Guys,
I've started a multi-part article series discussing how the Note4's camera should be used (and how it compares to other high-end phones, cameraphones or even standalone cameras).
The first two parts in the series have already been published:
Part I: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3781966
Part II: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3782300
This series will be of particular interest to Snapdragon 805 users. Exynos users, at the moment, will find the series less interesting, as third-party apps, currently, can't access the (almost) non-processed image stream and they, consequently, can't export non-overprocessed images.
EDIT (2015/01/17): Part III is published on HDR: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3782850
EDIT (2015/01/24): a brand new writeup is here at XDA; you should start with it instead of the previous ones: http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4/general/shooting-light-best-image-quality-note-4-t3012008
Great. Thank you
Skickat från min iPhone 6 Plus med Tapatalk
So which app we must use for normal photos ?
How to manually change shutter speed to 1/8s in Snap Camera HDR app? Thx
masterchif92 said:
So which app we must use for normal photos ?
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Basically, if you have an Exynos device, the stock Camera app unless
- you're absolutely sure you don't need shutter speeds under 1/30s (the restriction of many apps, incl. FV-5) and
- you do need the on-screen controls of that app.
Otherwise, the image quality will be the same so there's no advantage in using any third-party app for shooting, as opposed to the Snapdragon case.
If you have a Snapdragon device, you can get far-far better image quality out of your camera in both still and video shooting mode because of the lack of noise reduction and oversharpening. Then, using third-party apps like Snap camera HDR is preferable, assuming, of course, you don't need features like dual camera.
Menneisyys said:
Basically, if you have an Exynos device, the stock Camera app unless
- you're absolutely sure you don't need shutter speeds under 1/30s (the restriction of many apps, incl. FV-5) and
- you do need the on-screen controls of that app.
Otherwise, the image quality will be the same so there's no advantage in using any third-party app for shooting, as opposed to the Snapdragon case.
If you have a Snapdragon device, you can get far-far better image quality out of your camera in both still and video shooting mode because of the lack of noise reduction and oversharpening. Then, using third-party apps like Snap camera HDR is preferable, assuming, of course, you don't need features like dual camera.
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I have the s805 model....there are some settings with this camera to set? Or it will be good with the stock one ?
cornelito said:
How to manually change shutter speed to 1/8s in Snap Camera HDR app? Thx
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You can't - the pre-Lollipop API doesn't let for directly setting the shutter speed. The device will automatically use 1/8s when there's little light.
You'll need to make sure you do enable the Photo > “Samsung Camera Mode” checkbox; otherwise, it will NOT be able to go under 1/15s, resulting in a complete loss of no less than 1EV. At least on Snapdragons; I couldn't test this on Exynos devices.
masterchif92 said:
I have the s805 model....there are some settings with this camera to set? Or it will be good with the stock one ?
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Then, if you really want to see in which cases third-party apps can produce significantly better images, you really want to compare my example shots of the stock app to those of, say, Snap camera HDR - see the crops in my article.
Basically, the stock Camera app applies far too much noise reduction and oversharpening, pretty much ruining fine detail and introducing ugly oversharpening halos. Photos produced by third-party apps, incl. Snap camera HDR, are far more natural.
Just writing my HDR article. The first two parts of the new article is already published: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3782850
Very nice articles. Thanks for doing them.
Is there any way to get rid of the cruddy yellowish look I get on low light photos on my phone? My wife's phone doesn't have this at all, and both of the Note 4s that I have had do. I've been very unimpressed with the low light abilities of this phone, so far. I'd love a solution that doesn't involve sending the phone in to maybe be fixed.
usmaak said:
Is there any way to get rid of the cruddy yellowish look I get on low light photos on my phone? My wife's phone doesn't have this at all, and both of the Note 4s that I have had do. I've been very unimpressed with the low light abilities of this phone, so far. I'd love a solution that doesn't involve sending the phone in to maybe be fixed.
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Have you tried setting "White balance" to "Incandescent" in Settings?
Muyfa666 said:
Very nice articles. Thanks for doing them.
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Thanks! Today, I've continued working on the HDR article.
Thanks for your work. I don't know if I understand correctly but the play store version is 6.2.0. Can this version take pictures under 1/15s? Or we still need a test version for this?
Thanks
zabumba said:
Thanks for your work. I don't know if I understand correctly but the play store version is 6.2.0. Can this version take pictures under 1/15s? Or we still need a test version for this?
Thanks
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Yup, 6.2.0 has just been released. I've tested it; it works flawlessly, at least on Snapdragon:
1/8s is supported
almost-RAW output is supported
Hi there. It's a nice report! However i do have some input
1. The stock camera does do 1/4s in rare occasions , happens for me when I do shots in not-well lit conditions and yet insufficient for camera to engage in night mode.
2. I have no idea if its just me, but night mode does not downsize my photos to 6mpix no matter how dark the scene is. It still stays at 5312x2998. N910G here. Details of photos on poorly lit scenes do not have significantly worse detail for me as compared to well lit ones and file size is in fact larger by a bit. (the room is still not too dark though).
