problem with camera exposure - Xperia Z1 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

My camera is extremely sensitive with illuminated objects.
If something is under sunlight, no matter what time of the day it gets always completely whited out and this when the sun or source of light is behind me.
Often the sky, if it's simply a sunny day becomes monocromatic etc.
This problem happens with either superior auto as well as manual setting 50 iso and lowering the exposure to the minimum.
it seems to me that the sensor is too sensitive or has a very narrow dynamic range.
Is it possible to re-calibrate it?
Often I also do not see any difference by changing the iso (the onscreen preview does not change on the fly).
Either in low or high light conditions.
Any suggested diagnostic and fix?
Thanks a lot

Related

Light sensor

Hi,
According the the literature the light sensor adjusts the backlight according the the ambient light available.
Is it just me but this doesn't seem to be working and yes 'Auto adjust backlight' is checked.
Regards.
I can actively see this working all the time, if you happen to hold your hand over a bit of the screen you'll notice it slightly fade. I'ts not a major difference but it's def there.
Fru T Bunn said:
Hi,
According the the literature the light sensor adjusts the backlight according the the ambient light available.
Is it just me but this doesn't seem to be working and yes 'Auto adjust backlight' is checked.
Regards.
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On my TD2 it is working, but the change in backlight are not so obvious, you have to pay attention to see it: the change is not instantaneous, it is gradual (over a 0.5s time maybe), and it does not change much (not as much as the powersaving no-activity backlight level, which is much lower).
The best way I have found to check if it work is to be in a moderately lit room, and cover/nucover the light sensor with your finger. You should be able to notice the small change in backlight level as you cover/uncover the sensor....
BTW, anyone knows if it is possible to tune the backlight level/ ambiant light function? I would like to keep the auto-adjust, but lower the backlight level when it is completely dark to the minimal setting (or even lower), similar to the powersaving level I was talking about above.
This very low level is not nice for watching movies or pictures (it skew the color rendering because white is not white anymore, it is yellowish grey), but I find it ideal for ebook reading in the dark (it saes the battery, it is not tiring for the eye, and it is not bothering for the sleeping beauty sharing my bed when I read late ;-) )
G-Light
gkai said:
On my TD2 it is working, but the change in backlight are not so obvious, you have to pay attention to see it: the change is not instantaneous, it is gradual (over a 0.5s time maybe), and it does not change much (not as much as the powersaving no-activity backlight level, which is much lower).
The best way I have found to check if it work is to be in a moderately lit room, and cover/nucover the light sensor with your finger. You should be able to notice the small change in backlight level as you cover/uncover the sensor....
BTW, anyone knows if it is possible to tune the backlight level/ ambiant light function? I would like to keep the auto-adjust, but lower the backlight level when it is completely dark to the minimal setting (or even lower), similar to the powersaving level I was talking about above.
This very low level is not nice for watching movies or pictures (it skew the color rendering because white is not white anymore, it is yellowish grey), but I find it ideal for ebook reading in the dark (it saes the battery, it is not tiring for the eye, and it is not bothering for the sleeping beauty sharing my bed when I read late ;-) )
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try this: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=440665
When I move around (indoor/outdoor), the screen brightness is very consistant (and colors are brilliant too), I persume the light sensor worked
but TD2 did not respond to my random playing of the sensor.. the finger trick did not work for me, but i don't care
kidleaders said:
When I move around (indoor/outdoor), the screen brightness is very consistant (and colors are brilliant too), I persume the light sensor worked
but TD2 did not respond to my random playing of the sensor.. the finger trick did not work for me, but i don't care
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe a stupid question...but maybe you mistake the LED for the light sensor.
The indicator led is on the left of the speaker grid, the light sensor on the right...if you have ticked automatic in the backlight intensity (parameter/more/alimentatation section, backlight subsection), you should definitely see a change if you are under bright light and cover/uncover the light sensor just right of the speaker grid.
BTW, thanks fort the g-light application, it is working nicely!
Could even save battery, although maybe this is mitigated by having one more background process running for polling the light sensor data...

