Database Users

Increase Camcorder framerate in low light ;)

Hey guys,
I know a lot of people with this phone are happy with the frame rate of videos in good light (30 fps constant). But one thing that really does my head in is the shocking frame rate in low light (like indoors).
Well fear not chums, supremebeaver is here to put your fears to rest
Steps:
- Open camera (not camcorder) app. Set ISO to 800
- Open Camcorder app, set Exposure to -2.
- Notice improved frame rate in viewfinder.
- Smile
I will admit, the quality suffers a little. The video gets a lot darker but imo its a good compromise for smoothness. At least for me. I was able to go from 9 fps with stock settings to 25 solid with those settings changed.
Enjoy

if you want to know why this works, heres how:
at 30 Frames Per Second, each frame of video has a minimum exposure time of 1 thirtyith of a second, or 1/30 seconds.
in low light this is does not give the camera enough time to gather light to expose an image, so it slows the exposure time down, saaaay, 1 fifteenth. this reduces the frame rate to 15fps. this gives the camera twice as long to expose an image.
by changing the exposure to -2 you are telling the camera not to increase the exposure time and so you end up with a darker image but better frame rate.
this is not something that can be magically fixed by a firmware update, its simple photographic physics.
the only thing a firmware fix will do is turn the default ISO up.

rossysaurus said:
if you want to know why this works, heres how:
at 30 Frames Per Second, each frame of video has a minimum exposure time of 1 thirtyith of a second, or 1/30 seconds.
in low light this is does not give the camera enough time to gather light to expose an image, so it slows the exposure time down, saaaay, 1 fifteenth. this reduces the frame rate to 15fps. this gives the camera twice as long to expose an image.
by changing the exposure to -2 you are telling the camera not to increase the exposure time and so you end up with a darker image but better frame rate.
this is not something that can be magically fixed by a firmware update, its simple photographic physics.
the only thing a firmware fix will do is turn the default ISO up.
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but why is the cam on htc hd7 have faster fps than hd2 when they got the same specs? hd7 has WP7 and hd2 has WP 6.5. is it the o/s?

The HD7 has the same chipset as us, the HD2 has the last generation of snapdragon (the same one as the classic desire).
Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk

Consider using the built-in flash to compensate for that darker image issue

it would be nice if we had a brightness setting, like LG camera does. There, you can also boost ISO to 1250.

mdalacu said:
it would be nice if we had a brightness setting, like LG camera does. There, you can also boost ISO to 1250.
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but the noise will be too high.. like on the iphone 4, they raise the ISO so high to maintain framerate but all u get is a super grainy video that looks rubbish.
Technology for phone cams still has a long way to go...

Camera: tips for manual settings or auto to use in certain circumstances

Would people care to post tips about what are best settings to use in:
low light photos
fast subjects
etc,

Don't have this phone, but I can share some common knowledge.
There's a term often called "exposure triangle". Proper exposure is achieved by combining three variables - ISO, aperture, shutter speed. High ISO, wide aperture (low f-number) and low shutter speed give you more light. Depending on what you're shooting, you'd want to sacrifice one or the other. High ISO gives you more light at the expense of image quality. Wide aperture gives you more light at the expense of lower depth of field (which is not necessarily bad - e.g. may be intentionally desired). Low shutter speed gives you more light at the expense of not being able to give you a sharp image of something that's moving. Generally you can vary one to compensate for the other two. With most phones, the aperture is fixed, so you're left with only shutter speed and ISO.
For low light, you'd want to drop the shutter speed to something like 1/10 or 1/5 - if the subject is still and your hands are steady, you can have a sharp photo this way. The lower you drop the shutter speed, the lower ISO you will need to ensure proper exposure - and the lower the ISO, the cleaner the image given the exposure is proper - but don't try to keep the ISO low if it would result in an underexposed shot. Experiment with what is the lowest speed at which you can manage a sharp shot.
For fast subjects, it depends - sometimes 1/100 is enough, sometimes 1/500 is not enough - very much depends on what you're shooting (primarily how fast it is moving). Again, try it yourself.

