Hi,
I'm currently trying to decide between the Nexus 6 (too big!!!) and the Moto X (2014). One of the deciding factors is the camera. I love the HDR+ mode the Nexus 5 offers and that is going to get even better with Android 5. Sadly, I haven't seen any other device yet, that activates this option in Google Camera.
The Galaxy S4 GPE offers HDR, but without the "+". It still takes great shots though,
So, if you insstall Google Camera on the New Moto X, what kind of HDR mode do you get, and how well does it work?
Thanks!
installing the Google Camera on your Moto X unfortunately only gives you the standard HDR mode and not HDR+ like in the nexus devices.
What does the + do/add?
dobbs3x said:
What does the + do/add?
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Here's a quote from phone arena
"Nexus 5 smartphone. The handset features the so-called HDR+ mode – a smarter HDR mode that can be used for capturing*"vivid photos by day and sharper photos by night".*When enabled, it can improve not only scenes containing both bright and dark sections, but also low-light images and shots with moving objects in them. Again, the software takes a rapid burst of photos and uses advanced algorithms to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the combined image. If movement is detected, HDR+ takes only the sharpest single shot for that area, thus reducing motion blur."
Sounds cool.
I have the unlocked Exynos variant and on the latest pie update. When I set the HDR(Rich tone) option to always enabled, the resultant shots don't look like they have any HDR processing applied, but if it's set to auto, the same shot comes with much better controlled highlights.
I'm new to this phone, albeit this is my first Samsung.
With previous phones I've used, whenever HDR was forced to on, it applied HDR to every shot taken.
Am I missing something here? Any help would be much appreciated.
Tilman said:
I have the unlocked Exynos variant and on the latest pie update. When I set the HDR(Rich tone) option to always enabled, the resultant shots don't look like they have any HDR processing applied, but if it's set to auto, the same shot comes with much better controlled highlights.
I'm new to this phone, albeit this is my first Samsung.
With previous phones I've used, whenever HDR was forced to on, it applied HDR to every shot taken.
Am I missing something here? Any help would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
i have read on some website that when you set HDR to on but not "Always apply" but "Apply when needed" the photos come out better.
Unfortunatly i cannot find that site atm.
Also i often pull down exposure a bit in bright sunlight because despite hdr some hightlights get clipped sometimes.
Just in case you dont know, exposure compensation works by tapping on the viewfinder to focus, then use the "bulb" slider that appears briefly just above the "trees" ( wide-angle - telephoto switch). It can be hard to see in bright light though.
Hope that helps a bit
Why It is impossible to turn on the flashlight during usage of ultra wide camera?
mrduta said:
Why It is impossible to turn on the flashlight during usage of ultra wide camera?
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1. The wide-angle camera uses multi-frame technology that combines multiples shots to get the best picture. However, flash light only allows single-frame shot. Therefore, flash light is disabled by default for these cameras to allow multi-frame shots with better effects. This is an official explanation by oppo for similar behaviour on their phones. Must be similar for Samsung. OnePlus does this too.
2. Wide angle cameras are usually meant for landscape photography where the subject is beyond the range of a phone flash, and flash usually introduces refraction artefacts from suspended particles in air.
3. When used for near object photography, wide angle also doubles as the macro camera, which doesn't play well with flash at close range. Once again, it probably has to do with multi frame capture and composite image processing which won't play well with only single frame photo that flash allows for.
enigmaamit said:
1. The wide-angle camera uses multi-frame technology that combines multiples shots to get the best picture. However, flash light only allows single-frame shot. Therefore, flash light is disabled by default for these cameras to allow multi-frame shots with better effects. This is an official explanation by oppo for similar behaviour on their phones. Must be similar for Samsung. OnePlus does this too.
2. Wide angle cameras are usually meant for landscape photography where the subject is beyond the range of a phone flash, and flash usually introduces refraction artefacts from suspended particles in air.
3. When used for near object photography, wide angle also doubles as the macro camera, which doesn't play well with flash at close range. Once again, it probably has to do with multi frame capture and composite image processing which won't play well with only single frame photo that flash allows for.
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Thanks for information.
enigmaamit said:
1. The wide-angle camera uses multi-frame technology that combines multiples shots to get the best picture. However, flash light only allows single-frame shot. Therefore, flash light is disabled by default for these cameras to allow multi-frame shots with better effects. This is an official explanation by oppo for similar behaviour on their phones. Must be similar for Samsung. OnePlus does this too.
