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Hi,
The SGS2 does awesome times in daylight, but it starts to get noisy when it gets dark.
I searched on the market, but didn't find any app, that particularly could make night mode less noisy.
What I'm looking for is an app, that uses longer exposures, and reduces the ISO settings. I know you have to hold the camera still, but it could produce better night pictures.
Does anybody know any way to improve night pictures?(messing with the settings eg.)
Thanks
I also would like to know how to get better night pictures...
Besides, I can see that there's a small delay between the flash and the picture taken, what makes pics even worse...
Any idea guys?
Thanks.
I don't think you are really going to find an app to overcome limitations in the camera sensor. That's a hardware issue, and it's common in many cameras, not just mobiles.
It has more to do with the ISO sensitivity than anything else.
Well actually the picture taking happens before the shutter sound, don't get confused. Exactly when the flash "flashes" Make sure tho, that your fingers are not around the flash, as they can mess the picture up.
I quess if somebody would take the camera application apart, they could set a manual ISO. Not sure how tho...
So why don't HDR apps work properly on our phones?
One manufacturer I contacted insisted that it was because the EVO 3D doesn't utilize the android api properly to adjust the exposure setting. I even confirmed this with HTC. You can try it out as follows: If you open the camera app and play with the exposure slider in the options, you'll see that instead of changing exposure, what it does is just bumps up the brightness of the image.
HOWEVER, yesterday I noticed that the exposure does change properly but not when you use the slider. Best way to try this is sitting next to a window on a sunny day. If you point the camera towards the window, the exposure auto adjusts you can see the details outside but anything inside the room still in the frame just looks dark. However, if you point the camera so it's mostly pointing inside the room, you'll notice that the exposure auto-adjusts again so you can now see details of objects inside the room but any part of the window still in the frame is now completely washed out. So..auto-adjustment of exposure works.
Now in most of the these HDR apps work by taking a picture on high, medium, and low exposure and then stitches them all together. However, the app isn't able to adjust the exposure settings properly and this is probably because it's tapping into the "exposure setting" in the camera's api...the same thing we are able to change when using the exposure slider on the camera app. As I said before though, the exposure slider is actually controlling the brightness. But I'm now certain that the camera is actually able to adjust the exposure but only does so through auto-adjustment. What's broken is the ability to set the exposure manually. How would one fix this?
where should i post this to get the attention of the devs who might know how to fix this?
The issue is it is a hard question. lol I don't have any idea. haha. I think the issue is we have two front cameras.
runcool said:
The issue is it is a hard question. lol I don't have any idea. haha. I think the issue is we have two front cameras.
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two rear cameras my man. There's only one in the front
Interesting... I've used a couple of hdr apps on gingerbread and they appeared to work. Although I didn't do rigorous testing. All I did was compare normal pic against hdr app and I noticed a difference. However this was last summer. Maybe something changed since then.
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA
Oh and the stock camera app in ICS, or at least in the couple of roms I've tried, has hdr as a feature. Except it isn't true hdr I don't think. It snaps 1 pic then processes it. I didn't think there was any difference at first, but I did notice a slight improvement.
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA
There will always be slight differences between stock vs HDR pics because the HDR app usually does some post-processing however, if it's not taking 2 or more pictures that have the exposure adjusting drastically, you're not really getting the HDR effect.
Yes, I know about hdr... The processing and everything. I just hadn't tested these things like you have and sharing my experience.
Anyhow... I had also read others claim htc didn't use the app right months ago. Not sure why they messed that up. I'm going away for the weekend and might mess with this myself. If I see anything worth adding I will.
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA
Just wanted to share hdr works as it should on the latest ics leak. I just tried it on mean rom ics 1.6. Exposure adjustments in their stock app also works as it should.
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA
That's excellent news! Are you sure the exposure setting works properly and doesn't just change brightness? I know you probably tested it before posting but if you could do this for me and write back, i'd really appreciate it.
From inside a room from a distance, point camera towards a window. Are you able to see detail inside and outside the room by changing the exposure slider to either extreme?
abdeviation said:
That's excellent news! Are you sure the exposure setting works properly and doesn't just change brightness? I know you probably tested it before posting but if you could do this for me and write back, i'd really appreciate it.
From inside a room from a distance, point camera towards a window. Are you able to see detail inside and outside the room by changing the exposure slider to either extreme?
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I haven't had a lot of time to play but it did work. I'm a photographer and video producer so I know what to look for. My quick test however was as a passenger in a car. I pointed it to the seat where part was in bright sun and then other was in shade, plus some of the frame of the car in shade. Stepping down showed the detail in the seat in sun, increasing it showed it in the shadows.
I also tried hdr + (I think that's the right one) and each of the 3 photos was at a different exposure, granted not by much.