killchain said:
Don't have this phone, but I can share some common knowledge.
There's a term often called "exposure triangle". Proper exposure is achieved by combining three variables - ISO, aperture, shutter speed. High ISO, wide aperture (low f-number) and low shutter speed give you more light. Depending on what you're shooting, you'd want to sacrifice one or the other. High ISO gives you more light at the expense of image quality. Wide aperture gives you more light at the expense of lower depth of field (which is not necessarily bad - e.g. may be intentionally desired). Low shutter speed gives you more light at the expense of not being able to give you a sharp image of something that's moving. Generally you can vary one to compensate for the other two. With most phones, the aperture is fixed, so you're left with only shutter speed and ISO.
For low light, you'd want to drop the shutter speed to something like 1/10 or 1/5 - if the subject is still and your hands are steady, you can have a sharp photo this way. The lower you drop the shutter speed, the lower ISO you will need to ensure proper exposure - and the lower the ISO, the cleaner the image given the exposure is proper - but don't try to keep the ISO low if it would result in an underexposed shot. Experiment with what is the lowest speed at which you can manage a sharp shot.
For fast subjects, it depends - sometimes 1/100 is enough, sometimes 1/500 is not enough - very much depends on what you're shooting (primarily how fast it is moving). Again, try it yourself.
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Exactly as mentioned above pretty much, I will add a little more.
Normal cameras you can change the aperture which in turn will also affect the required shutter speed for the correct exposure in the given shot. Your phone does not have this, only a fixed aperture, how you phone regulates this is through shutter speed and adjusting your ISO. Manual with all cameras is recommend for best results, as your camera can make bad decisions for these exposures.
Perfect example I can give you is the other night I was trying to photograph christmas lights, the camera was trying to illuminate the entire scene over exposing all the lights, I had to compensate this by underexposing by one stop what the camera was trying to expose.
If you have ever photographed scenes with lots of black and or lots of white, with black your phone overexposes and you black becomes greyish the rest of the shot is bright white. With white your phone underexposes, the white has lots of details but the background is very dark of completely black. it each of these situations if you don't take control you will not get the best out of the scene.

Thank you contributors. I found out that by changing the exposure my screen darkens quite a lot but when I take the photo comes out a lot lighter. What is that about? Is it not wysiwig?

mihaid said:
Thank you contributors. I found out that by changing the exposure my screen darkens quite a lot but when I take the photo comes out a lot lighter. What is that about? Is it not wysiwig?
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The camera is trying to show you a real time image, so in low light it has to keep the shutter faster to keep up with you moving the camera, if they didn't do this and it was showing you real time in low light you would have to wait the exposure time, this would get really annoying as you have to wait for each frame to refresh
So in summary they have a minimum shutter they show in the screen preview (not sure what this is) maybe 1/15 sec so it can keep up with you panning/moving the camera
The Sony display tries to improve the look of photos, you have noticed when you view a photo that it changes while you are looking at it.

If you want a less post-processing you can use "Landscape" mode. You will get visible color noise in low light situations but also more detail in dark areas. A bit like what G4/V10 does and depeding on scene it can be passable. In good lighting it brings out the details better than other modes. It does though like to up the ISO but it can be countered with the EV.

Does people even have the phone to make comments, the only settings in manual mode is change iso value that's it, there is no shutter speed at least not in Sony stock camera app
Sent from my E6653 using Tapatalk

You can change most of the settings mentioned above using the Fv-5 app, try it

babarmaqbool said:
good
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Stop with the good spam in each thread please.
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Vcaddy said:
You can change most of the settings mentioned above using the Fv-5 app, try it
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It is not free (lite version is horrible) and can only shoot long exposure in 2.1 MP.
I bet it doesn't even shoot a real long exposure, I think it just shoots a video into a picture.
BTW, normal photos can only be taken in 8mp max.

This phone needs a real manual mode like the G4 because the phone really does not deal with low light well due to lack of control in the app. FV-5 is useless really as it's only 8mp and doesn't really do any better than stock on this phone or the G4

Jonathan-H said:
This phone needs a real manual mode like the G4 because the phone really does not deal with low light well due to lack of control in the app. FV-5 is useless really as it's only 8mp and doesn't really do any better than stock on this phone or the G4
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Agreed.
Long exposure in vf-5 app is only 2.1mp btw.

camera auto mode showing iso 0?