2. Wide angle cameras are usually meant for landscape photography where the subject is beyond the range of a phone flash, and flash usually introduces refraction artefacts from suspended particles in air.
3. When used for near object photography, wide angle also doubles as the macro camera, which doesn't play well with flash at close range. Once again, it probably has to do with multi frame capture and composite image processing which won't play well with only single frame photo that flash allows for.
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Click to collapse
It has to do more with reach than it does with multi frame technology since every camera (not just the ultra wide) uses multi frame tech. Cameras uses multiple frames to increase dynamic range (HDR) and reduce noise. Both are less necessary when flash is used. The problem is weak phone flashes don't have the ability to provide even lighting across the ultra wide angle, even in a smaller room. It's disabled at the API level so even third party apps won't have the option to turn on flash with the ultra wide.
beserker15 said:
It has to do more with reach than it does with multi frame technology since every camera (not just the ultra wide) uses multi frame tech. Cameras uses multiple frames to increase dynamic range (HDR) and reduce noise. Both are less necessary when flash is used. The problem is weak phone flashes don't have the ability to provide even lighting across the ultra wide angle, even in a smaller room. It's disabled at the API level so even third party apps won't have the option to turn on flash with the ultra wide.
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I think that's a better explanation than the one I posted above
I think this deserves it's own thread.
Installation description and download link is given here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/...vivo-system-app-ver-2-5.4533545/post-87946927
Right now only the version 8.4 is working - though 8.7 is already published.
It's a tiny bit slower - especially in the dark vs the vivo camera. The colors are very different - in general I feel in the dark Vivo is more correct - but gcam has the advantage of no auto night mode mwhich means you have to use Sports mode (which isn't perfect at night as it's exposure is very quick).
In general pictures - especially on the zoom lens are a bit sharper vs stock camera. On the zoom lens at 10x and above it's significantly sharper. I would say at 20x the Google camera manages 20-30% more detail minimum and avoids the oversharpening that the Vivo camera does (do not pixel peep at the 10x or 20x pictures of the vivo camera - it's mostly awful when the vivo AI for example detects text - but much much batter on the gcam).
However I think we somehow miss the HDR - or am I top stupid to find it? Could it be that because we need to select Pixel 2 - we only get features that are available on Pixel 2?
I'll attach a screenshot showing the missing HDR and the difference in zoom detail.
It's a bit annoying that at night the gcam sometimes is way off on white balance at night. With way off I mean way off. Otherwise I prefer it over the stock camera for pictures (I didn't really take videos so cannot comment there).
The really nice thing about gcam is how you can select each lens and force it to be used - unlike Vivo that especially at night does not use the 2x camera - and sometimes not even the periscope. All lenses work.
Edit - I found the HDR mode. You can enable it by clicking on HDR in the Auto white balance row - then another row pops up with HDR settings (off, on, enhanced).
Screenshots examples.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Missing HDR+
Details in gcam - 1 level above the stock camera.
It's noisier but the colors are more accurate on the vivo stock camera except the dark green which is better on gcam. The orange in the middle in reality is a tiny bit darker than in the Vivo pic. But here it appears red. Besides that it's actually hard to tell which color is more accurate. There are many examples which I will not show here however - where the gcam was way off indoors at LED lightbulb light.
Details on stock camera below
Oh yeah - I did check that the Vivo here choses the periscope camera. Cropping into the main lens is a bit worse. Let me attach a sample too (taken with gcam as I cannot force the vivo stock camera to use the main lens). I really do feel Vivo should have gone for 4.5x zoom on the periscope camera. Up to 4x the main sensor doesn't do too badly. And just for the sake of it I will take one with the 2x cam too - I think the 2x is worst at zoom. It's a portrait camera only.
Main sensor (10x zoom is max so it's s but bigger than the other ones)
2x sensor.
Actually - well the 2x sensor does capture more detail than a crop into the pixel binned main sensor (or is gcam going into the unbinned sensor? But it's clear the lens of the 2x is too slow / surface too small so it suffers here at roomlight and is really really noisy.
@extremecarver Could you change thread title to Themes/ Apps/ Mods. I think is better than "Question"
done
Btw, the gcam from BSG version 8.7 (current) is also compatible.
Just if you mess up a setting you have to reinstall. Not sure why, changing the setting back doesn't help. It seems to have better colors on first try, but resolution identical to stock camera...
It's bad you cannot install BSG and bigkaka in parallel. It gives me an error notice when I try to do so
extremecarver said:
It's bad you cannot install BSG and bigkaka in parallel. It gives me an error notice when I try to do so
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Click to collapse
If you are trying to install 2 mods that have the same signature (Snapcam for example), it's normal that it doesn't work.
