Database Develop

[Q] How do you turn off auto-focus

As a "proper" camera, the unit seems to be missing some things I'd expect by default. How do you turn off auto-focus an focus manually... taking pictures at night - the stars etc - invariably the images are out of focus.
Also auto-exposure control - you can turn that off easily for images but for videos there seems to be no way to turn off the auto exposure - which makes the end product look very amateurish.
Finally whenever I go out at night, the LCD dims, I can't seem to stop that and it dims WAY too much?
Any ideas chaps?

scargill said:
As a "proper" camera, the unit seems to be missing some things I'd expect by default. How do you turn off auto-focus an focus manually... taking pictures at night - the stars etc - invariably the images are out of focus.
Also auto-exposure control - you can turn that off easily for images but for videos there seems to be no way to turn off the auto exposure - which makes the end product look very amateurish.
Finally whenever I go out at night, the LCD dims, I can't seem to stop that and it dims WAY too much?
Any ideas chaps?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It appears that you cannot turn Auto Focus off but you might be able to find a third party camera app in the Play Store that allows this
Settings for video are sparse it's true and again there is no control over the exposure etc.
I didn't notice the LCD dimming, The camera doesn't have an auto brightness LCD so I am not sure what's causing that. Turning the brightness up from the drop down notification bar is easy enough though.
Sorry these are not the answers you are looking for but we have to remind ourselves that this is a premium camera not a pro camera however.

apprentice said:
It appears that you cannot turn Auto Focus off but you might be able to find a third party camera app in the Play Store that allows this
Settings for video are sparse it's true and again there is no control over the exposure etc.
I didn't notice the LCD dimming, The camera doesn't have an auto brightness LCD so I am not sure what's causing that. Turning the brightness up from the drop down notification bar is easy enough though.
Sorry these are not the answers you are looking for but we have to remind ourselves that this is a premium camera not a pro camera however.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that. I will indeed look out for such an app. Agree with you that it's not a "pro" camera - but for example - on the iPhone who's video handling is equally dire, there's an app that completely compensates by letting you shoot 16:9 with auto exposure, auto focus and auto-white all turned off at the touch of a button. This camera really does need such controls to make it useful for anything other than "party" videos. Its a big disappointment that Samsung would miss off such obvious controls having taken the effort to make a special camera app in the first place.

there are only 2 focus modes as far as I can tell, auto and macro.
night sky shots have worked fine for me using auto focus though.
I made some nice pictures of a crescent moon without a tripod or manual focus, and it was sharp enough to see the craters on the moon.
using manual camcorder under expert you can set the brightness, and white balance for video recording manually(wb is under the settings gear)
lcd dimming: settings gear - general - display brightness
the settings gear is hidden under the > and the expert mode can be accessed through the mode button.
don't be so afraid to dig a bit through settings.
I often see complaints about missing/misbehaving features in apps when it's all available through a settings screen.
EDIT: apprentice: auto brightness works using the camera sensor, so it only works while in the camera app.

Thanks for that - so solved the LCD brightness, but I've gone through all the settings and cannot figure out how to turn off the auto-focus or the auto-brightness. Put your hand in front of the lens - and both kick in whether you want them or not... any ideas anyone?

thedicemaster said:
there are only 2 focus modes as far as I can tell, auto and macro.
night sky shots have worked fine for me using auto focus though.
I made some nice pictures of a crescent moon without a tripod or manual focus, and it was sharp enough to see the craters on the moon.
using manual camcorder under expert you can set the brightness, and white balance for video recording manually(wb is under the settings gear)
lcd dimming: settings gear - general - display brightness
the settings gear is hidden under the > and the expert mode can be accessed through the mode button.
don't be so afraid to dig a bit through settings.
I often see complaints about missing/misbehaving features in apps when it's all available through a settings screen.
EDIT: apprentice: auto brightness works using the camera sensor, so it only works while in the camera app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I can tell in camcorder mode, the one thing you can set - brilliance- is only relative brilliance - the exposure still bobs up and down like a YoYo.... making the movies look terrible - surely guys there has to be a way to turn this off?

