When it comes to smartphone photography, the most challenging shots are always going to be night shots. Situations with limited light most often result is grainy unusable photos for devices with weaker cameras. The Kirin 970’s AI chip helps to solve this issue with “Handheld Super Night Mode”.
One way to achieve better night shots is to set your phone on a tripod and let your camera use a longer exposure and higher ISO. This is a bit inconvenient as most people obviously wont be walking around with tripods. To solve this issue, Honor uses the Kirin 970 to add “Handheld Super Night Mode” to their phones. This mode lets you take better night shots without having to setup any equipment.
Handheld Super Night Mode works by using powerful AI algorithms, and the quick processing ability of its Kirin 970. There are several techniques used to enhance your night time photos.
AI Detection of Handheld State
One of the key factors of Handheld Super Night Mode is how the phone uses the AI chipset to detect any hand-held jitter of the phone. To realize accurate and efficient detection, the AI system collected and analyzed tens of thousands of data records reflecting different types of photographers and their camera and tripod usage methods, designing a machine learning logic to understand their habits. As a result of implementing this massive amount of data, the Kirin 970 is able to detect when Handheld super night mode is needed in 0.2 seconds. Using this data, the average users is now able to take better night shots without having to use a tripod.
AI Photometric Measurement
The AI photometric measurement system controls the camera’s light intake. After you tap the shutter button, The AI will automatically set the exposure and number of frames based on the lighting scenario, brightness of the preview image, distribution of light sources, and jitter.
AI Image Stabilization
After all of your frames are captured from your night shot, they are merged into a single image. It is common that surring this process, night shots often turn out blurry. To avoid this, before the synthesizing process takes place, the AI the clearest frames and discards any of the bad ones. The clearest frames are used as the standard for the image, while the other frames that the AI has not discarded are automatically aligned. The AI-powered Kirin 970 chip detects feature points within each frame, matching these points and aligning them to to produce the cleanest image possible.
Image synthesis
The final step in Super Night Mode is image synthesis. For this step, customized algorithms have been computed for the AI system to increase the number of short-exposure frames in bright areas to avoid overexposure and the number of long-exposure frames in dark areas to improve detail retention. Frame differences are detected pixel by pixel. If differences are large, AI determines that alignment failed around the edges and conducts correction and repair to ensure the edge regions are still crisp and sharp enough after synthesis. Noise reduction is performed on multiple frames, thereby improving the image’s signal-to-noise ratio, and achieving a clearer, cleaner, and brighter night shot.
Check out photo samples using walking night mode here.
May be Ai helps but in my experience AI mode decrease the image quality, sharpness and boost the colours too much.
Most of images captured in AI mode are not useable.
Thanks for this usefull info sir. Very well explained.
Related
Anyone else having issues with the camera not taking crisp photos?
I came from a S3 and once you touched the screen to focus and then hit the photo button it would take sharp pictures all the time, on the S5 I have went thru every setting possible trying to see of one will help it take a clear picture and as of yet have failed every time.
Sitting in the living room lit with sunlight I tried to take a pic of the living room, came out blurry (yes the plastic film is off of the camera). out of 5 photos maybe 2 come out clear. Last night at the basketball game I had the same issues, pictures of us taken by other people required multiple shots to get one that came out clear, shots we took in the arena when it was lit up well were hard to get to come out in focus.
Anyone else seeing these issues on the S5?
Turn off picture stabilization future in your camera.
Swiping from dark side of Galaxy S5.
norbarb said:
Turn off picture stabilization future in your camera.
Swiping from dark side of Galaxy S5.
