I've been taking some test shots with the mini pro camera, and I have to say I'm a bit let down.
Turns out the camera is a bit slower than I initially thought, and the pictures come out to be a pixelly mess.
I thought the dithering artifacts where only due to low light scenes, but it turns out I can see there artifacts with well let subjects.
The still frame camera does better than the video, but both suffer. Maybe Sony could do us a favor and have an option to remove in camera noise reduction. This would give us a chance to do better noise reduction in post to try and produce better quality results.
The video also suffers from cadence issues when outdoor light is very bright. I've seen this in dedicate video on stills cameras, it results in choppy video. I'd rather have smoother better quality low resolution video as compared to this dithered choppy mess of video.
Most of these artifacts are masked if you view video on the camera itself, but when you view them on your HDTV they are quite obvious.
Anyone have ideas on turning off the NR, I'd be happy to hear them.
Things you can do to help performance.
Set camera to fixed or infinity focus for faster response.
Use the sports mode for higher ISO shots, faster pics.
Use center weighted focusing.
Another interesting thing to note, I also happen to have the X10 mini pro. Looking at the phones side by side, the x10 has a slightly larger lens. I was a bit surprised at this change. I hope Sony makes an effort to bring better quality photo and video to the smart phones. Heck, they can make it their market differentiator.
Mike
hardware or software?
is it hardware problem or software? can video recording be improved through software upgrade?
irumbustalin said:
is it hardware problem or software? can video recording be improved through software upgrade?
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Possibly.
But you also have to realise that this is just a mobile phone, of course it isn't going to be as good as dedicated hardware.
irumbustalin said:
is it hardware problem or software? can video recording be improved through software upgrade?
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I can't say if software is an issue, but I'm certain hardware is an issue.
1 thing they could do from a software POV is to have an option to remove noise reduction. Sony may be not want people to see what the photos look like without NR.
2: It's a physics thing, the lens is tiny and the sensor is even smaller. The sensor technology is another issue. The sensor can only collect so much light, this directly impacts it's a ability to produce better photos. Note that Sony has a higher quality sensor Exmor they decide to reserve for other cameras.
I was hoping the phone could produce video quality to rival something like a flip phone.
3: Keeping the lens clean. It's hard to do this with a phone you constantly hold in your hand without some sort of lens shield. My old W580i hid the lens when it was in the close position. It also had a nice smooth easy to clean lens surface. It was only 2MP, but took excellent photos.
There are a few more things I could play with in my quest for better photos. For one, I should make sure the image stabilizer isn't on when I take well lit photo samples.
One other interesting thing I noted is the maximum shutter speed I've been able to produce. The camera may max out at 1/125 sec. I was a bit surprised, that's kind of slow. I haven't gone to see what my other camera phone can do, but that in itself shows the weakness of the phone.
Several of the shots I took under what I would call bright/normal lighting produced 1/16th shutter speed. This makes it hard to get a blur free photo due to subject movement and camera shake.
I was able to compensate some using sports mode, but that increases the ISO which = more noisy photos.
Mike
Comparison to x10 mini pro
Just had the opportunity to take a look at a few photos my wife has taken with the x10 mini pro. Actually, based on the experience with this phone, I decided to wait for and buy the mini pro 2.
I was happy and at the same time sad to see how much better photos taken with the x10 mini appeared vs. the mini pro 2.
The colors, focus, as well as resolution was better. Also noted that the photo size was larger, near the 1.5M size I expected out of the mini pro 2 photos.
Also noticed the x10 mini is capable of ISO 40.
I compared the panorama type shot, the X10 fared better, but still not great in panorama detail, I guess that's o.k.
Also noticed the x10 camera options are significantly fewer than those on the mini pro 2. That's fine since the photos are of decent quality though it would be nice to have a bit more control over the photo options.
I'm certain Sony could at least do something about the photo compression being used in the Mini Pro 2, it would be nice if the camera could at least equal the x10 mini pro photo capability.
Mike
Hi there,
As you guys know, camera of Redmi Note 3 performs poor in indoor conditions. But from the reports, I heard, are saying that camera manufacturer is samsung, and resolution is 16MP. Then it must not be hardware issue, right? Could it be a software issue? By software issue, I dont mean camera app, I actually meant the driver software of camera. So, what do you think? Camera is the only downside of this phone. Even cheap samsung phones below 10000₹ has higher indoor quality.