Stock Photo Gallery Color Issue?

I've noticed the color of the thumbnails in the stock Samsung gallery app differ when they're actually enlarged. Anyone else notice this? It doesn't happen with third party gallery apps, but I'd prefer to keep the stock gallery app simply because it plays back the slomo video. If you haven't noticed, check it out. Watch the vibrant reds/blues slightly shift to a lighter red/blue.
Now, I've experimented with this, and noticed it does this when the "Adaptive display" setting is left on. However, leaving it on and testing this out with a third party gallery app, it worked perfectly. The display adapted and the colors matched. Of course the color will be the same once enlarged so as long as you change the display's screen mode to "AMOLED photo". However, I'd prefer the adaptive setting because I don't like the warmer white tones when using my phone for everything else besides photo editing.
Leaving it on "Adaptive display", the software should know when I am actually opening a photo and adjust the colors so they're accurate. But now I'm thinking that there's a glitch with the stock gallery. The adaptive display setting is working fine with third party gallery apps, just not that stock gallery app. Which is sorta ironic....
Thoughts?

I noticed that too, doesnt really bother me.
What does bother me is how there is no "Capture" feature anymore what playing back a video and how trimming videos takes a ridiculous amount of time all while not being able to retain 4K resolution. My Note 4 trimmed 4K videos in seconds and kept the resolution.

Wide Aperture mode not working properly

so this worked fine for the first few days- the bit where you get to tap on areas you want the focus to be on (and blur everything else)
usually the aperture circle appears and then you can slide up and down to adjust the f-stop to widen the area that gets blurred.
all of a sudden, the circle no longer sticks so I'm unable to adjust the aperture.
things I've tried but to no avail:
clearing Gallery app data
clearing camera app data
reboot
turn off and then turn on
anyone have this issue please feel free to chime in and find a solution together

Do you have this issue only in the aperture mode or also in the regular camera mode? Meaning do you get the brightness slider wenn tapping for focus in regular camera mode?
Working fine for me Btw.

clouds5 said:
Do you have this issue only in the aperture mode or also in the regular camera mode? Meaning do you get the brightness slider wenn tapping for focus in regular camera mode?
Working fine for me Btw.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
damit you're right... cam brightness slider as well! this sucks....

yellowchilli said:
damit you're right... cam brightness slider as well! this sucks....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hm can't find any setting that would affect that. There is a "restore default" button in the camera settings, have you tried that?
I guess the only other thing I can come up with at this time is a full factory reset

clouds5 said:
Hm can't find any setting that would affect that. There is a "restore default" button in the camera settings, have you tried that?
I guess the only other thing I can come up with at this time is a full factory reset
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hmm nah I've already deleted data for both cam and gallery apps.. that should work better than reset defaults. it's strange, as though both sliders are the same thing across both apps.

yellowchilli said:
so this worked fine for the first few days- the bit where you get to tap on areas you want the focus to be on (and blur everything else)
usually the aperture circle appears and then you can slide up and down to adjust the f-stop to widen the area that gets blurred.
all of a sudden, the circle no longer sticks so I'm unable to adjust the aperture.
things I've tried but to no avail:
clearing Gallery app data
clearing camera app data
reboot
turn off and then turn on
anyone have this issue please feel free to chime in and find a solution together
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK so I worked backwards.. quite painfully.. on all the changes I made over the past few days and I worked out what was causing the issue.
It was a problem that I created for myself really.. but one that was totally unexpected and I'm sure is a bug.
I changed all UI animation to None in developer settings to get around quicker and it was the Window Animation that did it. changed it back to .5x and both the camera brightness slider as well as the aperture slider returned.
strange but true.
anyway, SOLVED.

