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[Q] [Solved] Possible Faulty Camera Module of VS980 G2 Compared to Nexus 5

Hello all. I recently purchased an LG G2 VS980 second hand. I've got a question about the camera. I'm wondering if the camera in the unit I have is defective, or if that's just the way it is. It seems that any photo's I try and take with unnatural light, involve massive over exposure of that light if it's nearby and loss of detail. Lowering the exposure and iso setting does not compensate enough for this problem, either does trying HDR mode. I have enclosed a photo taken with a Nexus 5 which properly handles a particular scenario throne at it, as well as the same shot taken with the LG G2. There's a big difference between the two, and this is not what I was expecting given everything I've seen in terms of the G2's photographic capabilities. What are your thoughts? I have tried taking photo's on the G2 with the stock camera as well as Google's camera, but I could come nowhere close to the nexus 5 in terms of detail.

bestmvno.com said:
Hello all. I recently purchased an LG G2 VS980 second hand. I've got a question about the camera. I'm wondering if the camera in the unit I have is defective, or if that's just the way it is. It seems that any photo's I try and take with unnatural light, involve massive over exposure of that light if it's nearby and loss of detail. Lowering the exposure and iso setting does not compensate enough for this problem, either does trying HDR mode. I have enclosed a photo taken with a Nexus 5 which properly handles a particular scenario throne at it, as well as the same shot taken with the LG G2. There's a big difference between the two, and this is not what I was expecting given everything I've seen in terms of the G2's photographic capabilities. What are your thoughts? I have tried taking photo's on the G2 with the stock camera as well as Google's camera, but I could come nowhere close to the nexus 5 in terms of detail.
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Solved, and nearly unbelievable to me. This problem seems to have occurred because the camera lens cover had "scratches" on it that were hard to see. Actually they were not scratches, but just a crappy oleophobic coating applied to the lens cover by LG that gave the appearance of scratches. To fix this, I disassembled the phone and removed the plastic cover that housed the camera lens cover. I then followed the instructions in another thread and used toothpaste and q-tips to clean the it. The difference in photo quality is astounding and now the photos of my lamps match or surpass what I was getting from the Nexus 5. It was very time consuming though to get it cleaned using the toothpaste method. Instructions for anyone else having this issue can be found in the following thread. I suggest though, if you need to do the cleaning, you also remove the plastic housing containing the lens cover from the phone as shown in this youtube video so that you don't accidentally get water or anything else dripping into the inside of the actual phone. I actually also used some distilled vinegar for cleaning and that may have worked better than the toothpaste.

Real NIGHT VISION on our G3

Since our G3 has the laser focus shouldn't it be able to see at night?. Night vision uses IR light which the laser focus puts out. Now all we need is an app to process the IR light from our laser focus an boom we have REAL night visiovision not like those fake android apps. The best part about it is only our G3 are capable of doing it.. Take that Apple and Samsung.

Afaik to use IR the camera sensor itself would need to be able to capture the light emited in the IR spectrum. This is pure speculation right here since I havent read on how the laser autofocus works, however I do believe it it only used to measure the distance to automatically adjust focus tpfor that distance. Emiting IR and capting/reading the IR is 2 different things.
Also, I can clearly see the laser autofocus as a red dot (not very smart, but SCIENCE). So the I'm not quite sure that the autofocus module can even detect IR.
And add to that, we're surrounded by IR. Emitting and being able to capture ad process the infrared spectrum around us with a sensor that was made for the visible spectrum (400-800nm) would be impossible to do unless it can also detect longer wavelengths (IR).
Tl; dr: Can't be done. Laser is red light, not IR. No infrared receiver/sensor. Camera sensor can't detect IR.
PS: Sorry if this is a bit hard to understand. I'm used to explaining physics in french lol

macdaddie87 said:
Since our G3 has the laser focus shouldn't it be able to see at night?. Night vision uses IR light which the laser focus puts out. Now all we need is an app to process the IR light from our laser focus an boom we have REAL night visiovision not like those fake android apps. The best part about it is only our G3 are capable of doing it.. Take that Apple and Samsung.
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1) Laser autofocus if a point source. It's ray is very focused and weak. Besides, it's in visible spectrum (though quite close to IR).
2) Our camera has an inbuilt IR filter. Until it's removed, it won't see in IR.