tips for clearer shooting in low light to dark, night shots

As we all know by now, all camera reviews say our S5 has sub par night shooting. The thing is if we have our default settings on, this is absolutely true. I believe default has ISO on Auto and image stabilization ON. If you notice night shots are blurry as hell and we lose lots of detail even if we hold the phone absolutely still. This is because Auto ISO, I believe, is digitally ramped super high past ISO 800 in order to have a quick shutter speed. This causes less details to be taken in, in trade for brighter night shots.
This is the easiest way to get much better night shots and I wish reviewers tried this in their camera reviews for smartphones. See examples below of:
1. auto image stabilization with auto ISO
2. ISO 800
MUCH BETTER. notice that with auto settings on, it artificially brightens the entire shot, the night sky is forced to be brighter and you notice lots of noise near the horizon. the carnival lights are over exposed and details are not present.
notice the manual ISO shot, the night sky is correctly a pure black, and the lights are not over exposed so it leaves a crisp detail.
TL;DR: deactivate image stabilization so you can manually adjust ISO. Instead of Auto ISO, choose 800 for crisper, more detailed night shots.
next tip in the near future: shooting people in dark lighting
chillsen said:
As we all know by now, all camera reviews say our S5 has sub par night shooting. The thing is if we have our default settings on, this is absolutely true. I believe default has ISO on Auto and image stabilization ON. If you notice night shots are blurry as hell and we lose lots of detail even if we hold the phone absolutely still. This is because Auto ISO, I believe, is digitally ramped super high past ISO 800 in order to have a quick shutter speed. This causes less details to be taken in, in trade for brighter night shots.
This is the easiest way to get much better night shots and I wish reviewers tried this in their camera reviews for smartphones. See examples below of:
1. auto image stabilization with auto ISO
2. ISO 800
MUCH BETTER. notice that with auto settings on, it artificially brightens the entire shot, the night sky is forced to be brighter and you notice lots of noise near the horizon. the carnival lights are over exposed and details are not present.
notice the manual ISO shot, the night sky is correctly a pure black, and the lights are not over exposed so it leaves a crisp detail.
TL;DR: deactivate image stabilization so you can manually adjust ISO. Instead of Auto ISO, choose 800 for crisper, more detailed night shots.
next tip in the near future: shooting people in dark lighting
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Click to collapse
What park is that? Looks like the one near me, is that roller coaster the crazy mouse? Lmao.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Impressive, that's a nice shot.
not bad
thanks for the tip the delay sucks anyway to get rid of that?
What about during the day, I have it on auto but imagine stabilization off. would 800 iso be fine for the day? Or is there a better setting for the day, I just leave it on auto b/c I don't want deal with remembering to change it back and forth lol.
surf1 said:
What about during the day, I have it on auto but imagine stabilization off. would 800 iso be fine for the day? Or is there a better setting for the day, I just leave it on auto b/c I don't want deal with remembering to change it back and forth lol.
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Click to collapse
for the day, auto is fine because there is so much bright light it will automatically be able to keep the iso low like 100-400 and still have a quick shutter. if you want super clear crisp pictures, try ISO 100 but depending on how bright it is, you might get blurry photos because the shutter will have to compensate by being open longer.
if you know the basic relationships between shutter speed and aperture, you'll know that our aperture is only 1 setting. so the only thing we can do to brighten pictures is to have a long shutter time (which is bad bc if you move it will get blurry) or change the ISO speed (higher iso, enables quicker shutter speed but sacrifice details).
galaxy s4 nutjob said:
thanks for the tip the delay sucks anyway to get rid of that?
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Click to collapse
the delay isn't actually a delay but its how long the shutter of the camera is open for (taking in enough light to form the picture). Since it's dark and the ISO is at 800 there will be a longer shutter speed. if you listen carefully you will hear 2 noises, one at the beginning, then the delay, then another sound. those two sounds are when the shutter is opening and when it closes back after it has enough light to create a picture.
another way for you to understand this is try iso 100, it will be a longer delay and the picture will come out way too underexposed (darker) because it can't capture enough light while the shutter is open.
however if you have a nice digital camera you can take great night shots with a tripod at low ISO speeds, since you can manually set how long you want the shutter to be open for.
Br4nd3n said:
What park is that? Looks like the one near me, is that roller coaster the crazy mouse? Lmao.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
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Click to collapse
this was at the annual fair in virginia