Thanks for posting the solution. Haven't got my P9 yet but I usually turn off Window Animation as well. I can see how they are related but it really shouldn't affect the camera app functionality. Definitely a bug imo.

yellowchilli said:
OK so I worked backwards.. quite painfully.. on all the changes I made over the past few days and I worked out what was causing the issue.
It was a problem that I created for myself really.. but one that was totally unexpected and I'm sure is a bug.
I changed all UI animation to None in developer settings to get around quicker and it was the Window Animation that did it. changed it back to .5x and both the camera brightness slider as well as the aperture slider returned.
strange but true.
anyway, SOLVED.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi man,
I tried to do it, but it doesn't work for me. I also had all the UI animations deactivated, and even though I turned them on individually, and simultaneously, nothing happened. The thing is that I do have aperture slider and the camera brightness one, but when i take the shot on wide aperture mode, and open the gallery the wide aperture icon doesn't appear.
Thanks anyway.

manug89 said:
Hi man,
I tried to do it, but it doesn't work for me. I also had all the UI animations deactivated, and even though I turned them on individually, and simultaneously, nothing happened. The thing is that I do have aperture slider and the camera brightness one, but when i take the shot on wide aperture mode, and open the gallery the wide aperture icon doesn't appear.
Thanks anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my p20 lite has the same prooblem as you mentioned , did u find any solution?

manug89 said:
Hi man,
I tried to do it, but it doesn't work for me. I also had all the UI animations deactivated, and even though I turned them on individually, and simultaneously, nothing happened. The thing is that I do have aperture slider and the camera brightness one, but when i take the shot on wide aperture mode, and open the gallery the wide aperture icon doesn't appear.
Thanks anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
maybe try rebooting street changing the animation settings?

:/
yellowchilli said:
maybe try rebooting street changing the animation settings?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What do you mean with "rebooting street", could you please explain me? Thanks in advance..

manug89 said:
What do you mean with "rebooting street", could you please explain me? Thanks in advance..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sorry.. it was a typo from my phone. I meant reboot your phone after changing the animation settings. see if that helps

yellowchilli said:
sorry.. it was a typo from my phone. I meant reboot your phone after changing the animation settings. see if that helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think my problem is not related with the animations and UI tweaks that we can turn off from the developer settings (because i have the sliders working properly). The thing is that... is like the WAM (wide aperture mode) is there on the camera, you can use it, but it really doesn't take any effect on the photo....like a preview mode...nothing else.... I know is weird. But if I go to the gallery, and open the photo that I supposelly took with the WAM, the little icon to change the value is not there. It is a normal photo.

Camera Screen Brightness Adjustment

I've been googling around for adjusting the brightness of the camera app, it's just too bright! I would like to be able to adjust as i pleased like the old camera app from samsung does. Anyone found a way? or was there any hidden settings?

[APP]OLED Saver (flicker free backlight dimming, no PWM)

This app is a life saver for anyone who suffers from "invisible" screen flickering caused by PWM backlight control. Most AMOLED displays control lower than 100% display brightness by PWM. This method is extremely easy to implement, but can cause eye strain and headaches for sensitive people. DC dimming is rare as it is hard to implement without sacrificing color accuracy. This is where OLED Saver comes in handy.
How to use:
- turn off system adaptive brightness
- install the app, allow permissions it requests and enable the service
- set minimum screen brightness to 255 if you want to have the safest value (guaranteed to have zero flickering). After further testing, values as low as 96 seems to be still safe - but test it with your phone to be sure.
- minimise the ongoing notification to hide it from lockscreen
- turn on automatic brightness change from the notification ("A")
- remove OLED Saver from battery optimizations
In some rare cases you will need to suspend the service from notification (while taking screenshots for example, app installer might need it disabled too).
If you have Tasker and root access, you can toggle the service to force 100% brightness automatically. I'm using 100% while viewing videos/pictures and taking photos.
Start service
Code:
am startservice org.js.oledsaver/.MainService
Stop service (this will remove also notification)
Code:
am stopservice org.js.oledsaver/.MainService
So far I haven't found any negative point while using this app, just wish it was included in the AOSP code so we could still use adaptive brightness. Anyway, give it a try and share your experience.