There is still a bug where the front camera flips the photo left/right after it's taken, however, you only seems this after reviewing the pic.
Edit: the app was hdr camera
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA
Oh also fyi... The first leak did not work in relation to this.
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA
awesome, perhaps HTC got around to fixing it in ICS. Several months ago, I actually contacted them describing to them what was wrong with the camera. After a lot of back and forth and escalating the issue internally, I was finally able to reach the team that actually works on the stuff and they confirmed the issue and said they will include a fix "in a future release" but did not make any promises. Maybe they got around to it
I'm going to have to flash a ICS rom to test this myself once I find some spare time
Quite strange that they declared the Xperia S to be the worst performer in the group and said:
But, it does look like the 12.1MP Sony Xperia S is the least impressive of the four devices, even with its megapixel superiority. The poorer quality can possibly be attributed to its lower cost and hence, cheaper hardware
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http://www.androidauthority.com/xperia-s-vs-iphone-4s-vs-s3-vs-one-x-camera-fight-90384/
Watch out for even more "fanboy" reviews to popup.
I have seen this article yesterday, I dont know what's going on but. I had chance to play with IPhone 4g and HTC ONE X cameras and I have to say that my SONY XPERIA S is the winner. Whoever made this macro picture with bananas for XPS _ completely f **** it. For me this looks like an anti -Sony competition ...
Sent from my LT26i using XDA
Hmm...
I always take these photo reviews with a grain of salt. It is really the reviewers who make/break these sort of reviews.
He doesn't say whether he uses Auto-Mode, or anything like that. With standard settings I feel you aren't even capable of reviewing a camera properly...they leave it all up to the auto-mode to decide what settings to use.
Oh well, I know my Xperia S takes amazing pictures in comparison to most of those devices, that's all that matters to me, regardless of the random negative reviews here and there .
True. I am surprised to see such horrible photos taken with the Xperia S. XS can do much better than what the author managed. Pretty sure he used auto mode and didn't let the phone focus properly. Or maybe messed up the settings to make it seem worse.
well
XS camera is great and compare to my previous SGS 2, XS has fast focus and fast shutter speed.. even the color is better
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/118344624379023636652/albums/5747354225338739793
Have you already tried any photos with low light.. they are pretty noisy i think the flash its not very good .. i mean my satio did better
tel033 said:
Have you already tried any photos with low light.. they are pretty noisy i think the flash its not very good .. i mean my satio did better
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That seems to be a software problem
Sent from my LT26i using XDA
shmoejoe said:
Hmm...
I always take these photo reviews with a grain of salt. It is really the reviewers who make/break these sort of reviews.
He doesn't say whether he uses Auto-Mode, or anything like that. With standard settings I feel you aren't even capable of reviewing a camera properly...they leave it all up to the auto-mode to decide what settings to use.
Oh well, I know my Xperia S takes amazing pictures in comparison to most of those devices, that's all that matters to me, regardless of the random negative reviews here and there .
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fully agree there is full of fanboys with no respect for the tecnology look at this video for example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A33-6M-XChs&feature=related
Sent from my LT26i using xda premium
Bad review I must say. I wonder if companies are paying reviewers to bash another company's product and make them less appealing. I find the iPhone 4S pics quite colour accurate but the Xperia S has much more detail and gives me perfect pictures. I seem to use my dSLR less since I got the S. I don't like HTC One X's camera. Just not as good. One reason I didn't consider it. Though I am not sure about S3. If it's close to S2's camera unit, I can crown my Xperia S as the winner
Sent from my wonderful Xperia S
waiflih said:
That seems to be a software problem
Sent from my LT26i using XDA
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Any tip or solution?
a4rocks said:
Bad review I must say. I wonder if companies are paying reviewers to bash another company's product and make them less appealing. I find the iPhone 4S pics quite colour accurate but the Xperia S has much more detail and gives me perfect pictures. I seem to use my dSLR less since I got the S. I don't like HTC One X's camera. Just not as good. One reason I didn't consider it. Though I am not sure about S3. If it's close to S2's camera unit, I can crown my Xperia S as the winner
Sent from my wonderful Xperia S
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Can you upload some pics in low light please I'm having problems in normal conditions camera is great although sometimes a bit of noise but in low light AF problem but the worst is noise
Sent from my LT26i using XDA
tel033 said:
Any tip or solution?
Can you upload some pics in low light please I'm having problems in normal conditions camera is great although sometimes a bit of noise but in low light AF problem but the worst is noise
Sent from my LT26i using XDA
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The noise is caused by the small (better say tiny) light sensor on the phone. Sony makes the best sensor. I don't think any other phone uses better sensor than XS.