I know in the other thread I stated that SNAPCAM package is recommended for Vivo/Oppo/OnePlus devices because it allows access to all camera lenses, however it looks like something has changed for the better because I'm currently using the com.agc.cam signature for the AGC GCam, and all lenses are recognized without issues.
In short, if you want to have both BSG GCam and Big Kaka AGC ,
Download the BSG version that has Snapcam signature (others like com.android.mgc could possibly work as well, it's just that I haven't tested them):
BSG: MGC_8.7.250_A11_V6
Download MGC_8.7.250_A11_V6 by BSG.
www.celsoazevedo.com
And for AGC, download the one that's on top (com.agc.cam)
BigKaka: AGC8.4.300_V9.3
Download AGC8.4.300_V9.3 by BigKaka.
www.celsoazevedo.com
IMPORTANT FOR AGC USERS:
Noise models for our X90 Pro+ have been submitted by user Viktor. The .c files can be imported in AGC settings. BSG doesn't have this feature.
If you don't know what this stuff is, you can read on the topic here https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/morgenman/noise-modeller-how-to/
Download noise models for all 4 back cameras here: https://drive.google.com/drive/fold...rIYRBKKq_6NlufPwrgGQMNXkbNJA-OInawB64cO9U9zSJ
the models can be imported in
Lens settings > choose lens (Main 1x, Ultrawide 0.6x, Tele 2.2x, Tele 3.9x) > Noise model > and finally Import noise model
from my short testing, the OV64B tele benefits the most from the custom noise model.
extremecarver said:
The really nice thing about gcam is how you can select each lens and force it to be used - unlike Vivo that especially at night does not use the 2x camera - and sometimes not even the periscope.
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Click to collapse
"Auto switch of lens" should be disabled
Thanks for that info - However after I selected to show debug focus information in the gcam - now it seems something is broken/leftover. I rebooted, uninstalled, reinstalled, tried different versions - and now any version is crashing on boot.
In general my gcams would crash if I don't select Pixel 2 XL (Taimen) interface mode. Strangely this was not needed at the beginning.
Important things for setup and getting the colors much more accurate: - strangely this worked for all lenses -
In color transform - chose IMX989 Mi12US AGC
this changes the colors dramatically and makes them much more accurate (bigkaka). Clearly a proper color transform for Vivo x90 Pro+ would be evne better - but with that setting you get close to the vivo camera.
Then enable Auto-CT and put a slight offset of 1.1-1.3 on the CCT WB Offset.
If you prefer more vivid and contrast - similar to the Vivid mode on the stock camera - set WB-Intensity to 1.2
and WB Saturation to 1.2,
This gives in general contrast/white balance/saturation similar to the stock camera without the occassional comic look of the vivid mode. It's a bit in between Zeiss Natural Colors and Vivid.
CCT WB Correction and WB color space fix I ticked too - but could not notice much difference.
The google camera is much sharper, has better focus I feel, and especially if the light situation is difficult - it will produce much better pictures. With a caveat - the stock camera AI is better at making light sources/the sun smaller instead of overblowing them.
I kinda feel all that Zeiss T* coating seems like a bit of rubbish when you compare with gcam and with gcam it looks just like any other smartphone on light sources. Vivo in that field simply upped the AI (however maybe with the problem that the whole rest of the picture is worse). Clearly I feel Vivo camera is not that great at all. It's just the hardware that is good and of course as we don't have the perfect setup for gcam - Vivo camera is more consistent.
Bugs/shortcoming on the gcam:
1. No macro mode/no auto macro. The manual focus for me did not work. The minimum focus distance on the stock camera vs the gcam is about half.
2. The 2x portrait camera is kinda useless on the gcam. Because I cannot see one ounce of a difference by taking pictures in normal or portrait mode on the 2x lens.
3. Should have much more scene modes
4. Not strong on beauty effects. Basically there aren't any vs a vast selection on Vivo stock camera - however if you want those just rarely - use the vivo editor to increase eye size, smoothen skintones, change face shape and whatever. However say you often photograph your girlfriend who want's to look "beautiful" - especially Asian girlfriends - it's so much more convenient to find a setting that works good on the Vivo cam and just use it everytime. Well clearly here we get into the woohaa supermodel on picture vs average girl in real life terrain which is just so common in Asia.
