[Q] General Camera Question - Huawei Ascend Mate 2

My wife's old iphone 4 seems to take way better low light pics and video (HAM2 camera is jittery when taking low-light video, not smooth at all) Are there any camera tweaks to be done? any settings to change? Thanks!

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The B148 update supposedly helped a bit, but I haven't tested it yet. But if you've already updated, I'm afraid there's not much else to do.
Phones like ours are cheap for a reason, meaning they have to be "bad" somewhere. Cameras are never good on Androids of this price range.

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ScoobSTi said:
The B148 update supposedly helped a bit, but I haven't tested it yet. But if you've already updated, I'm afraid there's not much else to do.
Phones like ours are cheap for a reason, meaning they have to be "bad" somewhere. Cameras are never good on Androids of this price range.
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That's cool, I understand. I guess the majority of pics & videos happen outside in the light anyway. Thanks. p.s. I figured out how to silence the camera and video camera sounds using ES file manager, so that's good.

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GT1873 said:
That's cool, I understand. I guess the majority of pics & videos happen outside in the light anyway. Thanks. p.s. I figured out how to silence the camera and video camera sounds using ES file manager, so that's good.
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Ooh cool, mind sharing?

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ScoobSTi said:
Ooh cool, mind sharing?
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Sure. I followed this link and scrolled to the bottom where it talks about rooted devices. You're basically just adding a small addendum to the camera sound file names in the system. Works for me, but who knows what the long-term effects will be. Do this at your own risk, I take no responsibility for your actions. Do not do this if it is illegal in your country, check your laws.

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Some third-party camera apps will give you additional options, like higher ISO, that are not available in the stock Huawei camera. lgCamera has been mentioned in another thread here. I'm partial to OpenCamera. Paid options like A Better Camera provide additional modes. But even with all these options, I think the limiting factor for low-light photography with the HAM2 is focus. It becomes very uncertain in anything less than bright light.

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Sweet, it works! You should make a thread for it, I reckon.

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ScoobSTi said:
Sweet, it works! You should make a thread for it, I reckon.
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Will do.

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I work sports leagues and tournaments and get a lot of teams asking me to take their picture. Sadly, it seems that ANY iPhone takes better pictures than anything I've dragged out there. In order of my use- Optimus V, Samsung S2, Note 2, and a Nokia 520; also a few small tablets, usually wrapped up on the beach so no pictures there.

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Once I realized that the HAM2's camera software doesn't allow flash when in HDR mode, I began looking at other camera software on Google Play. I recently bought Open Camera. It has so many more options, including flash when in HDR mode and a night mode. Here are photos taken on a walk today taken in HDR mode with the phone software and Open Camera.
Phone Software
{
"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"
}
Open Camera
I'll get some photos in night mode over the weekend and post them.