Bump.
Any response?
AtomR said:
Hi there,
As you guys know, camera of Redmi Note 3 performs poor in indoor conditions. But from the reports, I heard, are saying that camera manufacturer is samsung, and resolution is 16MP. Then it must not be hardware issue, right? Could it be a software issue? By software issue, I dont mean camera app, I actually meant the driver software of camera. So, what do you think? Camera is the only downside of this phone. Even cheap samsung phones below 10000₹ has higher indoor quality.
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Click to collapse
I am pretty sure its an hardware issue. Because area of the sensor dedicated for each individual pixel is very less. Which in turn results in less photons recieved by each pixel when in low light situatuon. This problem can be tacjled by software optimizations but it will never behave like other camera sensors with comparatively larger sensor size. Note: megapixels is not the only parameter to judge a camera.
How is the camera quality? Im coming from S22u
Battery is ok. Zoom definetly not the camera to shine. Ultrawide and standard lens are very good. However, coming from an S22u you might have a downgrade..
Main camera captures a lot of details and offers a very good (and bright) night mode. Ultrawide and tele are "ok cameras". They can take good pictures in some conditions but don't expect much, they are not in S22u or i13 Pro territory. You'll notice too that the default camera app tends to oversaturate colors. Sometimes overly So. I got Gcam for that reason. The front cameras for selfies are also ok cameras. In poor light they are almost unusable for me. I recommend using the main camera for selfies. Find N is a great phone but the cameras are not the highlight.
Cameras on this Oppo are very good. Samsung S22 Ultra is plagued with horrible shutter lag nobody talks about. Not anymore since I upgraded to Oppo find N. And here you have proper 50mm portrait focal length unlike 75 (3x) they now put in every flag****.
Noticed very poor quality of selfie camera specially on FB Messenger. This is the most common messaging app used in our region and my old s21u takes better selfie camera quality when video calling than s23u. The detail is so soft. And the white balance is too dull.
Maybe the app is still not updated for s23u's selfie camera. But it feels like FB Messenger right now shows the raw capability of the selfie camera without software tweaks yet. Not a good impression coming from a flagship device.
Anyone noticed this? What's your take on this?
Use stock camera. That's my take. How many selfies are you sending?
Nah FB Messenger camera is generally terrible but in S23U it is worse than S21U. I do use the stock camera when sending selfies. But during video call, the quality is unbearable. I hope my theory that FB hasn't updated their app to support S23U is right
Major Update Released for Galaxy S23, Improves Camera - TizenHelp
As promised earlier this month, Samsung is now releasing a major software update for the Galaxy S23 series. The major focus of the software is to improve the camera performance & Gallery of Galaxy S23, S23+ & S23 Ultra. In the past, many users complained about the camera and other features, so...
www.tizenhelp.com
1. A function has been added to the gallery so that you can immediately delete photos that are being processed immediately after taking them with the camera.
2. For faster photo taking, the AF concept has been changed so that when the user presses the shooting button, the user can take a photo even when the focus is not completely set.
However, if you want to shoot after completing Focus as before, please change the settings in the latest Camera Assistant.
3. Improved sharpness/flicker and added notice when shooting Ultrawide in low light indoors after setting Camera Video Mode > Super Steady On.
4. Fixed a phenomenon where a green line was displayed on the left side intermittently when shooting in the rear photo mode.
5. Improved image stabilization when shooting with FHD60 after setting Auto FPS Off in the rear video.
6. Improved line-shaped banding noise in the sky in mid-low light when shooting high-pixel in low-mid light.
Overall sharpness was optimized during high-pixel shooting, and intermittent blurring was improved through OIS stabilization.
7. Fixed a malfunction when shooting after Night Off in low light after selecting Shooting Speed > High Resolution > Speed Priority in Camera Assistant.
8. Fixed an issue where face recognition could not be recognized intermittently after ending a 3rd party video call.
9. Stability has been improved for camera movements introduced through other routes.
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Nice and specially the faster photo taking, but I don't see anything about post-processing...
I can see some post-processing things. Point 3 - more sharpening, <sarcasm on> because out of the box Samsung is applying to less <sarcasm off>.
As predicted, no serious change. stock camera picture will continue to suck.