YaDr said:
1) Laser autofocus if a point source. It's ray is very focused and weak. Besides, it's in visible spectrum (though quite close to IR).
2) Our camera has an inbuilt IR filter. Until it's removed, it won't see in IR.
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Re point 2):
I don't believe that is true.
I use the g3 camera to verify that my IR emitters are working. The IR emitters operate outside of the visible spectrum and I can't see them. Point the g3 camera at them and boom they're visible. Test it now with your TV's remote control.
I cannot speak to point 1). However, I believe the threads OP is right, the tech is in place and all that is needed is:
a) someone capable of writing an app to exploit it; and maybe possibly,
b) an IR emitter LED array (perhaps built into a case or a clip-on attachment) to address point 1). To that point, the camera flash is an LED (light emitting diode) and therefore, by changing the input voltage can emit light of any colour in the visible spectrum; and I submit - should also be able to emit light in the IR spectrum.

V20 Bug - Purple Shadow when Taking Night Pics with Wide Lens

Hi Everyone,
Have a look at attached example image to see what I mean.
Please try to take a manual shot with your wide lens in a very dark environment with very high ISO (3200 in example) and exposure time of 5secs plus (20 secs in example).
Everyone who has tried that so far has the same issue, a big purple shadow on the top. It's most likely the laser and it won't happen with the normal lense.
Do you have the same result? Any suggestions what we can do about it?

Whoa! I haven't seen that in a long time. I think maybe around the time of the Nikon D80. I can't currently try this out personally but by the sounds of it what has happened is called Amp Glow. It's when you kind of start getting out of the bounds of what is really acceptable shooting conditions for a given sensor. In this case, if you really are shooting in conditions that call for high ISO AND still need a shutter speed of 20 seconds and the image still comes out that dark, then you're way beyond realistic expectations for shooting with a cellphone. In the older DSLRs, people would see it when doing star trail photos that were 10 minutes or longer. Frame stacking software became the solution to this problem by taking a lot of shorter photos and stacking them up and pulling through the new dots of light. (And this is still used by a lot of photographers as it also gets rid of other forms of noise.)
So what is happening? ISO is pretty much the gain. It's the amplification being applied to the signal coming off of the sensor. Ideally with ANY camera, you want to stay as close to the base ISO of a given sensor. That's usually the lowest ISO number. (There are some exceptions where some camera manufacturers have done some trickery to get a lower ISO to show up but that was short lived as it didn't really help things.) Unfortunately, image sensors are not hanging in space. They're packed in with a ton of other stuff. Stuff that gets warm. If that stuff is near an edge of the sensor, that heat bleeds into the sensor and then those warmed pixels get amplified by the higher ISO and next thing you know, Amp Glow. Well, that's the simplified version at least.
A cellphone, any cellphone, is not designed for those kinds of shots. If they were, they would have a tripod mount, a much better flash, and a much larger sensor. (Yeah, the flash on your cellphone is not meant to light up stuff much past 5 feet. Even the ones built into a DSLR aren't meant for much past about 15-20 feet.) The reality is that cellphones are designed for handheld shots with decent light. Even the larger sensor used in some cellphones shouldn't be expected to pull any miracles that top end DSLRs are just barely pulling off cleanly. For that shot, you would want to use a dedicated camera locked down on a tripod using base ISO and long exposure at the very least. Although, personally, I'd probably just take a pass on that shot.

someone on reddit has the exam same issue with the wide angle. and someone said it's in the regular too. weird. my s7 never had this purple hue when I did even 30 second exposure at night.
Sent from my LG V20 US996

something obstructing the lens maybe, or just camera went bad

Better hope this isn't the same problem the HTC one m7 had with the purple haze. The culprit was a light sensor on the camera would overhear and give a purple haze on the screen in low light. Place the phone face down and with the camera on and see if the purple comes back.
Sent from my LG-H910 using Tapatalk