I'm in a dim room.
Testing picture quality
Consistently, auto mode producing the better pic. Manual mode without any adjustments on my part is very grainy.
Checking on the details of each pic, the manual pic shows an ISO of 4k. But the auto shows an ISO of zero!
can you guys reproduce this

A) Can't reproduce.
B) Max setting accessible in ISO is 3200 according to the two camera apps I have.
C) Since you are not getting an accurate readout of the ISO, I can't comment on why one is grainier than the other.

I mean open the pic in gallery and choose details. That's where is saw I so 0

But taking a picture outside in bright daylight both pictures show ISO 100 in the detail screen. I can easily reproduce this by just dimming the lights, and again, the one taken in Auto mode has iso 0.

Ok, I had to shoot in a room way darker than I'd ever shoot with a phone to get anything to happen as far as ISO. I still have no idea how you are seeing ISO 4000. Max setting is ISO 3200. I am not seeing ISO 0, it just doesn't show an ISO listing if I'm shooting in an excessively dark area. Like I said though, I wouldn't shoot with a phone, any phone, in this kind of light. I'm not sure I'd even shoot with my 1" sensor camera. I'd probably grab my full size camera.
As far as "grain", what you're seeing is noise. That's what happens when you exceed the physics of the sensor. There's two ways to go about it. Either you live with the noise in exchange for a little more detail or use noise reduction and smooth the detail into oblivion. Auto is definitely using a lot more noise reduction and killing detail that manual isn't quite doing. Overall, the noise profile in manual is actually pretty good for such a tiny sensor at such a high ISO and it makes for a really good old school film look.

I think I vaguely remember the g2 showing ISO 0 or no ISO at all when in auto in certain situations. may be an LG thing.
Sent from my LG-US996 using Tapatalk

Hmm..also...it seems iso 600 noise is more dots like, while 800 and 400 seems splotchy...like...wet paint. (For dimly lit images).
As for the weird iso numbers..dunno..that's what the details say

splotchy is the noise reduction. g2 had it too. we called it the oil painting look lol
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Using Manual Mode (Camera) for much (much!) better photography.

I think we can all agree that the camera's auto mode can be a little weak on low light, fast moving objects, and focus.
However, I have gotten ridiculously amazing results using manual settings. To the point where I wish (if anyone from oneplus is seeing this, please please implement it) I could set up various quick-access custom manual mode presets. It would be a very good feature (does anyone know an app that has that btw?).
With a little tweaking, you can find a super sweet spot for a picture on certain conditions.
The following are examples on a very low light scenario with no image movement and minimal hand movement (exact same environment conditions on all):
- Normal mode
- Normal mode with HDR
- Normal mode with HQ
- Manual mode with ISO at 400, and shutter speed at 4s. Then touch and raise finger on screen to place exposure point, and then touch same spot and drag to place focus point.
I was shocked to see that this camera could actually capture something like that last shot in my home's corridor at 2am, when the normal modes barely gave me anything visible.
That setting is working very well for me on multiple very low light situations. Really wish we had some quick-access presets.
There are also settings which can capture images with fast moving targets (with low shutter speeds and a little higher ISOs), and usually I don't get blurry shots with focus on infinite or when selecting focus point.
Things to avoid are super high ISO's like 6400 which for some reason the normal mode is very fond of using even though on manual we can only get up to 3200.

Not sure why you would prefer blurry 4s shot over noisy high ISO shot? Yes auto mode isn't as good as the one compared to LG or Samsung flagships but even manual mode has its limitations. 1/8s is pretty much the limit of what you can shoot with OIS and that is only if you have super steady hands. Most phones with OIS can give quite good results at 1/16s and ISO 100 onwards depending on the lighting. Anything else like 1s or longer exposure and you'll need a tripod . By the way max ISO is only 3200 so you can't go higher.
Oneplus 3T noise reduction algorithm is quite bad and even at 100 ISO which should be super clean in daylight is probably one of the worst in the class.

gedas5 said:
Not sure why you would prefer blurry 4s shot over noisy high ISO shot? Yes auto mode isn't as good as the one compared to LG or Samsung flagships but even manual mode has its limitations. 1/8s is pretty much the limit of what you can shoot with OIS and that is only if you have super steady hands. Most phones with OIS can give quite good results at 1/16s and ISO 100 onwards depending on the lighting. Anything else like 1s or longer exposure and you'll need a tripod . By the way max ISO is only 3200 so you can't go higher.
Oneplus 3T noise reduction algorithm is quite bad and even at 100 ISO which should be super clean in daylight is probably one of the worst in the class.
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maybe RAW is a solution here?