Camera overexposed

I need some insight into the P10 camera. In auto, the rear camera seems to incorrectly read exposure so I find it overexposures the screen in bright sunlight or situations of high contrast. It's very hard taking a picture when a slight tilt of the phone makes it switch from dark to light in an instant. Just as bad in selfie mode.
Is this normal? Is there anyway to adjust it?
I find it mystifying as it's incapable of taking a simple pic in an ordinary scenario which most other good phones on the market are capable of doing by default.
Of course there is manual mode where you can adjust the EV but it should be able to do this automatically.
When you hold you finger on screen you can change exposure I think (a circled sun icon appears) ? You move it with finger still on screen to see differences.

Does the Note 8 camera really overexpose light?

Recently, I've noticed the Note 8 camera tends to overexpose the background light in photos by default (that is when you tap on the screen to focus on a location and it adjusts light automatically). The pictures are amazingly sharp and high quality, but they seem a bit fake due to this light overexposure. On the other hand, when I manually adjust the light, the pictures tend to look more realistic of the natural situation.
So does the camera just overexpose by default? Or is this normal for all cameras? I'm using all default settings and auto mode.
For comparison, and better understanding of my question, see the two photos.
Touch to focus work similar in every other phone. Get focus and light settings only on touched object. Background always become over or under exposed in depending the darkness of the focused object.
For solve that use camera soft button. In this case focus and light will be average for whole pic.