I used to have some trouble watching text on this display under certain light conditions.
I don't know if it is just a placebo effect, but since I've installed this app, I don't feel any discomfort anymore.
I also can't see any difference in picture quality.

pecholino said:
I used to have some trouble watching text on this display under certain light conditions.
I don't know if it is just a placebo effect, but since I've installed this app, I don't feel any discomfort anymore.
I also can't see any difference in picture quality.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can easily check if it's working with another phone's camera. People have different sensitivity to PWM flickering, from none to watering eyes. You are probably somewhere in between. Without the app, I had a slight feeling like something was pulling my eyes. As soon as I enabled the app, this sensation has been gone. My wife doesn't see/feel any difference, but I left it enabled for her anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Thanks a lot for introducing this app. It works.
However I encountered a problem. With this OLED Saver activated and using GCAM to take photos, it boosts the brightness to maximum. Then I went elsewhere like home screen or other app, the auto brightness seemed not working and kept the max. brightness.
Then I tried locking the screen and unlocking, the brightness went up or down randomly, or it worked in some particular patterns I don't know. Anyway, it can't keep the brightness I set previously.
Does anyone has any idea to remedy this? Thanks a lot.

CLS_phone said:
Thanks a lot for introducing this app. It works.
However I encountered a problem. With this OLED Saver activated and using GCAM to take photos, it boosts the brightness to maximum. Then I went elsewhere like home screen or other app, the auto brightness seemed not working and kept the max. brightness.
Then I tried locking the screen and unlocking, the brightness went up or down randomly, or it worked in some particular patterns I don't know. Anyway, it can't keep the brightness I set previously.
Does anyone has any idea to remedy this? Thanks a lot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which GCAM app do you use? I'll try it. In stock camera it doesn't behave this way.
Btw. I tried to contact the developer if he could add global intents so we could control OLED Saver with Tasker and without root, this should help in preventing this kind of behavior. No response so far though. If you are rooted you could use method mentioned in the first post.
Also I'm in touch with Velis Auto Brightness developer - this app offers much more features (customizable automatic brightness levels, apps exclusion and more) and has similar feature for OLED displays, but sadly it doesn't work on status/nav bar as of now. If he manages to use the same method as OLED Saver, we could switch to VAB app.

The GCAM version is 7.0.009.259843690.
Phone model is M1906F9SH (64G global version) with OE ROM.
Thank you.

CLS_phone said:
The GCAM version is 7.0.009.259843690.
Phone model is M1906F9SH (64G global version) with OE ROM.
Thank you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Could you send me the link to the particular GCAM apk pls? Different authors might give slightly different results.

I'm not allowed to post link here, yet.
Please search this file name: PMGC_7.0.009_FinalBuild_V14.apk
It's what I've saved and installed.

CLS_phone said:
I'm not allowed to post link here, yet.
Please search this file name: PMGC_7.0.009_FinalBuild_V14.apk
It's what I've saved and installed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hm, I can't replicate this. I've installed GCAM, enabled max brightness for pictures (but it does nothing, as system brightness is at max already and real dimming is done with OLED Saver, which is not being controlled by GCAM). Moving to/from GCAM doesn't change anything. If I manually suspend OLED Saver from notification, GCAM shows max brightness correctly. On resume it returns to the expected behavior and dimmer display.

Yeah, sometimes I got what you described. Sometimes it rushes to very very bright, but sometimes it can be very dim...
I'll try reset it again and see how it goes. Thanks for your time.