I have been trying Open Camera for the last couple of days. Seems to take much better low light photos. Not as good as my 6p but at least the photos dont look over processed and washed out.

Weird Camera question?

So try this, find a place where the lighting aint great, indoors, under your desk etc, where iso would be about 1600 or even higher, take a shot in Manual mode but without adjusting anything, then change to auto mode and take exactly the same shot, then go to gallery, open each photo and check the iso using the 3 dot menu and select details, you'll see for the Manual shot the iso will read 1600 iso or 2000 iso or whatever and the photo will have some noise (obviously).
Now go to the photo you took in Auto mode and select 3 dot menu and select details, you'll see the iso is 0 and the shot is much less noisy (very clean), What the hell is going on here?? you can even check the F stop and shutter speed, they'll be the same but the Manual mode has high iso (like it should for a low light scene) but the auto mode will be much cleaner and have 0 as iso, and thus much cleaner photo, any idea's???

any ideas anyone?

I've also noticed this. could this be because of HDR?

aaaaleon said:
I've also noticed this. could this be because of HDR?
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Ah, yes, maybe thats it, will check, many thanks, appreciated

Nope not HDR, put HDR off and still get 0 iso in some shots (bright and low light), ok am stumped, have no idea what is happening...
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I saw a clue in the dpreview review for the G6. The reviewer thinks that a multi-frame technique is being used in very low light. This would combine sequential exposures kind of in an analogue to how HDR works. So while it would not be related to the HDR setting, it would use a similar technique. The sample image he posts as an example of this has no iso reported, possibly because there were multiple iso settings combined or else there's not a logical way to come up with the equivalent iso (or they were just too lazy to do so).

Jostian said:
So try this, find a place where the lighting aint great, indoors, under your desk etc, where iso would be about 1600 or even higher, take a shot in Manual mode but without adjusting anything, then change to auto mode and take exactly the same shot, then go to gallery, open each photo and check the iso using the 3 dot menu and select details, you'll see for the Manual shot the iso will read 1600 iso or 2000 iso or whatever and the photo will have some noise (obviously).
Now go to the photo you took in Auto mode and select 3 dot menu and select details, you'll see the iso is 0 and the shot is much less noisy (very clean), What the hell is going on here?? you can even check the F stop and shutter speed, they'll be the same but the Manual mode has high iso (like it should for a low light scene) but the auto mode will be much cleaner and have 0 as iso, and thus much cleaner photo, any idea's???
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I did the test and on manual iso was 1750 and exposure 1/15. then on auto mode iso was on 1600 and exposure at 1/15, but on AUTO there is almost not noise...

jdock said:
I saw a clue in the dpreview review for the G6. The reviewer thinks that a multi-frame technique is being used in very low light. This would combine sequential exposures kind of in an analogue to how HDR works. So while it would not be related to the HDR setting, it would use a similar technique. The sample image he posts as an example of this has no iso reported, possibly because there were multiple iso settings combined or else there's not a logical way to come up with the equivalent iso (or they were just too lazy to do so).
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Ah ok, makes sense, many thanks jdock, appreciated. Stupid thing is that one has no idea when it will do what you mention, i took 8 photos (in auto mode) of exactly the same scene and had 3 with no iso and 2 hdr shots and 3 with normal iso readings.
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It will mostly have zero ISO in low light condition. Which is amazing. That is why picture are less noisy. I don't have G6 but same thing happens on LG V20. I love the camera of V20 as I mostly take pictures indoor. I used to hate HTC 10 camera. All the pictures were extremely blurry and full of noise whether I keep HDR on, use manual mode(pro mode lowest ISO was 100) or flash.
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Below two picture taken from HTC 10. This phone was so expensive (750$) and look at the quality of camera. One picture i have taken on afternoon and other evening time. I hope none of the HTC fan come and start giving explanation.
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