+ cameras, but the lack of support for the Wide Angle and Telephoto cameras in Pro mode and not being able to get DNG/RAW files with that sensors is a reason for me not to fully love the phone's camera setup. As far as I know, all cameras have the same sensor, so really it wouldn't be much difficult for Samsung to let us use those cameras in Pro mode via an OS Update.
Other manufacturers like LG and Huawei let me take RAW files with other cameras (I've had the LG V30 and the Huawei Mate 20 Pro), and if you are a photographer or at least know the importance of RAW files, you should understand me.
I shoot professional photography on my DSLR, but when I leave my camera at home to go with friends or to a live show, having full camera control on my phone would be really appreciated knowing how easy would be for Samsung to let us do by software update.
Edit. Misunderstood at first
Each sensor is different: normal and telephoto are 12MP, ultrawide is 16MP, telephoto and ultra wide are 1 micron sensors, normal has 1.4 micron pixels so it's best for low light and I think ultra wide has no auto focus? But that's no excuse, those cams I think are the same as S10+, so are around for at least 6 months and should have enough time to properly update software.
I remember when Note3 came out it was one of the first, if not the first phone with 4k video etc., I don't see that bleeding edge anymore. For example Huawei has 40 MP sensors and better low light capability. Maybe Samsung is adopting Apple strategy to make the phone just good enough and leave newest tech for next generations, but that could bite them back.
Related
Using A7 (2017) and thinking of upgrading to A70, but not sure technical specs wise if the Front-Selfie Camera, would be much better than A7 (2017).
The Culprit = Aperture.
A7 (2017) - 16 MP, f/1.9
A70 - 32 MP, f/2.0
Now I take loads of selfies and low aperture is very important for me. The new A70 has one stop higher aperture as compared to my 2 year old phone but yes the megapixels is big but tht hardly matters in how much light the module lets in.
So according to specs, shall I conclude the front shooter is equal or maybe slight worse than my current phone ?
Need inputs.
The difference between f1.9 and f2.0 is not very significant, the quality would depend more on the noise in the chip I'd have thought. In whole f-stop numbers, you'd need to go down from 2.0 to 1.4 to double the amount of light allowed in by the lens, f2.0 to f1.9 isn't even a third of a stop, even if these were real f-stop numbers anyway.
Andre
UPDATE: I got the chance to demo Live A70 and I was shocked with the performance.
The selfie camera takes photo as if heavy beauty mode is applied by default. The rear camera takes "Greyish" pictures and even video colors were way off.
Compared to my A7 2017 it was a clear downgrade and even the Samsung representative in the store agreed with my inputs...
So am sticking with my current phone for now and possibly will switch to Oppo Reno !!
So you took a couple of quick photos with store demo unit and decided that camera is bad? I'll rather trust reviewers who spend days with the device before giving impressions and actually provide picture and video samples and comparisons with other devices.
Glotttis said:
So you took a couple of quick photos with store demo unit and decided that camera is bad? I'll rather trust reviewers who spend days with the device before giving impressions and actually provide picture and video samples and comparisons with other devices.
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I thought something was fishy with that demo unit... as it was on Demo mode and while taking selfies there was no option to disable beauty mode.
I again tried a demo in a local shop with consumer mode - and I am happy to inform that the pics and video all seem normal and satisfactory.
BTW, Greyish tone in pics can be widely seen in reviews too!
Camera is not great at all. It is normal as other low cost phones. Also
Bluetooth is breaking a bit with head phones.
audio for receiving calls is poor.
cannot connect to external monitor with type-c to hdmi which I feel is a basic feature.
it is high cost product.
Overall for this price, it is not a good product.
Until unless some one want new phone like me, its good to wait and check for other models.
Many of the cheaper phones which claim to have 48 MP cameras use an interpolated solution to provide a 4x12 MP image. I can excuse companies to use this method on very cheap phones.
Samsung uses (Tetracell) technology from late 2018 to create a hardware computed 8x4 image while claiming to have a 32 MP camera, this clearly shows when zooming in to crop an image, the blur is real unlike my S8+ f.ex. which actually only has a 12 MP camera. I want to shoot 16:9 photos and these are strictly limited to 8 MP, 4:3H does produce 4x8 but it´s still nowhere near the quality of the S8+ 12 MP camera. I was naive to think that Samsung wouldn´t pull a trick like this on their customers, the shots at low light clearly show the limitations of the camera.
I called Samsung support in Denmark and explained the problem, the lady told me I could choose whatever picture size I wanted in any aspect ratio.... she told me to wait as she was going to find out how, she came back 5 minutes later and told me she couldn´t do it on her models ... of course not, I already knew that. I left her my email because she asked .... not going to do any good.
The pictures are nice for the most part ... just don´t zoom. My Umidigi F1 for 180 dollars takes overall worse pictures but the zooming is far better on pictures as the lines are straight without blur regardless of how much I zoom in, it does not have any low light capability however.
