After some testing, I find the following two settings give the best results in low light or indoor.
1. All default settings with HDR on. HDR seems to make for brighter and less noisy shots than without, and with much better shadow detail too.
2. All default settings but with Night Mode on. Use this only if your subject is very still, but this is the least noisiest setting.
If visibility of subject is too low, you can turn 'outdoor visibility' on, but be warned it'll make shots slightly noisier, as will the contrast option too.
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Hi guys
Which preference do you use? Is automatic brightness option best for battery saving?
i remember it was an official battery saving tip for iPhone and wondered if it's the case for N1.
eh, just keep it on the lowest brightness... thats the best bet
the problem with auto-brightness is that it fluctuates a bit too much if you're in a room with localised lights and shadows... even in a seemingly bright area to your eyes, the display will go to lowest brightness... i just found it personally annoying, as it would usually fluctuate when i wasn't expecting, and to a lower brightness than i could stand... i've since stopped using it... i set my brightness manually to about 25%... for me that's a good balance between a usuable brightness for all conditions, while still giving good battery life...
I use auto brightness with locale which toggles it on and off based on my location. But even before I did that I really didn't notice to much of a difference in battery levels at the end of the day.
I just wish there were min and max settings for auto brightness. Cause I am pretty sure I have never needed the brightness turned all the way up.
i prefer auto brightness if it works. my 1st N1 had a glitch where the screen brightness used to flicker. on my 2nd N1 the auto brightness does not adjust on full scale........(if you go into 100% dark room, the brightness setting must automatically drop to 0)
I too found that the auto-brightness flickered too much. I downloaded Brightness Level off the marketplace and never looked back...
Auto-brightness fluctuates too much for my liking. So, I just keep it set to middle brightness.
the light sensor is unstable, so manually 25% all the time..
Auto brightness too dark
In my Nexus autobrightness works ok outdoors, but indoors it sets the light too dark. I wish it`d work fine because it's a waste of time adjusting it manually every time you move into different light conditions.
I've read Nexus users report different behaviours of their light sensors, maybe it is a bad quality component of the phone. Is there an app which can modify the sensibility of the light sensor? Would be great to adjust this sensibility and set brightness always to auto with a little more brightness indoors in my case.
manual, 25% - the best balance of battery and light for me.
i use about 60%. I hated the automatic brightness because it was darker than I would like most of the time.
My position is, I bought a phone that has a high resolution, so why not give it the brightness to make the color "pop" like they should.
Htc Hd2 has only one flaw: outdoor display contrast. in the bright day contrast is not on the iphone display level.... if there is a possibility to increase display light and contrast?? i try lumos but result is same as before... I dont want to use antireflect foil or anything similar ....
I suppose that's very subjective. I use lumos with my own settings for the brightness curve (linear with a deep slope) and I can use it in daylight with no big issues.
In case you wanted to test, you probably could set the screen brightness to 100% manually from manila preferences to see if that suits your need, and then agjust lumos curve to your needs
I try again with lumos .... probably something I was not well set up ...
hey! -------> this time it's better and brighter!
But isn't the auto-backlight feature doing the same thing? Making Backlight bright when outdoors?
How is it compared to lumos?
Dadaism said:
But isn't the auto-backlight feature doing the same thing? Making Backlight bright when outdoors?
How is it compared to lumos?
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Lumos gives you control over the backlight. You can set up minimum and maximum backlight as well as the backlight intensity curve (vs external light intensity).
The built in auto backlight feature is very weak. It is fine for indoor use but it does not seem to get any darker in the pitch black and does not get much brighter in direct sunlight.
I find myself manually adjusting it everytime...
Agree - the automatic backlight is not working sufficiently. You all need to log this with HTC customer support so they can add it to the next firmware release. Issues really need to be logged sooner rather than later as this phone is going to soon be too old to warrant HTC spending any more time fixing things.
I've been trying to report everything I can before windows 7 comes out and everyone forgets about the Leo.
Hm, well I recognized that the Auto-Backlight is sometimes "slow". But not always. If I walk from a bright room into a dark room the display gets darker. But sometimes it stays quite bright.
Perhaps I give lumos a try. At least to compare.
But when Lumos has so many options to set a brightnes curve, won't you find yourself setting up an adjusted brighnness curve everytime because there is no curve that fits to every situation?
Sometimes there is bright sunlight and shadowy corners, sometimes there is a thunder-storm and barely light.
The light gradient won't be a linear one .
Ok, I played around a little bit.
What are your Max values with HD2? 1178 at mine.
0 is Min value but thats clear. Only thing that is wierd: When I move to a place not directly near a lightbulb the sensor goes very fast down to zero.
It shows zero but it is not dark in the room at all.
Is it the same at yours?
When set to 'Auto', the white balance for shots with flash has a strong blue cast. I've discovered that setting the white balance to the flourescent light setting results in much more accurate white balance with the flash. It really makes a huge difference to the quality of shots taken with the flash.
Hope someone finds this useful.
Any way to force the camera software to use the settings conform this tip, if it turns out to help?
Automatic white balance should just do that; automatically use the flourescent light setting when flash is used
My old smartphone can auto turn the brightness to max when I switch on camera mode, which is good because normally my camera brightness in quite low (I prefer low brightness).
Anyone know how to tweak it?
Any setting behind there?
Anyone else observing that when they take a pic with the flash on in "medium" light conditions, the photo comes out actually darker than if the flash wasn't even used?