Dark Jedi said:
Better hope this isn't the same problem the HTC one m7 had with the purple haze. The culprit was a light sensor on the camera would overhear and give a purple haze on the screen in low light. Place the phone face down and with the camera on and see if the purple comes back.
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No, it won't happen with the same ISO/Shutter settings I took the previously attached photo. But maybe that's because it's not dark enough. Did the M7 issue only happen in dark enviornment as well?
CHH2 said:
Whoa! I haven't seen that in a long time. I think maybe around the time of the Nikon D80. I can't currently try this out personally but by the sounds of it what has happened is called Amp Glow. It's when you kind of start getting out of the bounds of what is really acceptable shooting conditions for a given sensor. In this case, if you really are shooting in conditions that call for high ISO AND still need a shutter speed of 20 seconds and the image still comes out that dark, then you're way beyond realistic expectations for shooting with a cellphone. In the older DSLRs, people would see it when doing star trail photos that were 10 minutes or longer. Frame stacking software became the solution to this problem by taking a lot of shorter photos and stacking them up and pulling through the new dots of light. (And this is still used by a lot of photographers as it also gets rid of other forms of noise.)
So what is happening? ISO is pretty much the gain. It's the amplification being applied to the signal coming off of the sensor. Ideally with ANY camera, you want to stay as close to the base ISO of a given sensor. That's usually the lowest ISO number. (There are some exceptions where some camera manufacturers have done some trickery to get a lower ISO to show up but that was short lived as it didn't really help things.) Unfortunately, image sensors are not hanging in space. They're packed in with a ton of other stuff. Stuff that gets warm. If that stuff is near an edge of the sensor, that heat bleeds into the sensor and then those warmed pixels get amplified by the higher ISO and next thing you know, Amp Glow. Well, that's the simplified version at least.
A cellphone, any cellphone, is not designed for those kinds of shots. If they were, they would have a tripod mount, a much better flash, and a much larger sensor. (Yeah, the flash on your cellphone is not meant to light up stuff much past 5 feet. Even the ones built into a DSLR aren't meant for much past about 15-20 feet.) The reality is that cellphones are designed for handheld shots with decent light. Even the larger sensor used in some cellphones shouldn't be expected to pull any miracles that top end DSLRs are just barely pulling off cleanly. For that shot, you would want to use a dedicated camera locked down on a tripod using base ISO and long exposure at the very least. Although, personally, I'd probably just take a pass on that shot.
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Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. My question here would be, why doesn't it happen to other phone-cameras with similar settings?

Kujoja said:
No, it won't happen with the same ISO/Shutter settings I took the previously attached photo. But maybe that's because it's not dark enough. Did the M7 issue only happen in dark enviornment as well?
Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. My question here would be, why doesn't it happen to other phone-cameras with similar settings?
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Yes the m7 only happened in low light / dark environment. Do a Google search for HTC one m7 purple haze. What caused me not to buy another htc phone
Sent from my LG-H910 using Tapatalk