PS: HW sensors will report the cameras as 8 MP because they don´t understand the 4x8 technology. As it is I believe all third party camera apps will detect the same and be limited to 8 MP.
So ,I was skeptical of posting this ,but maybe it can be a spark for new development
At first ,I believed that perhaps the camera sensor in the A70 is just 8 MP and some marketing jargon made it appear 32 MP
Idk if this app is true or not but it's actually identifying the sensor as a proper GD1 Samsung sensor with resolution of 32 MP
Yet ,the software is only reading 8 MP from this sensor ,which may mean that there is probably an issue with software rather than hardware
I am no expert ,but I thought this might help us to perhaps unlock our device's full potential
the came api responds to the apps (gcam included) that the camera has only 8mpx
is the api
there are devices where peolple with root and twrp can change this
but it is not working on A70
It's a 32mp sensor, we've always known this. 32mp IS available but only using Samsung's own api, which is only available (so far) in Samsung's camera app. You can verify that yourself by taking a photo in 3:4H mode. Look at the details and the res will be 6528x4896 - 31.9 million pixels. So it's real and it's there. I also don't understand why people are chasing this mode when it's been shown that it's no better than the usual 12mp mode. Would what be nice though is having access to 12mp through the Google camera api, this would allow 12mp in gcam for example, instead.of the 8mp we are currently stuck with. Not.that the photos are bad in gcam but I believe theres a bit more detail to be resolved if we had the full 12mp.
Yes, pics taken with the GCam are good. The pic and resolution quality is acceptable and a level above the Samsung app even in 3:4H mode. But the quality is still a level beneath my Iphone7, in my testing.
Still hoping to see a high MP Gcam or significant software updates to the Samsung camera app.
Thanks to everyone for the reply
It's just annoying as hell to have low megapixel count ,because I usually love cropping into my photos and it really limits me , specifically because of a lack of telephoto lens as I love architecture photography
Another worthy note : I tested over 10 apps that check the hardware info of the phone
None of them could manage to identify the ultrawide cam nor the depth sensor ,all of them only identify the front and back camera...which probably mean there is sort of hope that maybe the Camera2API provided by Samsung is not really fully unlocked and it strict the readings of the entire camera module
If a developer could clarify why the ultrawide isn't identified I would be super happy
Maybe its an advantage of not owning a flagship phone before coz I have nothing to campare the cam of A70, but for me the 32mp mode is really good specially when using outside with good natural light, the zoom image is very impressive imo. Yes the gcam takes better images overall but I really love using the 32mp mode from the stock camera
Hello,
I have a silly question but I am very curious about it so I thought I would ask the experts .
Would a ported Google Camera take advantage of the S20 Ultra hardware or would it produce exactly the same photos as on Pixel? For example, would the Portrait mode improve for photos from the rear camera since S20 Ultra has ToF sensor and Pixel doesn't?
Or would pictures in general improve assuming there would be pixel binning from S20 Ultra and Google's HDR+?
Thank you for your insight
Rule of thumb is GCAM will always increase quality, Historically a custom build would need to be built and will most likely need root to take advantage of all 3 cameras. Most likely it will only be main cam.
Enigma_cpl03 said:
Rule of thumb is GCAM will always increase quality, Historically a custom build would need to be built and will most likely need root to take advantage of all 3 cameras. Most likely it will only be main cam.
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So essentially while one could use GCam in certain situations it would never be a 100% replacement of the Samsung camera app, right? That's a shame, from the S20 Ultra reviews the picture quality (HDR) looked quite inconsistent which is not something I ever experienced with my Pixel, hence the idea of using GCam with S20.
I was especially curious about portrait mode from the rear camera with ToF which my Pixel doesn't have -> hopefully improved object separation, and Night Sight (if pixel binning is done on hardware level + software processing from Google).
I'm guessing pixel binning is done on hardware, so you'll only get 12MP photos from the main sensor using GCam. Historically only the main sensor + wide angle are exposed via camera2 API by Samsung, so those lenses will likely work fine. Remains to be seen if telephoto is exposed as well, GCam on that hardware zoom could be dope.
kvell36 said:
I'm guessing pixel binning is done on hardware, so you'll only get 12MP photos from the main sensor using GCam. Historically only the main sensor + wide angle are exposed via camera2 API by Samsung, so those lenses will likely work fine. Remains to be seen if telephoto is exposed as well, GCam on that hardware zoom could be dope.
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Pixel binning is done on the SW side. You can't change the size of the sensor hardware wise. It's always a 108mp sensor, and the SW bins it down to 12mp.
VZTech said:
Pixel binning is done on the SW side. You can't change the size of the sensor hardware wise. It's always a 108mp sensor, and the SW bins it down to 12mp.