Slow motion blocked 16:9 0.9 mégapixel

Hi everyone, I saw that during idle mode the image is like a strobe and in the settings the image size is blocked 16: 9 0.9 megapixels, and impossible to change. I saw the same problem on my galaxy s9 + and also a galaxy s7. I saw on the net that a lot of this problem !? how to solve it? thank youView attachment 4661145
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Envoyé de mon SM-N960F en utilisant Tapatalk
krz_ayman said:
Hi everyone, I saw that during idle mode the image is like a strobe and in the settings the image size is blocked 16: 9 0.9 megapixels, and impossible to change. I saw the same problem on my galaxy s9 + and also a galaxy s7. I saw on the net that a lot of this problem !? how to solve it? thank you
Envoyé de mon SM-N960F en utilisant Tapatalk
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its how slow mo works. it takes high frame rate video with lower quality. iirc the slow mo you will take is 720p in 480fps. since lamps flicker at around 50-60hz, and you have 480fps which means you will have a faster shutter speed, thus the camera is capturing light faster than how lamps flicker
ammar18 said:
its how slow mo works. it takes high frame rate video with lower quality. iirc the slow mo you will take is 720p in 480fps. since lamps flicker at around 50-60hz, and you have 480fps which means you will have a faster shutter speed, thus the camera is capturing light faster than how lamps flicker
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Click to collapse
ok thank you friend, and so it is normal that we do not know anything in the settings and the lights flash! then all slow motion videos will be in poor quality as long as the light is by "day"? A friend made a slow motion video with an iphone 7 in a dark room, and the slow motion is great! I try me and it is awful ... where I asked myself these questions.
Envoyé de mon SM-N960F en utilisant Tapatalk
krz_ayman said:
ok thank you friend, and so it is normal that we do not know anything in the settings and the lights flash! then all slow motion videos will be in poor quality as long as the light is by "day"? A friend made a slow motion video with an iphone 7 in a dark room, and the slow motion is great! I try me and it is awful ... where I asked myself these questions.
Envoyé de mon SM-N960F en utilisant Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
yes, it is normal if lights flash, especially at higher fps
the default option for the slow mo on the Note 9 is super slow mo, which is 720p at 960fps. it requires quite a considerable amount of natural light, as artificial light, or lamps flicker. to get the normal slow mo, go to your camera settings, edit camera modes, rear camera and check Slow Motion. that way you can get higher quality slow motion at a reduced frame rate which reduces flickering.
on the side note, when you use super slow mo, you can remove flickering by playing the video, press the three dots at the upper right corner, and tap on Remove Flickering.
ammar18 said:
since lamps flicker at around 50-60hz, and you have 480fps which means you will have a faster shutter speed, thus the camera is capturing light faster than how lamps flicker
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These days the modern lamps can have all kinds of flicker frequencies and effects, especially at higher frequencies, due to using (cheap and/or small space) electronics to convert and control the mains voltage to the lamp's voltage/current, and the conversion has its own higher frequency.
The end result can still be flickering, just that it can also look different than the older 50/60Hz effect, depending on how the camera works. For example, it can show as lighter and darker stripes instead of brightness changes in whole frames.
For examples as seen right at my desk with the super slowmo preview: LED backlight display of my slightly old work laptop flickers wildly and full display effect; my newest LED backlight 4K monitor is steady; my older CCFL-backlight monitor shows a slow slightly colored rolling wave effect through a rainbow of shades (though in this case the effect could be caused by the actual LCD-panel control instead, or the combination of the panel and backlight both varying at different frequencies); LED stripe desklight is steady; fluorescent room ceiling light (has electronic ballast) is steady; the hallway light uses LED replacement lights for small halogen bulbs and flickers madly.
(The old laptop display is kind of bad one, it sometimes flickers even visibly while it "warms up", and it shows a bit of rolling flickering also in the normal photo mode preview, whereas the hallway lights and the CCFL-backlight display look completely steady in that mode.)
Slow-motion / high frame rate video recording not only needs plenty of light, it should be non-flickering type, either daylight or lamps with electronics that are good enough to give steady non-flickering light output. (Details, details: There are other means, but I don't think there is need to go into details here; photography/video forums/websites are better source of info at this point, as this applies to all cameras in general, not just mobile phones or specifically Note 9. Also, even normal photography should use non-flickering types of light, otherwise auto-exposure measurement just before the shot can get different light level than what ends up recorded on the sensor, possibly leading to bad and/or varying exposures, or even lighter/darker stripes on the photo if the exposure uses rolling shutter.)
The super-slowmotion preview is a nice way to check your lights, although it doesn't necessarily reveal all the problems. Normal camera with fast rolling shutter might be even better "detector" in this sense.
6thtry said:
These days the modern lamps can have all kinds of flicker frequencies and effects, especially at higher frequencies, due to using (cheap and/or small space) electronics to convert and control the mains voltage to the lamp's voltage/current, and the conversion has its own higher frequency.