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This. I'll explain. the higher the ISO the faster the shutter speed at the expense of photo quality. in traditional film cameras higher speed films (ISO) came out very grainy and loss of detail. It's used a lot in dark, low light situations because as you know the slower the shutter speed, the more chance of blur.
image stabilization in smartphones has at least some to do with shortening that shutter speed by ramping up the ISO, leading to loss of detail. aperture / shutter speed / iso are the three things that are correlated, our cameras have a set aperture. when you take pics outdoors on a bright day, the shutter doesn't have to be open long, and the ISO is taken down to 100, so that is why you have amazing crisp clear pictures.
at night, take of image stabilization, set the ISO to 100-200-400, and have a VERY steady hand. when you try all 3 ISO levels, you'll notice it will take longer for the shutter to close, however if you have a tripod or set it on a table, your picture will look very clear. clearer than iso 400, 800, etc.
the benefit is at higher ISO, in low light settings the shutter will be faster so less chance of blur
I don't have the image stabilization turned on, it takes to long to use it and even when I did try it out the photos it produced were blurry as well.
I am pretty camera savvy as I have a nice DSLR, I have tried different metering options and messed with the ISO. No change in settings produces a clear picture, beginning to wonder if I have a defective camera system in the phone. I noticed this morning that the camera module is set in the phone crooked as well.
sneakyws6 said:
Anyone else having issues with the camera not taking crisp photos?
I came from a S3 and once you touched the screen to focus and then hit the photo button it would take sharp pictures all the time, on the S5 I have went thru every setting possible trying to see of one will help it take a clear picture and as of yet have failed every time.
Sitting in the living room lit with sunlight I tried to take a pic of the living room, came out blurry (yes the plastic film is off of the camera). out of 5 photos maybe 2 come out clear. Last night at the basketball game I had the same issues, pictures of us taken by other people required multiple shots to get one that came out clear, shots we took in the arena when it was lit up well were hard to get to come out in focus.
Anyone else seeing these issues on the S5?
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Click to collapse
I get very sharp shots in good light. I'd say it is hard to get one out of focus in good light. I'm seeing pretty decent performance in low light (for a camera phone). If you are getting poor focus in good light, you may have a defecting camera.
What shutter speeds are you getting for the ones that are out of focus? Because of the camera's limitations in aperture and ISO, it is easy to get shutter speeds in the 1/15 second range. Obviously anything moving in the picture is going to have motion blur, on any camera. Only way to get around that is to increase light (e.g., use flash).
Here are a couple things to try (if it is not motion blur of subjects):
- Turn on tap to take picture, and keep the phone as still as possible. I find that with this set, I have to do less handling of the phone and can keep it more stable
- Picture stabilization helps a bit. It increases the ISO a bit, and does some image processing. It appears to be doing some sort multi-frame processing (comparing/combining multiple frames to yield a better shot). Seems to help more with camera shake blur than it does with subject motion blur.
Hey hey people.
I got xperia Z3c few days ago, I had abrupt end to my Xperia Z's life and had to replace it with something. I am enjoying the phone feature and size wise, I really wondered where is the neck for smaller powerful phones in android marketplace. That about me and that about "I am really more or less glad with this phone"
But the same problem persists with the camera, it's quality is good only outside, and indoors the quality is worse the darker it is. I take ONLY inside photos if I ever do take photos. So I see a lot of grain and stuff with photos I get.
I am not sure if there is a thread for this but basically; tips/tricks for improving the camera quality.
Personally i want sharper and less noisy photos with low light, light bulb illuminated spaces. if there is any tricks to improving this just slightly even, I would be thankful. Camera is really the only gripe I have with the phone and I really do not take that much photos with it anyway, but whenever I do I want to get the best possible.
Sumea said:
Hey hey people.
I got xperia Z3c few days ago, I had abrupt end to my Xperia Z's life and had to replace it with something. I am enjoying the phone feature and size wise, I really wondered where is the neck for smaller powerful phones in android marketplace. That about me and that about "I am really more or less glad with this phone"
But the same problem persists with the camera, it's quality is good only outside, and indoors the quality is worse the darker it is. I take ONLY inside photos if I ever do take photos. So I see a lot of grain and stuff with photos I get.
