When I'm taking 3D photos, it says that I have such and such thousand photos remaining, but after taking a picture the count sometimes jumps down by four or five numbers at a time. For instance, I've taken nearly 600 photos so far, but my original photo count was up near 16,000, now it's reading in the upper 11,000 range (Taking into account a few short videos and higher megapixel 2D photos too). I just took three daylight photos outdoors, which IME usually requires less imaging effort than night-shots, and yet the count went down by five numbers a pop!
Does anybody have an idea what gives? I really expect a photo count to be a fair representation of how many pictures I can still take. I'd appreciate some advice and/or assistance, thanks.
Hey, I'm just bumping this to see if anyone knows why this occurs, or how many of you out there also noticed the same thing. Thanks for any replies.
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The first quirk being with the messaging app........every time i send a message to anybody that last word of the sent message always gets saved as a draft for absolutley no reason.....i dont get it lol..........and theres no setting to fix drafts.......also my camera seems to take very crappy pics in 2d.....the motion is horrible ......i take a lot of pics of my daughter and if she even moves ever so slightly i jsut get a motion trail.......dunno if this is standard or if my 2d lens just sucks because 3d pictures are always always more sharp , more detailed , and not so blurry. Any comments on this?
nothing in my drafts folder and i have sent multiple texts and emails. haven't really taken any 2d pics yet. just a couple of 3d to check out the new feature.
One of the big selling points for me with this phone was the camera. I am finding the pictures to be a little underwhelming. I find that half the pictures I take are out of focus, and when i try to manually focus on a target, it zooms in and out trying to figure out the image, but ultimately ends with a red square and an out of focus image. I was really hoping for a smarter camera with better results. I dont remember ever having issues like this with my last phone (HTC Rezound). I use my camera a LOT (mostly taking pictures of my kids). Should I try downloading another camera from the app store? Anyone else experiencing these issues?
I should note that outdoor, long range pictures seem to come out much better than indoor relatively close (5-10 feet) shots.
Any tips/tricks as far as settings go?
Also, when I hook up the phone to my pc and view the pictures, they are all rotated to the left 90 degrees.
Hello,
I bought sony Z2 few weeks ago. It's a nice phone, it's very smooth and I'm very pleased. But it overheats, not as much in 4K(which I don't use so no bother for me) but Creative effect just puts too much stress on a battery and the camera very quickly shuts off because temperatures of the battery go over 46 Celzis which is probably a treshold temperature. I hope sony will optimize their code in future firmware updates for Z2. I don't change phones often, this was a step up from first! HTC Desire(more than 4years ago) and I'm hoping to get a few years of from Z2. I did tried a bunch of roms on desire, but Z2 is gonna wait, it is so smooth and ofcourse because of the warranty. If they don't fix the overheating problem, next time I'll try samsung or go back to HTC if they manage to make a decent camera which they never did make in any of their models(purple tint, poor sharpness, whashed colors etc. I'll stop here, don't wanna turn this into a flame thread, just my couple of thoughts)
Also, what's with the HDR in manual mode - it says it takes two pictures, but it takes only one and the picture is the same as the picture I take with HDR mode off. I see no difference... Or maybe I'm doing something wrong with HDR?
MartiniWisdom said:
Also, what's with the HDR in manual mode - it says it takes two pictures, but it takes only one and the picture is the same as the picture I take with HDR mode off. I see no difference... Or maybe I'm doing something wrong with HDR?
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It will take two pictures and then combine them into a single one. The two pictures have different exposure (one underexposed to get more detail in the shadows, one overexposed to get more detail in the highlights), and when they're combined, the result is a single image with greater dynamic range (that is, the range of brightness from dark to light) than a single photo could've captured. The greater dynamic range will sometimes make them look flat and one-dimensional, but with the right shot it can be a big improvement.
If you want to test it, look for a scene with very wide contrast from shadows to highlights. A good example would be a dimly-lit room with bright daylight outside the window. In a single exposure the room would be dark, the window completely white, or both. With an HDR exposure, you'll see more detail in the room and/or window.
Tnx for the info,I know how HDR works and what it does but I didn't see any difference in photos. I'll try more photos with more shadows in scenes.
I have no idea if it's the right forum, but this is a subject impossible to find answers for.
I had an idea for app development which requires acquiring information using the phone's camera. Smartphone cameras use CMOS sensors, which (usually) work with an electronic rolling shutter, that is, the pixels are exposed to light and then read and reset line-by-line, going from one end of the sensor to the other.
This leads to a delay in moment of light capture between the first line of pixels and the last. I wanted to make use of that effect by recording several points of time in one picture across several tenths of a second. The issue is that the "shutter travel" happens very quickly, too quickly for what I need; I don't know the exact number, but it's at least as quick as 1/90,000 of a second on my Mi 6 as I can get an image exposed for this little. My question is whether anyone familiar with development of camera-using applications knows if you can control the speed of that operation. It's not like performing something more slowly should be an issue in-and-of-itself, but someone elsewhere claimed it might be hard-coded by the camera manufacturer (Sony for example) to perform as quickly as determined possible. I need the electronic shutter to be slow moving and one pixel-line wide (which basically involves setting the exposure time to the shutter travel time divided by the number of scanned lines of pixels).