CLS_phone said:
Yeah, sometimes I got what you described. Sometimes it rushes to very very bright, but sometimes it can be very dim...
I'll try reset it again and see how it goes. Thanks for your time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that I saw OLED Saver "crash" once while using the phone - brightness suddenly went to max and was controlled by system. Since I removed this app from battery optimizations, it seems to be stable. Though this does not explain rapid bright/dim changes.

This looks very useful but what is it doing exactly? Is it running the screen at max brightness at all time and using some kind of overlay to dim the screen? Isn't that bad for battery life?
Sent from my G6 using Tapatalk

barth2 said:
This looks very useful but what is it doing exactly? Is it running the screen at max brightness at all time and using some kind of overlay to dim the screen? Isn't that bad for battery life?
Sent from my G6 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, as you said, running HW brightness at max and putting a translucent overlay over the screen. It's basically SW implementation of DC dimming. It has a small artifacts with very low brightness, especially on grey colors, but otherwise no issues. Impact on battery should be negligible (OLED displays work different than LCD). Here is a nice article with links to more information at the end https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2019/11/...e-11-pro-and-pro-max-google-pixel-4-and-4-xl/

_mysiak_ said:
Yes, as you said, running HW brightness at max and putting a translucent overlay over the screen. It's basically SW implementation of DC dimming. It has a small artifacts with very low brightness, especially on grey colors, but otherwise no issues. Impact on battery should be negligible (OLED displays work different than LCD). Here is a nice article with links to more information at the end https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2019/11/...e-11-pro-and-pro-max-google-pixel-4-and-4-xl/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Has anyone used a high speed cam to determine at which brightness level the a3 flickers, or is it all level below 100%
Sent from my G6 using Tapatalk

barth2 said:
Has anyone used a high speed cam to determine at which brightness level the a3 flickers, or is it all level below 100%
Sent from my G6 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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Edit: actually PWM seems to kick in at 80% brightness and below.

Hi _mysiak_,
I changed to some other version of GCAM (without the max brightness view finder) and then this OLED Saver App is working fine afterwards. Thank you.
Then I found, when in very dim setting, occasionally, the white color (now it's actually gray) seems not stable. It could be fluctuating from neutral gray to warmer. Not intrusive, though. Do you see that?

CLS_phone said:
Hi _mysiak_,
I changed to some other version of GCAM (without the max brightness view finder) and then this OLED Saver App is working fine afterwards. Thank you.
Then I found, when in very dim setting, occasionally, the white color (now it's actually gray) seems not stable. It could be fluctuating from neutral gray to warmer. Not intrusive, though. Do you see that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I noticed that "slow flickering/artifacts" as well. I believe it's the side effect of DC dimming method and probably one of the reasons why it's not so widely used. From what I read, Samsung AMOLED panels are designed to be used with PWM dimming, so we probably can't avoid it with very low brightness. If it's too disturbing, I just move the OLED Saver brightness slider a bit higher (it stops completely at roughly 40% brightness). Using pitch black themes in apps helps too. Not a perfect solution but definitely better than PWM
Btw. it's the same for any app using translucent overlays, I tried a couple of them and at similar brightness, all behave the same.

barth2 said:
Has anyone used a high speed cam to determine at which brightness level the a3 flickers, or is it all level below 100%
Sent from my G6 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems to be at 80% and below. 81-82% and above should be safe.
CLS_phone said:
Hi _mysiak_,
I changed to some other version of GCAM (without the max brightness view finder) and then this OLED Saver App is working fine afterwards. Thank you.
Then I found, when in very dim setting, occasionally, the white color (now it's actually gray) seems not stable. It could be fluctuating from neutral gray to warmer. Not intrusive, though. Do you see that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try to change the "basic physical brightness" to value 96, artifacts don't disappear completely, but I don't notice them so often.
Level 96 in OLED Saver corresponds to HW brightness level 82%, which seems to be still free of PWM.

Thanks for the tip.

It's really works. Thanks for the tip ???