I am not sure if there is a thread for this but basically; tips/tricks for improving the camera quality.
Personally i want sharper and less noisy photos with low light, light bulb illuminated spaces. if there is any tricks to improving this just slightly even, I would be thankful. Camera is really the only gripe I have with the phone and I really do not take that much photos with it anyway, but whenever I do I want to get the best possible.
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Try different camera apps and take with your time to play with the settings. When I take a picture and I have the time, I just take the picture multiple times, but with different settings each time.
You can't use AUTO mode when shooting if you want to improve the photo quality indoors. It automatically boosts the ISO too high and produces grainy, over-exposed photos. You'll have to manually adjust the ISO and exposure in Manual Mode. Play with it until you find the right combination that works for you.
PuffDaddy_d said:
You can't use AUTO mode when shooting if you want to improve the photo quality indoors. It automatically boosts the ISO too high and produces grainy, over-exposed photos. You'll have to manually adjust the ISO and exposure in Manual Mode. Play with it until you find the right combination that works for you.
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On my old phone, a Sony Xperia P i have very good quality indoors and outdoors with auto-mode, this is on Honomi MW v8 (Z1 apps) and , with my new Z3c the indoor colors are grossly saturated in comparison to the more accurate older phone.
(i haven't tested it outdoors yet).
This is really annoying.
Hey, if you have root and Xposed you can get an xposed module called "20MP superior auto" this enables taking photos in 20MP and 15MP while in auto mode. If you are on lollipop with root you can get this UNLOCKED CAMERA, which does the exact same thing but only for lollipop
Do you think that could correct my saturation issue?. I dunno.
Did you unlock your bootloader by any chance? The proprietary algorithm is lost when you do that and it could bring about a loss of indoor photo quality.
nzzane said:
Hey, if you have root and Xposed you can get an xposed module called "20MP superior auto" this enables taking photos in 20MP and 15MP while in auto mode. If you are on lollipop with root you can get this UNLOCKED CAMERA, which does the exact same thing but only for lollipop
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I'm not so sure that resolution is the problem. The phone's processing algorithm simply over-sharpens the image by boosting the ISO to the point where the photo looks grainy and lacks detail.
I've tried 3rd party apps and they have given me even worse results, though not necessarily in the same way. In my experience, the stock app has performed just a little better indoors than the 3rd-party apps I've tried.
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.
Anyone still on EMUI 9? can anyone give me 40 mp night mode vs normal on low light condition? i haven't save it yet
The emui 9.1 remove 40mp from night mode , why huawei remove their top feature? the night mode can't replicated with pro mode, it takes multiple frame to remove noise, bring up brightness and detail. Using these with 40mp is awesome and make low light shot with 40mp useable, also this feature is only on huawei other 48mp does not give night mode on 48mp mode CMIIW
It has wide angle and zoom, which don't operate at the 40 mp setting.
yes, but before i can change to 40mp and choose night mode so the 40mp res can have better useable image in low light. The 40mp mode by itself is capable taking pictures on the night as long there's enough light, with the help with night mode it capable to take any picture in various condition
and the wide angle night mode is 10mp only now, before on EMUI 9 it was fully 20mp, still the wide angle camera is nothing to write about,it have different league with the 40mp sensor
amdultra said:
Anyone still on EMUI 9? can anyone give me 40 mp night mode vs normal on low light condition? i haven't save it yet
The emui 9.1 remove 40mp from night mode , why huawei remove their top feature? the night mode can't replicated with pro mode, it takes multiple frame to remove noise, bring up brightness and detail. Using these with 40mp is awesome and make low light shot with 40mp useable, also this feature is only on huawei other 48mp does not give night mode on 48mp mode CMIIW
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In Emui 9.0 night mode have only 10MPX option not 40MPX
In night mode at any resolution you have only 10MP. The same is valid for Aperture and Portrait modes. There is no difference between 9 and 9.1 about this.