Photos from some phones "looks" better because they apply a stronger software noise reduction than SX does or they have a bigger apperture (e.g. HTC One X has F2.0 compare to F2.4 in XS). My solution to this is to apply noise reduction after I've loaded the photos to my PC using Lightroom.
Any way to applied it in the phone not in pc? Better is there a software to reduce the noise before shooting? You said that it's sensor was good but tiny right? So is it hardware problem ? Or software? Or both?
Sent from my LT26i using XDA
Wow!
Hold on!
Just one picture and tooken with auto mode and this whole review...?
What the hell is this. This doesnt even makes sense...
This is more like:
Hey buddy im bored, let pick up some phones and take pictures and put it on internet.
So "we" can read it and discuss it so they can laugh their ass of...
In another threats .. With no "auto" mode they made few compares...
Different stages, scenes etc...
The xs came the best out.. It just beat all of them..
4s to s2(whens3 was not out)
Every high end smart phone.. But doesnt mind..
Sent from my LT26i using XDA
^
Can you post link to the comparo where XS beat them all ?
The original review work comes from the mobile reviewer at cnet. Having read her reviews in the past she is very apple biased and seems unable to operate phones correctly.
In her original review of the xperia s (put up against iphone 4) she complained about the xs' camera taking 'letterbox' photos and that she prefered the iphones 4/3 images. If she'd of bothered to hit the menu button when using the camera she'd of found it was set to 9mp 16/9 and that a couple of clicks would of then set it to 12mp 4/3.
So dont expect her to have used anything but full auto mode.
The manual options in the xs' camera are great with things like target iso, and multi point auto focus.
If only they'd bothered to include the jpeg compression options as the default level dratically over compresses images and introduces artifacts.
Also on her low light test (and most of the tests tbh) ... the iphones colours look artificially over saturated (post process) the noise level on the iphone is also horrific yet she complains at the rest!
It's also funny to see her complaining about the iso effect, its probably because the xs and gs3 can change there iso and the rest cant! Try having some movement in the image and then see how well the iphone copes.
What is also funny is that the images have all been resized for web display, having 50% more pixels to start with gives you more options for post processing and thus noise reduction
So if we could adjust the jpeg compression the noise would be reduce right?
Sent from my LT26i using XDA
nit said:
The noise is caused by the small (better say tiny) light sensor on the phone.
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That's not strictly true, the noise comes from the software raising ISO in low light, all sensors from the tiny ones in a phone to a full frame 35mm one will suffer from noise as the ISO is raised. Its just that the bigger the sensor the higher the ISO needs to before it to become a problem.
If noise is a problem then just use Neat Image, nothing comes close to it http://www.neatimage.com/
The noise in this camera is not particularly bad, tbh in low light every digital camera will have noise because of the use of higher ISO. I think the 12mp sensor also make the noise more visible...I'm not sure about the technical details though...
Sent from my LT26i using XDA
The basic gist of iso levels is as follows.
For a given amount of light hitting the sensor (metered) an exposure duration is determined.
Increasing the iso level decreases the exposure time for the same amount of light.
A shorter exposure time reduces the signal to noise ratio significantly, but it also reduces motion blur. Noise can be post processed, blur not so much.
My old nokia n95 would have exposure times of over 2 seconds in low light conditions, chance that everything remained totally motionless in this time is very small!
The exposure duration is usually stored in the exif file, I hope her original files kept all this sort of info!
The xs' camera has potential because we can change the target iso value (though compared to a still camera they're still low) we can also change the metering method as well. I haven't seen either of these features before in a phone camera.
The only thing we are missing is the ability manually specifiy exposure duration.
You are also correct in that the higher pixel density of a sensor the higher probabiltiy of noise.
Ability to take raw photo's or 100% quality jpegs would be nice (people have done mods to enable 100% jpeg quality, but I cant root my phone at present to test it as i use sky go)
Edit - Just checked the exif info on the 'original full size' images and its been wiped file sizes are interesting though.
GS3 - 2.1mb, IP4 - 2.6mb, 1X - 1.5mb, XS - 2.0mb
Have just noticed all the 1x pics are 6 megapixel images in 16:9 format which seems suspicious to me. But it says it all for the XS when it has a smaller file size than the GS3 and IP4 yet 50% more pixels.
Rough rule of thumb is that you need at least 1/2mb per megapixel to avoid any degradation on a full image (ie no patches of black or white)
so iv been seeing people taking AMAZING pictures with their evo, but it seems every time i go to take a picture it looks GREAT on my phone but if i email to myself it comes out grainy. am i doing something wrong?
Warrior 3000 said:
so iv been seeing people taking AMAZING pictures with their evo, but it seems every time i go to take a picture it looks GREAT on my phone but if i email to myself it comes out grainy. am i doing something wrong?
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Click to collapse
It's noise in the image from high iso which is required to take pictures in low light without motion blur. If you have plenty of light try setting the ISO to 100 or 200 and it should help.