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Well yea it's done in the software but I mean to GCam it'll likely show up as a 12MP sensor due to the firmware Samsung will bake into the ROM, meaning for our purposes it's essentially at hardware level. In their camera app the default is 12MP so that will likely be the format exposed. You see this with the selfie cameras in current Samsung phones which are 10MP but cropped to 6.5MP by default, and that's the only resolution we get in 3rd party apps.
kvell36 said:
Well yea it's done in the software but I mean to GCam it'll likely show up as a 12MP sensor due to the firmware Samsung will bake into the ROM, meaning for our purposes it's essentially at hardware level. In their camera app the default is 12MP so that will likely be the format exposed. You see this with the selfie cameras in current Samsung phones which are 10MP but cropped to 6.5MP by default, and that's the only resolution we get in 3rd party apps.
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I'm no expert, but I'm not sure this is the case. Guess time will tell.
Do you know if Samsung offer some custom camera SDK?
I mean Camera2 May be insufficient for the 108mp nonabinning sensor. Your average demosaic algorithm will make pitiful mess out of it.
So I think anything but dedicated software will make mess out of the camera.
Ideally one would like to set different exposure timing for the 9 sub pixels and do some weird maths to get large sensor like dynamic range for example. That is what is hot about this sensor. Running stupid software written for regular 12m sensor is waste.
I just took some photos at Best Buy, dont think Gcam is needed. Pics looked really good.
My original comment hurt someone's feelings. I have edited it because of that.
_Dennis_ said:
But, all the reviews are crap and you canceled your phone.....
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Why are you a wiseasz? I said i was going to return it, if it wasn't any good. Your post is is unnecessary.
My original comment hurt someone's feelings. I have edited it because of that.
plant_ said:
So essentially while one could use GCam in certain situations it would never be a 100% replacement of the Samsung camera app, right? That's a shame, from the S20 Ultra reviews the picture quality (HDR) looked quite inconsistent which is not something I ever experienced with my Pixel, hence the idea of using GCam with S20.
I was especially curious about portrait mode from the rear camera with ToF which my Pixel doesn't have -> hopefully improved object separation, and Night Sight (if pixel binning is done on hardware level + software processing from Google).
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In my opinion, it is way too early to put much stock in any reviews being done on the S20 Ultra camera. It is so early - only a few handsets out right now - more will be shipped this week - and like most past samsung devices, Updates that improve and often fix issues that were discovered pre launch or even post launch, will surely address the issues (most if not all) that have been raised by these early reviews.
Bottom line, Samsung is putting a lot into the success of this phone and most of that success will be driven by it's camera. You can be sure that Samsung will do everything possible to make it the best that it can be. IMHO.
Is there currently a version compatible with the s20 ultra?
Eckono42 said:
Is there currently a version compatible with the s20 ultra?
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try Urnyx05-v2.3
https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/f/changelog1016/
I tested previously on a demo unit (snapdragon); the main (12mp) and ultrawide lenses seemed to capture and save images; tele lens did not toggle though
Thanks I sure will.
I think if eventually will, the level of functionally ported over will be a different thing.
TL;DR;
Would it be possible to insert S20FE's optical 3x zoom lens instead of this 64 MP useless gimmick so that S20 loses the high-res mode and earns proper, optical zoom of cheaper S20FE instead?
Full story:
I take many photos with my phone and I'm pretty happy with S20's main and ultrawide cameras, but the 3x hybrid "optical" (ye, 1.1x optical is indeed very big magnification) zoom is a damn joke. I was disappointed from the very first pictures from the "telephoto" camera from my S20 - they are usable only with very strong, direct sunlight. As soon as the sun goes away or the phone is indoor with moderate amount of light, this "telephoto" is just useless. Either it won't trigger at all or produces photos comparable to phones from 2014 - noisy, low detail, bad exposure.
My disappointment was even bigger when cheaper and "worse" S20FE was released. My friend purchased one immediately after its launch and we did comparisons. Some of the x3 zoom photos difference between the two is that significant that I literally feel like we were comparing phones from different decades. S20FE literally feels like it's from the far future when compared to S20. Even photos taken with direct, bright sunlight (where the 1.1 "telephoto" from S20 is only usable at) has differences - S20FE images are simply sharper, has more finest details and has literally zero noise. I won't comment photos taken indoor or after the dusk, because it's like comparing devices from different decades, really.
I hoped that if cheaper and "worse" S20FE has proper, optical zoom, S21 will have it as well, but as the full specs are leaked already - Samsung opted for a 1.1 "telephoto" 64 MP gimmick again - we still don't have a compact Samsung flagship with zoom lens.
Would it be possible to remove this useless 64 MP module and put 8 MP 3x optical lens to my S20? Or swap the whole camera module (including the regular and ultrawide cameras as well)? Would the software work with non-official hardware setup? Does anybody have experience with such experiments?
S20 with optical zoom would be really the perfect phone for me I wish I could have.