5. I haven't really tried portraits yet - but I think portraits may be better on the Vivo camera in general.
6. If you use HDR instead of HDR enhanced - the sharpness is about the same as on the Vivo camera - however the spead is also the same and you have better fine tuning for pictures.
Overall right now (if I manage to get the camera running again) I feel like gcam is better for landscape, zoomed pictures, and night photos. The stock camera is better for everything else and switches lenses much faster - but severly lacks on color balance. Compared to gcam it's laughable to just have Zeiss and Vivid mode - and both aren't good at all.
When I say night pictures I mean pictures that look good. Not pictures that have detail in every shadow. Though actaully the gcam is only a little bit worse here vs the stock camera while making much more harmonic/beautiful/realistic pictures. Vivo night mode - sorry to say so, sucks for pictures. It's great as a night view machine (can be improved a bit by focussing on the lightest part of the picture at night).
Oh yeah - gcam night view is miles ahead on detail and sharpness vs vivo night mode when we take out the often/mostly too strong HDR of the vivo cam.
Besides the problems of crashing, slow lens switching, macro mode which all will be likely hard to fix - I feel the gcam has way more potential if we had a really good config/setup. and could replace the stock cam for everything but portrait right now.
Okay got it running again. I think it happened because the two versions influenced each other. If one Version is crashing it may somehow take the other one down too.
If there is a crash report, it makes it easier have a look at it in chrome and sometimes it has something useful. It said something about lense and then I disabled all lenses and re enabled one by one (starting with the 3.9) and somehow that fixed it .
bsg actually has a super macro mode - on bigkaka it's missing. If you mess up BSG, you need to do a full reset. Just changing the function that you set to break the app back - usually does not help. That's really strange.
I think easiest is to use stock camera and if your not happy then gcam. Because stock camera is faster and has better modes. For Landscape could default to bigkaka. At night it depends - it seems to be really a lottery which one takes better shots - and each setting is wildly different. Photos against sunlight - the stock camera seems to fail consistently. So that is a case for bigkaka.
We would need a proper auto white balance and color profile for bigkaka - then it could outclass the default camera quite easily. Missing this it's a bit hit or miss. That is if you need the better sharpness - go for bigkaka and HDR enhanced or night view.
How do you make BigKaka app work? It keeps crashing when I open it, I can go directly to settings, but if I open the camera normally, it crashes.
The BSG version works.
Start with a single Lens like 3.9x for debugging only. You may need to set interface as pixel 2 xl, and stream as sdk28. Then add other lenses, 1,3,4,,5,6 afterwards.
I think for bigkaka only snapcam and aweme version works. Try snapcam first. BSG for me also default version works. But yeah as soon as you set something wrong BSG needs full reset.
extremecarver said:
Start with a single Lens like 3.9x for debugging only. You may need to set interface as pixel 2 xl, and stream as sdk28. Then add other lenses, 1,3,4,,5,6 afterwards.
I think for bigkaka only snapcam and aweme version works. Try snapcam first. BSG for me also default version works. But yeah as soon as you set something wrong BSG needs full reset.
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Click to collapse
No, every package works perfectly. When you set something wrong in bsg you can access the settings with an "activity launcher" from Playstore. You can easily skip the viewfinder and jump directly into the settings. Change back what caused the crash and you are good to go.
On bigkaka you can do a long click and get right into settings without activity launcher. And yes on bigkaka restoring what caused the crash seems to work mostly. Not always but I think that is due to some instabilities. Some settings will launch if you ijstantly after opening click into the camera field, without it will crash.
Only on BSG you need activity launcher and for some settings restoring them doesn't help. Only way to get BSG working again then is to use activity launcher into settings and full reset (somehow there is something different from uninstall/reinstall vs reset - though I haven't found out what. Maybe some files are written outside of the app folder and therefore require reset via full reset menu point).
I guess this is somehow hardware related and the lenses remember what position was used or similar and with instable settings it can lead to crashes ...
I'm not even sure we can create a colour model that works universally. I guess the stock cams have quite a few models depending on the AI settings and what they detect regarding white balance. We would need a separate model of white balance for each kind of light type (except if having identical sensors to a Pixel model)
I also miss manual white balance on the gcams...
With manual I mean photographing a white sheet and then the camera adjust the white balance for getting the white sheet perfectly white. That's what you do on any kind of professional camera, especially in film when you want your actors to look the same skin tone no matter the lighting.