Looks fine on my monitor.
Try takin it off widescreen
Sent from my EVO using XDA
Those all appear to be HDR also, which will almost always have artifacts. Try normal shooting mode, with a lower iso and see what you get.
The only one that looked overly grainy to me was the clouds. And thats because your ISO is too high, or its an HDR - which all of the looked to be.
Read up on how HDR works and why the images can look really cool, but also what downfalls of it are. HDR is not meant for everyday shooting.
Looks like rain is heading your way. Make sure you bring an umbrella.
Agreed. Manual ISO FTW! If you're in a good lit area then definitely set your ISO manually to 100 or 200. Sometimes auto will raise the ISO higher than it needs to be and will make your pictures look noisy like that. Good luck!
Ok, it seems like every picture taken under the conditions mentioned above(sorry forgot to write them: natural light, inside my room, pretty much a well lit room, besides the fact i didn't turn on the lights) and everything else set on auto, have the same result. I get either a blurry shot, without the antishake option and a noisy one, when having antishake on.
Also i would like to mention, that this particular behaviour happens in a rather well lit environment. The only time i get acceptable results is when i go out and shoot in the natural sunlight.
Is this normal?
You didn't list any conditions above.
Let me just add some examples, maybe you will understand what i'm talking about a little bit better
1. camera ics+
2. camera zoom fx
3. stock samsung camera
4. lg camera pro
Your iso settings are wrong. Change it to auto.
Sent from my LG-P920 using xda premium
As i already mentioned, my iso settings are set to auto. Any ideas?
i m having same issues, suddenly, the in door shots are coming with horrible noise
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
it's normal for a cell phone camera - or any type of small sensor camera, actually
Well then, why other camera apps shoot a little bit better? My old Samsung Omnia was a better shooter in this regard. Also, could you provide some photos too?
Scratch.
You edited your post.
Sent from my LG-P920 using xda premium
I did, but my iso is always on auto nevertheless
I would try three things:
- Set ISO manually. I don't have an S3, but with my S2 I get the best results by setting ISO manually.
- Turn antishake off. In general, electronic stabilization adds noise (unlike mechanical/optical stabilization which does not add noise).
- Try to hold the phone a still as possible while taking the picture.
That said, keep in mind that any small sensor camera like what you have in any phone is not going to perform well without good lighting. However the S3 should be one of the best of the phone cameras.
yes u r right that while using antishake option it produces noise thats y its off by default!! and u r wrong that it is blurry bcoz if antishake is off my gs3 takes noise free perfect pictures its has a gud BSI sensor (Cmos) try not to shake ur hands while taking pic.!
contrast is not automatic...
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automatic contrast does lead to more noise on mine (judging from the preview window)
v1rtu4l said:
automatic contrast does lead to more noise on mine (judging from the preview window)
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Yes, In the dark the noise Is more high with automatic contrast...
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA
my first gs3 phone's pictures were immaculate in doors and out, but i had overheating issues so i got a replacement...this new phones camera does this...too much noise, didn't have that with the first phone the replacement phones case came damaged so i'm hoping to exchange it once more...hopefully the next phone won't have this camera problem....
I have the same issue, I've been comparing the pics with my S2 and results are really bad indoor, except with flash. much better than S2 with flash! im really puzzled
I had posted here my cam firmware version, I'm wondering if it's the camera app or else
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=27553609&postcount=274
okay....i am not sure whether you guys have knowledge about photography
exposure is measured by 3 component
ISO, shutter speed, and aperture
as long you have sufficient light (outdoor during daylight), lowest ISO will be used by the camera and it results no noise
ISO --- sensitivity to light
you will have noise or sometimes blur in door or low light situation...
that is because aperture of camera has opened wide then it results other two components compensate to maintain proper exposure
that will increase higher ISO (more noise) and shutter speed is slower to get more light ...
hope this explains why
androb0t said:
okay....i am not sure whether you guys have knowledge about photography
exposure is measured by 3 component
ISO, shutter speed, and aperture
as long you have sufficient light (outdoor during daylight), lowest ISO will be used by the camera and it results no noise
ISO --- sensitivity to light
you will have noise or sometimes blur in door or low light situation...
that is because aperture of camera has opened wide then it results other two components compensate to maintain proper exposure
that will increase higher ISO (more noise) and shutter speed is slower to get more light ...
hope this explains why
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Click to collapse
I dont think you understand that I have S3 and S2 with me and test them under the exactly same conditions and results are very different from all the tests of S3 on the web which clearly show that S3 takes better pics.
hm....it's hard to explain...unless you have DSLR and know how to do manual setting...
besides i am referring this to OP thread,NoOneCanHelpMe why there is camera blur and noise