IMO the stock camera does some sort of multi frame noise averaging technique (similar to canon's and sony's "Hand-held Twilight") to reduce noice.
andalism said:
Hi there. It's a nice report! However i do have some input
1. The stock camera does do 1/4s in rare occasions , happens for me when I do shots in not-well lit conditions and yet insufficient for camera to engage in night mode.
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Wow! Haven't ever seen such an image from my European Snap 805 (F) model. Could you post the original to, say, flickr, or, here as an attachment? (Of course, feel free to remove the location info first from the EXIF data.)
IMO the stock camera does some sort of multi frame noise averaging technique (similar to canon's and sony's "Hand-held Twilight") to reduce noice.
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It'd, then, exhibit a much higher probability of camera shake / stitching errors. The relative noiseless-ness is because of the very-very strong noise reduction. (Or, maybe, because of the "G" model you have is somewhat different from the European one? I wouldn't think so - after all, both are Snapdragon-based.)
Menneisyys said:
Have you tried setting "White balance" to "Incandescent" in Settings?
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I've tried all of the settings in the phone. Nothing makes the problem go away. Using the same settings as my wife's phone, and there's a huge difference in the quality of indoor pictures between the three phones.
It does take quite nice outdoor pictures.
usmaak said:
I've tried all of the settings in the phone. Nothing makes the problem go away. Using the same settings as my wife's phone, and there's a huge difference in the quality of indoor pictures between the three phones.
It does take quite nice outdoor pictures.
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Could you take low-light images with an LCD computer screen displaying white
- without(!) using f.lux or other tools to decrease the white balance (this is equal to about 7000K) and
- at both a very low brightness level (to "kick in" night mode) and a high one (to avoid night mode)
with both phones? Preferably in "auto" and "incandescent" WB modes on both phones.
Menneisyys said:
Wow! Haven't ever seen such an image from my European Snap 805 (F) model. Could you post the original to, say, flickr, or, here as an attachment? (Of course, feel free to remove the location info first from the EXIF data.)
It'd, then, exhibit a much higher probability of camera shake / stitching errors. The relative noiseless-ness is because of the very-very strong noise reduction. (Or, maybe, because of the "G" model you have is somewhat different from the European one? I wouldn't think so - after all, both are Snapdragon-based.)
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Unfortunately, I deleted those photos as it was blurry due to the unexpectedly low shutter speeds or that the picture sucked. I will post if I can reproduce that setting again.
As for the noise averaging mode...
1. It will not cause camera shake/stitching errors even if you hold still. Why? If you were to shake your phone violently, the software is smart enough to abandon image stacking altogether & the final image produced is the result of just 1 picture that has a little fine bit of extra noise reduction maybe.
2.Samsung's night mode is not well documented, unfortunately, despite them having this mode since Galaxy SIII.
However, the answer lies hidden in one of their support page for galaxy S4
http://www.samsung.com/us/support/howtoguide/N0000003/10094/120418/SGH-I337ZBMATT
"Night: Take photos by combining them to get a brighter, clearer photo in low light, without flash."
Now, you may think that perhaps this mode only applies to the S4's night mode, so I did a mini test.
(click on photos to zoom in)
(1)
Image taken with night mode
(2)
Image taken WITHOUT night mode under same conditions (This is done by tricking the camera to first take a photo in bright light,continue holding down the shutter button to engage burst shot, quickly direct phone to subject and wait for phone to adjust to the right exposure)
(3)
Same image from (2), but edited in Lightroom by dragging the luminance noise slider to like 40.(there is little or no chroma noise, so I did not touch that slider)
As you can see, despite their photos taken under the same conditions, (1) is the best as it as less noisy compared to (2) and sharper than (3).If Samsung really did engage in strong noise reduction at night mode, much fine detail would be lost and the photo will look like an oil painting when you pixel-peep. Thus , night mode photos you take will look more like (3) than (1), when (1) is the actual night mode photo in reality.
3. Another good guess that Night mode is actually a multi frame mode is that, all night mode's photos have their EXIF data eroded.
(Fun fact, dpreview says iphone 6+ does this too)
"the built-in, stock Camera app may have too strong noise reduction and oversharpening"
IMO, Im sorry but I disagree, too strong noise reduction would mean that photos from the note 4 would be too smooth and would lack any fine detail at all, which from my observations isnt true. Samsung excels in that area. Also, oversharpening is also not the case, oversharpened photos often result in false detail and look contrasty/frosty which is again, not the case to me.
EDIT: oversharpening and noise reduction could be a matter of taste so it could be true for some
Hello people! I'm trying to record video with my new OP3T, but when I watch the recording, the video frame size (or field of view I suppose) is smaller than what it looks like when I'm shooting. I mean the video resolution is still 1920x1080, but things at the edges of the screen are now out of view. I'm using 1920x1080 @30 FPS, stock camera app, Android 7.0. Same thing happens with other resolutions and FPS settings, and with OpenCamera app for example. But it does not happen when taking pictures, and even when I take a static shot WHILE shooting video, that picture comes out fine.
Is this a known issue? How could I solve this? Is there any modification that could help?