The end result can still be flickering, just that it can also look different than the older 50/60Hz effect, depending on how the camera works. For example, it can show as lighter and darker stripes instead of brightness changes in whole frames.
For examples as seen right at my desk with preview: LED backlight display of my slightly old work laptop flickers wildly and full display effect; my newest LED backlight 4K monitor is steady; my older CCFL-backlight monitor shows a slow slightly colored rolling wave effect through a rainbow of shades; LED stripe desklight is steady; fluorescent room ceiling light (has electronic ballast) is steady; the hallway light flickers madly (LED replacement lights for small halogen bulbs).
(The old laptop display is kind of bad one, it sometimes flickers even visibly while it "warms up", and it shows a bit of rolling flickering also in the normal photo mode preview, whereas the hallway lights and the CCFL-backlight display look completely steady in that mode.)
Slow-motion / high frame rate video recording not only needs plenty of light, it should be non-flickering type, either daylight or lamps with electronics that are good enough to give steady non-flickering light output. (Details, details: There are other means, but I don't think there is need to go into details here; photography/video forums/websites are better source of info at this point, as this applies to all cameras in general, not just mobile phones or specifically Note 9. Also, even normal photography should use non-flickering types of light, otherwise auto-exposure measurement just before the shot can get different light level than what ends up recorded on the sensor, possibly leading to bad and/or varying exposures, or even lighter/darker stripes on the photo if the exposure uses rolling shutter.)
The super-slowmotion preview is a nice way to check your lights, although it doesn't necessarily reveal all the problems. Normal camera with fast rolling shutter might be even better "detector" in this sense.
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true. i have seen some 'artificial' lights in super slow mo which appears to not flicker, even after taking the video. usually i check it first before taking a super slow mo video.
even in normal mode i can see some flickering on some laptop screens and monitors, and even the moving stripes sort of thing that doesnt go away even after tinkering with the shutter speed. so i guess its more dependant on the type of light, rather than shutter speed? (not implying shutter speed is not important in this regard)
thats a lot of information to swallow on me, but hey, not bad to learn something new.
ammar18 said:
even in normal mode i can see some flickering on some laptop screens and monitors, and even the moving stripes sort of thing that doesnt go away even after tinkering with the shutter speed. so i guess its more dependant on the type of light, rather than shutter speed? (not implying shutter speed is not important in this regard)
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The preview may use one shutter speed, even if the actual photo (or video) would be taken at another shutter speed. And how it looks depends on both the frequencies/effects on the light and the frequencies (and shutter type) of the camera and mode/parameters in use. (And there can be other differences in other cameras. E.g. DSLR's typically use one aperture when looking through viewfinder and adjust that aperture quickly when the photo is taken, then return it back to the "viewing" aperture. And that is why there can be a "DoF preview" button, which forces the desired aperture already during viewing. Ooops, again into details, photo/video websites are better for this.)
ammar18 said:
yes, it is normal if lights flash, especially at higher fps
the default option for the slow mo on the Note 9 is super slow mo, which is 720p at 960fps. it requires quite a considerable amount of natural light, as artificial light, or lamps flicker. to get the normal slow mo, go to your camera settings, edit camera modes, rear camera and check Slow Motion. that way you can get higher quality slow motion at a reduced frame rate which reduces flickering.
on the side note, when you use super slow mo, you can remove flickering by playing the video, press the three dots at the upper right corner, and tap on Remove Flickering.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, I understand what you explain, but the iphone 7 is also able to film Slo-mo video support for 1080p at 120 fps and 720p at 240 fps. As noted in 720p 9 but it does not have the blink of light and its slow motion has a good image quality unlike our samsung.
So if we need an extreme amount of light to slow down, they are available only in certain good light conditions! Which makes the option not very attractive unlike the slow-mo iphone.
krz_ayman said:
Hi, I understand what you explain, but the iphone 7 is also able to film Slo-mo video support for 1080p at 120 fps and 720p at 240 fps. As noted in 720p 9 but it does not have the blink of light and its slow motion has a good image quality unlike our samsung.
So if we need an extreme amount of light to slow down, they are available only in certain good light conditions! Which makes the option not very attractive unlike the slow-mo iphone.
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Click to collapse
are you using super slow mo or slow motion in your Note 9's camera?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIHg5p1KBsY
In this video, the image is clear and there is no light except the object that is lit. I do the same test and everything is completely dark and the quality very mediocre.
ammar18 said:
yes, it is normal if lights flash, especially at higher fps
the default option for the slow mo on the Note 9 is super slow mo, which is 720p at 960fps. it requires quite a considerable amount of natural light, as artificial light, or lamps flicker. to get the normal slow mo, go to your camera settings, edit camera modes, rear camera and check Slow Motion. that way you can get higher quality slow motion at a reduced frame rate which reduces flickering.