The camera, in addition to the slightly changed interface, generally has positive changes in the quality of the photos.
1. AI is less aggressive, the colors in AI mode are more natural than before. But in general, Auto mode without AI, Night and HDR seem to me closest to reality.
2. The night mode seems to me more realistic and the colors do not appear so yellowish
3. Zooming is smoother. Unfortunately, the zoom controls are still only on the right side when shooting in portrait mode and this is not so convenient for those holding the phone with the left hand. 30x zooming is usable if the phone is completely motionless, otherwise it is blurry.
4. HDR is slightly softer with less sharpening (probably cons for someone)
5. On a wide-angle camera the noise at darker pictures is less. But it still seems to me that the wide angle camera behaves better in the P30 Pro, although the hardware is the same. Generally, with a wide-angle camera, photos with AI included are brighter than those turned off
techops said:
In night mode at any resolution you have only 10MP. The same is valid for Aperture and Portrait modes. There is no difference between 9 and 9.1 about this.
The camera, in addition to the slightly changed interface, generally has positive changes in the quality of the photos.
1. AI is less aggressive, the colors in AI mode are more natural than before. But in general, Auto mode without AI, Night and HDR seem to me closest to reality.
2. The night mode seems to me more realistic and the colors do not appear so yellowish
3. Zooming is smoother. Unfortunately, the zoom controls are still only on the right side when shooting in portrait mode and this is not so convenient for those holding the phone with the left hand. 30x zooming is usable if the phone is completely motionless, otherwise it is blurry.
4. HDR is slightly softer with less sharpening (probably cons for someone)
5. On a wide-angle camera the noise at darker pictures is less. But it still seems to me that the wide angle camera behaves better in the P30 Pro, although the hardware is the same. Generally, with a wide-angle camera, photos with AI included are brighter than those turned off
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nope, there's 40mp size for night mode, there's other people confirming the same issue. You can use 40mp and choose night mode and your photo will still 40mp with the help of dark mode
10 mp night mode only on my mate 20 pro emui 9
amdultra said:
nope, there's 40mp size for night mode, there's other people confirming the same issue. You can use 40mp and choose night mode and your photo will still 40mp with the help of dark mode
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Wrong. Never available night mode and 40 Mpix
I made new account just for be able to ask this. I don't know if its annoying to you but why is video recording so much zoomed in 1x, so much more compared to 1x on photo? I tried samsung, iphone even regular p30 and only only p30 pro is so much zoomed in.On other phone you can even turn off and video recording on 1x is same as taking photo on 1x. I can use wide when video recording but the quality just isn't the same as on 1x. Its really really annoying to the point i actually wanna sell my phone. Everytime i have to video something in front of me i have to step back few meters but most of the time well i just can't. I don't know if this problem is some kind of bug, error of whatnot. I thought maybe update 10 would fix this but nothing..
It's due to Huawei's implementation of image stabilisation. The camera is recording a slightly wider field of view than you actually see, but to compensate for hand movements the camera crops the frame and adjusts its position in real time relative to any movements. Each phone will do this in slightly different ways and it seems Huawei's implementation is heavier on the cropping.
NekoMichi said:
It's due to Huawei's implementation of image stabilisation. The camera is recording a slightly wider field of view than you actually see, but to compensate for hand movements the camera crops the frame and adjusts its position in real time relative to any movements. Each phone will do this in slightly different ways and it seems Huawei's implementation is heavier on the cropping.
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Its too heavy, its too much crop. You can't even record something in front you. Its so terrible. I wish we could turn off video stabilization like on other phones
I mean, an alternative is to zoom out to 0.9x and utilise the wide angle lens, then you can video at pretty much the same frame as 1x photography - just not ideal in low light situations as the wide angle lens (understandably) can't let in as much light per pixel.
I have same issue on huawei mate 10 pro. I downloaded other camera app (named open camera ) and it works normal. I use it mostly for videos to record something in front of myself.