Luckily we have gcam on this device (the reason I went back to Samsung after 10 years)
Fl1nt91 said:
As predicted, no serious change. stock camera picture will continue to suck.
Luckily we have gcam on this device (the reason I went back to Samsung after 10 years)
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Click to collapse
Yes, I'm using GCAM as well and I'm quite happy with the picture quality, but it is frustrating that you need to use 3rd party app to make a camera for a such expensive device (which is by the way advertised as a camera-oriented one with exceptional quality) usable. And would be nice to make better use of that high-resolution sensor that we have. I know, that it is not possible to heave real 200Mpix or even 50Mpix pictures, but with good algorithms that would be more than 12Mpix that we have in the GCAM.
ajarosz said:
Yes, I'm using GCAM as well and I'm quite happy with the picture quality, but it is frustrating that you need to use 3rd party app to make a camera for a such expensive device (which is by the way advertised as a camera-oriented one with exceptional quality) usable. And would be nice to make better use of that high-resolution sensor that we have. I know, that it is not possible to heave real 200Mpix or even 50Mpix pictures, but with good algorithms that would be more than 12Mpix that we have in the GCAM.
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Agree, is so annoying
I hope this update will fix the photos and especially - the video stabilization bug that is unacceptable in a phone of such class.
In march I once had a pretty important event of which I took a couple of videos. All of them are shaky as hell - there is literally zero video stabilization on them. Pretty annoying given that the stabilization on S23 series is great and WAS great with january security patch, but they destroyed it in February or March patch.
Photos are also an oversharpened disaster. Can't wait for the update.
chetszot said:
I hope this update will fix the photos and especially - the video stabilization bug that is unacceptable in a phone of such class.
In march I once had a pretty important event of which I took a couple of videos. All of them are shaky as hell - there is literally zero video stabilization on them. Pretty annoying given that the stabilization on S23 series is great and WAS great with january security patch, but they destroyed it in February or March patch.
Photos are also an oversharpened disaster. Can't wait for the update.
Click to expand...
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If you were shooting fhd 60 fps then yes, that issue has been addressed. As for the rest, nope. Check first post for release notes.
chetszot said:
I hope this update will fix the photos and especially - the video stabilization bug that is unacceptable in a phone of such class.
In march I once had a pretty important event of which I took a couple of videos. All of them are shaky as hell - there is literally zero video stabilization on them. Pretty annoying given that the stabilization on S23 series is great and WAS great with january security patch, but they destroyed it in February or March patch.
Photos are also an oversharpened disaster. Can't wait for the update.
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Enable auto FPS until this update is released. This fixes stabilization issue on [email protected]
Probably in preparation of camera update, received an update of Camera Assistant (CA) app. New feature is reported:
"-Prioritize focus over speed
Wait for the camera to finish focusing before triggering the shutter. This may delay the shutter slightly."
The feature is actually not (yet) visible in the CA-app...
What's a gcam profile for the 23u?
I'm hoping it will stop the over saturation and balance photos better. Sometimes the colors it shows defy reality!
ekerbuddyeker said:
I'm hoping it will stop the over saturation and balance photos better. Sometimes the colors it shows defy reality!
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You have high hopes. There is nothing about that is the changelog.
I'll wait for the update to be released before offering an opinion on how good or bad it is.
Seems like minor update that's tweaking AF on stills and bunch of video mode fixes. Unless they don't list other tweaks
In The Netherlands the update is not there yet.
hill67 said:
In The Netherlands the update is not there yet.
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Don't worry, it's released only in S. Korea so far and nowhere else in this milky way galaxy. All are waiting.
Installing firm from 918N into 918B is an option ?
I mean ... is it just a CSC question or the phones are different in terms of hardware ?
enebro77 said:
Installing firm from 918N into 918B is an option ?
I mean ... is it just a CSC question or the phones are different in terms of hardware ?
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Click to collapse
Different hardware unfortunately
Fl1nt91 said:
As predicted, no serious change. stock camera picture will continue to suck.
Luckily we have gcam on this device (the reason I went back to Samsung after 10 years)
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Suck? Do you have parkinson's?
The camera while not perfect performs brilliantly .
Return yours
Mine is the best S Series Camera to date.
Must be a batch difference.
I took over 300 pics and vids comparing s22U to S23U and my results coincided with most every experienced YouTube reviewer.....overall: damned good with improvements expected