on the side note, when you use super slow mo, you can remove flickering by playing the video, press the three dots at the upper right corner, and tap on Remove Flickering.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ammar18 said:
are you using super slow mo or slow motion in your Note 9's camera?
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Click to collapse
I use slow motion
krz_ayman said:
In this video, the image is clear and there is no light except the object that is lit. I do the same test and everything is completely dark and the quality very mediocre.
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Click to collapse
what you see might look like there is no other visible light source, but actually it has lights from behind as you can see from the shadow. it can look like its dim because of its high frame rate.
ammar18 said:
what you see might look like there is no other visible light source, but actually it has lights from behind as you can see from the shadow. it can look like its dim because of its high frame rate.
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Click to collapse
Ok the friend, so in fact everything is normal and this mode is used in certain light conditions.
Hi, I understand what you explain, but the iphone 7 is also able to film Slo-mo video support for 1080p at 120 fps and 720p at 240 fps. As noted in 720p 9 but it does not have the blink of light and its slow motion has a good image quality unlike our samsung.
So if we need an extreme amount of light to slow down, they are available only in certain good light conditions! Which makes the option not very attractive unlike the slow-mo iphone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Frame rate matters; 240fps (let alone 960fps) might e.g. reveal flickering that is not noticed at 120fps. Each camera could also use different shutter speeds (which is not always the same as 1s/fps). Also, for proper comparison, the compared cameras should be used in the same circumstances (same lamps, etc.)
Quality differences is another topic I'm not going to comment on. There can very well be some, just like with the different quality of photographs with different cameras.
The amount of light does not need to be "extreme", but again, the higher the frame rate, the less time there is to expose (=gather light for) each frame, so the brighter the light needs to be for equal results. Specifically, e.g. 240fps vs. 960fps is 4 times difference in the light needed (if shutter speeds are scaled by the same factor). Or compare normal 30fps to 960 fps, the amount of light might need to be 32 times higher. As an over-simplified example (and not specifically for this Note 9 case), assuming a case where a normal 80W room light would be just enough for a nice 30fps video (shutter speed at maximum to still get 30fps), that light would need to be improved to a whopping 2560W for "equal" exposure with super slow motion. There are other factors affecting it, usually one doesn't really need 2.5kW of light (e.g. I can do a super-slow motion video that only gets a bit on the dark side right at my desk, which has light levels perhaps between recommended "normal room" and "office" levels and corresponds to maybe 20-40W of fluorescent output above the desk - but was it really 960fps, I didn't check), but this discussion is moving towards the territory of general video/photography stuff, other websites are better for these.
The linked video example is obviously made in a studio or studio-like environment, by people who likely know at least a bit on what they are doing ("Slow Mo Guys TV"), so they likely do have appropriately suitable lights (and then some).
The little bit of slowmotion / superslowmotion videos that I have so far taken with Note 9 hasn't shown me anything that I would not have expected (be it flickering lights or result getting too dark etc.) The only things currently in my list of questions related to Note 9 slow motion are: "is the video length in normal slow motion mode limited", "was the very begin and end of one normal slow motion video at normal speed, and if so then why, or does it even matter" and "what was that talk about 480fps and/or 0.2sec snippets I read somewhere (perhaps slips from S9+ or something)".
So, one can always simply try if the slowmotion mode works in the circumstances or not - no need to ignore it in other than certain light conditions - though I would not bother to even try at night, dark street, dim/dark rooms etc. Sometimes the light levels are ok, sometimes they are just too low or the lights are too flickery, in which case one might look for better lighting, and/or move to better lighting (closer to light, daylight outside, another room). Sometimes its tough luck, with no possibility to do decent slow motion video. In some cases one might be able to use certain software to make it slow motion in post-processing (but it has also its own limits). All this is also better explained in photo/video websites.
---------- Post added at 16:45 ---------- Previous post was at 16:25 ----------
ammar18 said:
what you see might look like there is no other visible light source, but actually it has lights from behind as you can see from the shadow. it can look like its dim because of its high frame rate.
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Click to collapse
To me, the apple basket snippet looked like multiple large diffused lights (or lights with many lamps/sources of light) (and/or reflecting diffusers) from "all" directions (except not from below and less from left); I can't see any shadows there, e.g. the handle only makes slight fuzzy darker area near it, looking like there is at least one light source somewhere up-right.
The dropping water seems to have only one smooth light to left, as reflected from the metal and drop surface, and the drops (when round) do not show anything from behind (or reflections from the front side).
The 3rd scene seems to have at least two not-so-well diffused 4-lamp sources (seen warped in reflections).
But all in all, well arranged lighting in each case (except the bee, where it is likely just the sunlight, no "arrangement" needed).

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