Oh yeah - and supposedly our cam features camera2 Level 3+ access - but if you set that on BSG it crashes. Only level 3 works sadly.
extremecarver said:
Oh yeah - and supposedly our cam features camera2 Level 3+ access - but if you set that on BSG it crashes. Only level 3 works sadly.
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I have tried bsg once only. I prefer Shamim or LMC.
Could you please post screenshots of how you set up the lenses on LMC and shanmin? Both crash on me (got LMC to open with 2 lenses, then tried to add more now cannot even get into settings again even though I reset data and uninstalled/reinstalled).
On Shanmin I didn't even find the lens selection section (are you using 8.7 beta v3?)
Edit: found the bug on not being able to get into settings. First need or let it start and crash once...
extremecarver said:
Could you please post screenshots of how you set up the lenses on LMC and shanmin? Both crash on me (got LMC to open with 2 lenses, then tried to add more now cannot even get into settings again even though I reset data and uninstalled/reinstalled).
On Shanmin I didn't even find the lens selection section (are you using 8.7 beta v3?)
Edit: found the bug on not being able to get into settings. First need or let it start and crash once...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using the latest 8.4 version of Shamim right now because I have made a lib some months back which doesn't work in newer gcam versions.
Thanks, well I figured it out don't activate id5. But the preview in LMC in the dark is unusable. Too dark to focus except on main lens. Have to see a bit right now it's the worst but I haven't set up anything yet besides the order of the cameras. Right now at night it's really not useful yet.
By now I got them all running on default settings, but well I have to say details wise at night clear win for bigkaka, then stock camera in night mode , then auto night mode, then quite a bit worse LMC/Shanmin..
I'm not sure anymore which gcam mod had Pxl in its name - that one was quite good too quality wise - but I think it wasn't as stable. In general bigkaka seems to be quite unstable if you mess around in the settings. LMC/Shanmin accept much more settings - but the quality at night (didn't test during the day) is just horrible in comparison to AGC and stock. At first the stabilization doesn't seem to work in night mode - meaning lots of blur, second in HDR+ mode they are as good as the stock cam in normal mode - but bigkaka blows them out of the water so to say.
How much is this difference - actually quite a lot. While bigkaka in night mode will look sharp on a 4k screen in full size - it's hdr+ mode and the stock camera night mode are about sharp enough for 0.75 of the size. The normal mode on the vivo stock cam and the HDR simple mode are about the same at 0.5 the size - wile LMC and Shanmin can only fill 0.4 of the screen while still looking sharp enough.
bigkaka the big problem is auto white balance - not sure about LMC/Shanmin here. They seem quite similar but I haven't tested in many locations yet.
I didn't get Shanmin 8.7 to run, maybe that one is much sharper. It seems to be quite different from the 8.4 version. The strange thing is - settings that crash one mod, will run fine in another . Sometimes it will only crash after stopping the app and restarting - or similar. It's really frustrating if the app crashes to find out what causes it.
I miss a high resolution mode on bigkaka - it doesn't seem to exist. However the high resolution mode in LMC is pretty strange too - it takes pictures at half the sensor resolution (instead of default 1/4). Clearly this will only matter under very good light. Roomlight 10MP is plenty big, at night well 5MP would likely easily cut it.
I will not play with RAW before I get the jpg somehow better than stock. I still don't understand why bigkaka is soo much sharper vs the other gcam mods.
If bigkaka would not be so unreliable on colors it would be the clearly best choice.
So let's make things more interesting for our device.
Vivo already makes an excellent job controling the lights so whenever theres artificial lights or HDR scenes involved it's the best to use Stock.
But it lacks on textures and details sometimes.
That's why we've been working on GCam to make our experience even better.
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GCam for Vivo Phones - Tech in Bermudas
This whole GCam for Vivo Smartphones section was created by the Tech in Bermudas community. If you have better suggestions feel free to use the comment section or any of our Social Medias like Telegram. If you come just to ask which port is the best for your device you will be restricted from...
techinbermudas.com
Download and Install the APK
Move the XML's to Internal Storage/LMC 8.4/
Long press the GCam icon > Take Video
Load the XML by double clicking near the shutter button area.
Option 2 follows other path
Internal Storage/SGCAM/LIB
Internal Storage/SGCAM/XML
Place the files there and load the XML like above.
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We also created a Google Photos Album for users to share their Vivo Pics (Stock or Not)
Vivo X90 Pro Plus [PHOTOGRAPHY]
310 new items added to shared album
photos.app.goo.gl
I really prefer AGC gcam (except for sunsets or zoom lens in low light where AGC fails often).