Now, if that's impossible to encode, my other idea is to record very high FPS (several thousands a second) at very low resolution, perhaps by reading only the middle portion of the sensor. Even 10x10 pixels might be enough. The question is also whether that is possible? A simple observance of the fact 2MP can be recorded today by most smartphones at (at least) 30fps shows that the bandwidth at least is well within the limit with 100pixels at 10,000fps. Also the shutter of course scans the pixels much more quickly if it can open about 3,000 lines of pixels in >1/90,000 of a second, but I don't know whether the process of saving a pixel takes a determined minimal amount of time regardless of how many pixels are handled in parallel.
Sorry for the long-winded questions. Thanks in advance.
Up.
Hi.
Like some that bought this phone I found the out of box experience on the camera a bit underwhelming and the pro app very confusing, after a bit of reading and searching and fiddling I've got it setup so I'm very happy with the results. It's not a low light or HDR monster like some camera systems but you can get some pretty nice results easily if the settings are tamed back a bit. So I thought I'd share what works for me.
Over the last few years I've had OnePlus 7t pro, LG V50, Xiaomi K20 Pro / Poco F1, HTC U12+/ HTC 10 and had a reasonable GCam on all of them and going to the Sony system was a bit of a culture shock, but the small form factor, flagship specs, SD card and 3.5mm socket are what I wanted.
BTW, I am not a Photographer or an expert by any means so if I've got anything wrong I'm happy to correct, or if anyone has more Tips and Tricks please post to this thread.
To start.
Use the Pro app AUTO mode for most pictures. It gives more consistent results than the standard camera app and can easily be set as the default.
Go to the basic camera app settings, scroll down to Launch with camera key and set to Photography Pro, this means when you hold the shutter button it'll start the Pro app by default not the Basic app.
Double click the power button and you can set the Camera app as default, that way both apps are easily accessible with the screen off, useful for video.
Make sure the Case you use allows for the 2 step shutter button, the first case I had made the button really stiff so 99% of the time I was just clicking for a shot not locking the settings with a half press.
Open up the Pro app and press the Disp option until you have the Histogram and viewfinder showing. There's plenty of Youtube videos explaining what a histogram is and how it works, it's no guarantee of a great picture but it will be an indication of a bad one.
Don't get too bogged down in all the options, I spent weeks tweaking Exposure/ISO/Shutter speeds without really understanding what I was up to and if you do understand all those options I guess this guide isn't for you!
My settings for consistent results, check out the screenshot in this link
Xperia 5 II XQ-AS52/XQ-AS62/XQ-AS72 | Help Guide | Launching Photo Pro (Photography Pro)
Drive Mode - Single Shooting
Focus Mode - Continuous AF
Focus Area - Centre
Face/Eye AF - On
JPEG
Aspect Ratio - 4:3 (12mp)
With those settings you can point, preload by half a click and get a reasonable shot most of the time. With the fancy auto multi focus wide settings I was always getting blurred pictures of my dog when he's running around due to the camera trying to focus on him then picking a random object in the frame so by the time I clicked for the picture it was a mess.
When you have a half click loaded, move the centre box around and see what the preview and Histogram is showing, if there's a hard line hitting the top at either the left or right hand side it's either too dark or too light. By moving the centre of the image slightly the camera should adjust the exposure slightly to stop the clipping.
The only other setting I tend to play with is S, click the AUTO button and scroll down to S mode. This allows changing of the shutter speed. This way you can capture faster moving objects in good light or slow down the capture speed in bad light. Here's where the Histogram is useful because if you set the Shutter too high, bright sky will clip and a bright blue sky will be white or you'll end up with a dark fuzzy picture. It's not worth going above 320 or below 80 unless it's in exceptional conditions.
I've attached some recent samples below.
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the detailed writeup. You're more on your way to be a photographer than you give yourself credit for...
Thanks! I learned more from this than reading a truly terrible book about the subject
I always use PhotoPro-Auto.
asvaberg said:
Thanks! I learned more from this than reading a truly terrible book about the subject
I always use PhotoPro-Auto.
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That's a great picture.
And you're welcome, I'm a bit tired of seeing posts saying how bad the camera is on this little phone. It does require a bit more work than a point and click phone but it's so worth it.
Nice reading and I also agree: this phone has a good camera and we just need to understand it.
IMHO the colour calibration seems to be very good.
Even in "point-and-shoot" mode with the default camera I usually get good results.
(true, I already got some surprises with light reflections at night)
After reading this post, I took the phone and turned all lights out in my inner room where I was.
Pointed to my Buddha friend and done. No much thinking. The whole process between grabbing the phone, turning lights out, taking the picture and coming back to my laptop to write this took less than 90 sec.
PS: I don't master any photography technique, and therefore I rely on the device setup and common sense.
I agree with the color calibration. It's very close to my Sony A7RIV when I've taken comparison pictures...at least comparing RAW files in Lightroom. One of my biggest frustrations with the P30 Pro was the colors of the RAW files are very off using the main sensor, and no software can easily fix it. The 5 II files are easy to work with and give good results.
Enjoyed the OP but I use the Program Mode. I live in the tropics in a mountain value and I use the EV control a lot. The rest of my settings are usually the same as given in the OP.
Here is a link to a YouTube video from a photographer who makes it quite clear that the camera system on the Xperia 5 II is not a "professional grade" system but has a place for people who enjoy producing photos.
I just wanted to add that every digital camera I've bought, stand-alone or phone, since 1998 has been defective....for 10 days to two weeks. Once I'd used it for a few hundred photos and read manuals and tutorials the cameras improved markedly.