PhantomGlass said:
Hello people! I'm trying to record video with my new OP3T, but when I watch the recording, the video frame size (or field of view I suppose) is smaller than what it looks like when I'm shooting. I mean the video resolution is still 1920x1080, but things at the edges of the screen are now out of view. I'm using 1920x1080 @30 FPS, stock camera app, Android 7.0. Same thing happens with other resolutions and FPS settings, and with OpenCamera app for example. But it does not happen when taking pictures, and even when I take a static shot WHILE shooting video, that picture comes out fine.
Is this a known issue? How could I solve this? Is there any modification that could help?
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Seems to be a known issue. Watch this video (pay attention at 3:30): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFC9OB85Tpk&t
I don't know if this can be solved as i received my 3T yesterday and haven't had a chance to use the camera yet.
panart said:
Seems to be a known issue. Watch this video (pay attention at 3:30): (snip)
I don't know if this can be solved as i received my 3T yesterday and haven't had a chance to use the camera yet.
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It seems so, yeah. Do you know if this sort of cropping happens during shooting or is it a separate process that's done afterwards? I figured this might be solvable somehow, since you do see the whole picture while you're recording. So it's not a physical limitation of the camera lens or anything.
PhantomGlass said:
It seems so, yeah. Do you know if this sort of cropping happens during shooting or is it a separate process that's done afterwards? I figured this might be solvable somehow, since you do see the whole picture while you're recording. So it's not a physical limitation of the camera lens or anything.
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Sorry, but i don't know why this happens.
panart said:
Sorry, but i don't know why this happens.
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Noticed that OpenCamera has a function to enable Camera2 API, which fixed the cropping! Also I found that on stock camera app, recording on 4K UHD (3840x2160) doesn't crop the video frame. But it limits to 10 minutes per shot (also workable on OpenCamera due to its restart recording function.)
It's the electronic image stabilisation. It needs to zoom in a little bit to stabilize the video. That's why the 4k isn't cropped, because in 4k, there is only OIS, and not EIS.
G4B33 said:
It's the electronic image stabilisation. It needs to zoom in a little bit to stabilize the video. That's why the 4k isn't cropped, because in 4k, there is only OIS, and not EIS.
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Exactly what I thought was the cause of it, thanks for clearing this up ??
Is there any way to disable stabilisation? Different camera app, some mod or something? Even OpenCamera doesn't specifically have a setting for that, but I guess Camera2 API doesn't support EIS or something, which feels like a crutch "solution" at best.
PhantomGlass said:
Is there any way to disable stabilisation? Different camera app, some mod or something? Even OpenCamera doesn't specifically have a setting for that, but I guess Camera2 API doesn't support EIS or something, which feels like a crutch "solution" at best.
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Scan build.prop see if there is some line related to ois or eis.
Since I have succesfully activated HAL3 on our device, I started getting amazing pictures with the help Google Camera. The noise reduction is off, the quality is crystal-clear, which means that we haveamazing sensors on both our cameras, the rear and front one.
But even with this feature turned on, the quality of the built-in cameras of Instagram, Skype, Google Duo , Whatsapp and Viber offer a very low quality of the image even when taking photos but most important - when making a video call. The quality is awfull, just like the stock camera with it's noise reduction on. Blury image and very low FPS while in a videocall. We have great camera modules on our phone, so how to find in the ROMs a way to make these apps use the best quality available of our cameras? Is it related to HAL1 or HAL3 or is there a code in the kernel that can be modified? Or what is the key to make it work better?
When opening the video camera of the stock camera app - the image is clear and the noise-reduction is off...so it is amazing, even the fps is high, no glicthes. As soon as I switch the camera back to the photo, I get a blury image and low fps in of the viewfinder.... exaclty the same is within any of the above meantioned apps. How to make a better camera quality when using them? I haven't found any solution anywhere on the XDA forum not even on the 4pda forum.
Am I the only one concerned about this fact?
The front camera of this device is OV5675 Sensore and read on their page, it says it can handle video recording of Full HD at 60FPS
Than why did the MIUI limit it's capabilities so low? To make it look like a cheap sensor and sell the phone as budget?
Anyone?
So we are hearing anecdotal evidence that the front camera has the classic softening, and this is causing video calls to look awful. Your picture will have no detail.
Anyone is able to test and post some screenshots?
kasiopc said:
So we are hearing anecdotal evidence that the front camera has the classic softening, and this is causing video calls to look awful. Your picture will have no detail.
Anyone is able to test and post some screenshots?
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I've had the phone since yesterday and the issue with front cam is limited to video calls and not photos or videos taken by the camera app or even 3rd party apps. I took photo using Camera app with front camera and compared to my Note 10 Plus and they are comparable (Note is slightly better):
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmNZfibB
I suspect the videocall issue has something to do with Sony not enabling some standard API that apps can use to access full camera features so they default to basic camera quality. I hope they fix in software updates! This is the only issue I found about the phone otherwise pretty solid flagship and I'm so glad I'm out of Samsung world.
My video chats with Facebook Messenger look nice sharp, according to the other party and from what I can see.