I swear the timing of the flash is bad on my S5. When I tap the button to shoot the photo, the flash turns on and the image on the screen looks bright and good. But then I think the photo is actually taken a split second later after the flash has turned off, and the photo that gets taken is dark as hell. I think I've tried all the combination of settings in the default S5 camera app, and nothing helps.
Brent212 said:
Anyone else observing that when they take a pic with the flash on in "medium" light conditions, the photo comes out actually darker than if the flash wasn't even used?
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I haven't seen this with my S5. Unfortunately you didn't elaborate on your camera settings, camera version or other crucial details.
At a guess, and it is only speculation since we don't have your details, you are expecting the flash to act like a fill flash. When the auto mode (which is probably what you are using) probably uses the flash in a conventional manner i.e. a fixed shutter speed (or limited shutter speed range). There are good reasons for that, but the net effect if the subject is outside of the flash range is that little of the flash is reflected back and the (presumably) higher shutter speed lets less total light in resulting in a darker picture.
You can test that thesis by taking some pictures of a subject that is very close to the camera. If the problem goes away with close subjects that implies that the problem is an artifact of using flash for a subject that is too distant for the flash to work with. No flash can work at an unlimited distance which is why people using a flash in a stadium when they are 75 meters from a subject is silly. In this case, flash mode simply isn't appropriate to the situation you are using it in and you'd be farther ahead to use a slower shutter speed, without flash.
It's highly unlikely that a bug would see the shutter opening after the flash.
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It happens with literally *every* combination of the settings in the camera app (with flash set to "on"). Auto mode, beauty face mode... actually, are there any other modes that I'd use to take a picture of something 3 feet away in a darkish room? I have panorama, "shot & more", virtual tour... those wouldn't be right, correct? So both beauty face and auto, with all the combination of settings... hdr on/off, stabilization on/off, iso at auto and all four "manual" options, all three metering modes... nothing makes a difference.
The problem is the same all the times -- it's not just that the non "subject" areas are dark -- the whole image is dark, just like if you turned off the light in a room and snapped a pic at the moment when the light was still on at 50% brightness as it's turning off. It's super annoying just because of how damn good the image looks on the screen when the photo is being taken... it even seems to "snap" the shot at the right time... the shutter sound goes off and the little border animation happens when the pic is nice and bright. Then I open the actual image and it's garbage.
I was hoping someone might know of some setting in a config file somewhere for a delay between when the flash is triggered and when the camera attempts to capture the image, and that maybe mine got changed somehow to a larger than optimal value.
My wife has an s5, I'll have to test with hers and see if it suffers from the same problem.
Long story short: the camera is using a fast exposure time to keep the subject from being "blown out", i.e. overexposed, when the flash is used. That means that the foreground is going to be sharper but anything in the background will be lost in darkness if the ambient lighting is low. When you leave the flash off, the camera will use a longer exposure time (or shutter speed, if you will) to allow enough light, which also lets more of the background be seen in the picture.
Another thing to consider is that if your screen is set for auto brightness control, you will not have the same brightness when viewing the gallery pictures that you will when looking at the camera view. The camera view is full brightness at all times, but if you're viewing the pictures that you took in the gallery, screen brightness will drop down according to ambient lighting. Photos definitely look dark if you're looking at the gallery by lamp light.
Marlin29 said:
Long story short: the camera is using a fast exposure time to keep the subject from being "blown out", i.e. overexposed, when the flash is used. That means that the foreground is going to be sharper but anything in the background will be lost in darkness if the ambient lighting is low. When you leave the flash off, the camera will use a longer exposure time (or shutter speed, if you will) to allow enough light, which also lets more of the background be seen in the picture.
Another thing to consider is that if your screen is set for auto brightness control, you will not have the same brightness when viewing the gallery pictures that you will when looking at the camera view. The camera view is full brightness at all times, but if you're viewing the pictures that you took in the gallery, screen brightness will drop down according to ambient lighting. Photos definitely look dark if you're looking at the gallery by lamp light.
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That's interesting stuff, but doesn't really apply to the problem I described (at least the first part... the screen brightness setting stuff is potentially related, but isn't in my case). The exposure time is fine, it's just **when** the exposure starts that is the problem... a little too late, IMO. Really wish there was a way to adjust when it takes the photo in relation to when the flash is fired.
The foreground objects aren't lit up at all. No difference between foreground and background. Sometimes, I'm taking a picture of a t-shirt laying on a flat surface from 2 feet away. Without a flash it looks pretty good, but it's a little dark so I decide to try the flash to see if it'll lighten it up a bit. Instead, it makes it look like I turned out half the lights in the room.... way darker than no flash.
Same here, three friends of mine too.
I'm having the same problem s5 neo
I just figured out how to correct the pics from coming out dark. Go into camera-settings-exposure value-slide to the right to 2.5 or more.My pics come out fine now. Indoor light normal daylight.( with flash off.) I will know more in other settings (places ,situations )if it needs to be tweaked again.
no problems here
my settings are AUTO MODE
flash AUTO
no effets at all
and still i get good shots in night
Power/current draw issue?
Mine was doing this, and I noticed the first flash (ranging) was fine, but the second flash (to illuminate the image when taken) was much weaker. Whilst plugged into charge, repeated low light experiment, and the low light flash illuminated image was fine!! Maybe battery on its way out?