Kujoja said:
No, it won't happen with the same ISO/Shutter settings I took the previously attached photo. But maybe that's because it's not dark enough. Did the M7 issue only happen in dark enviornment as well?
Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. My question here would be, why doesn't it happen to other phone-cameras with similar settings?
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Settings aren't the only part of the equation. The other par is the placement of other components within the device. I need to look at the tear downs to see how the various parts are placed next to each other but something is heating up and passing that heat to the sensor. Just off the top of my head there are four parts together; the two camera sensors, the laser focus module, and the flask module. Each one of those on its own will generate heat if used enough.
Dark Jedi said:
Yes the m7 only happened in low light / dark environment. Do a Google search for HTC one m7 purple haze. What caused me not to buy another htc phone
Sent from my LG-H910 using Tapatalk
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It's the same issue. I haven't looked at the HTC issue but from your description of it, it's the same. Amp glow is what it is called in digital photography. (OK, silly that I said digital as you don't get amp glow in film.) The glow will show up because there is no other data coming off of the sensor for those pixels and the heat is amplified as "data".
---------- Post added at 05:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:59 PM ----------
Ok, just watched the JerryRigEverything repair tear down. The flash module sits right next to the wide angle and the laser focus next to the regular sensor. There is no mention as to what is sitting next to the sensors on the main board but I see silver boxes on each side with one having some sort of black and yellow warning sticker. Not sure what they are so I can't rope them in as culprits. So for now, I'd say it's a combo of the four units of the camera assembly.
Were you running the flash or one of the cameras a lot while you were playing around? Shooting a lot of long exposure shots in a row?
I'll get to test out some night shots and video tonight at a lighting ceremony but I'm still not expecting to shoot 3200 for 20 seconds type shots. Again, that's pretty extreme.

I know what's wrong with g5plus camera.

The highlighted thing about g5 plus was also the reason for bad camera. The 1.7 aperture and wide angle camera are the cause here. Though it is good for shots within a certain distance like 10-15 feet. But any further the pictures loose sharpness and gets noisy due to which moto decided to use high denoising due to which the photos look soft. My father's redmi 4 clicks better distance pictures than this. It has 2.0 aperture and little less wide angle lens.

Don't forget that G5 Plus have the same camera sensor as HTC U11 or Asus Zenfone 4 (which takes good pictures on stock software).
Worse photo quality is caused by software (Motorola/Lenovo screw it up).
Did you tried any mods/apps? You can find a lot of these, but I suggest you to try Google camera app port.

.czarodziej said:
Don't forget that G5 Plus have the same camera sensor as HTC U11 or Asus Zenfone 4 (which takes good pictures on stock software).
Worse photo quality is caused by software (Motorola/Lenovo screw it up).
Did you tried any mods/apps? You can find a lot of these, but I suggest you to try Google camera app port.
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I use bacon camera on stock Android without root.
I disabled noise reduction and use hdr with manual mode and stable hands to get though grainy but nice pictures. Though the app is not perfect but it works

When I first got the G5+ I thought the camera was too dark... While a lower aperture may help in low light shots it does cause a bit of trouble for highly illuminated scenes.
HDR does compensate but it's nothing like HDR+ from Google.
Plus, terrible sharpen and overdone Noise Reduction excessive Color NR.
I felt quite dissapointed comparing it to my old Titan (G2)

Anyone tried to mod the camera to enable debug mode? You can disable noise reduction from there

ugupta100 said:
The highlighted thing about g5 plus was also the reason for bad camera. The 1.7 aperture and wide angle camera are the cause here. Though it is good for shots within a certain distance like 10-15 feet. But any further the pictures loose sharpness and gets noisy due to which moto decided to use high denoising due to which the photos look soft. My father's redmi 4 clicks better distance pictures than this. It has 2.0 aperture and little less wide angle lens.
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Coming from an old school enthusiast of photography background - you're aperture on your lens (in this case f1.7) isn't going to cause noise - that's a function of the sensor. A lot changed when we went from film to digital sensors, but the impact of the f number of the lens did not.
You might be on to something with the with loss of sharpness though. Typically a fixed focal length lens is at it's sharpest at it's only setting... but they very well could have forked this up.
Given that the camera does pretty adequately with other camera software or other hacks - I don't think it's a hardware issue or lens issue. It could be a cut rate sensor...
It could also just be that whomever chose the default settings for this camera did a bad job

pwag said:
Your aperture on your lens (in this case f1.7) isn't going to cause noise - that's a function of the sensor. A lot changed when we went from film to digital sensors, but the impact of the f number of the lens did not.
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What about shadows in bright scenes such as outdoor scenery?
I mean, wouldn't lens aperture like f2.2 preserve more of these details?

That's a function of the film/sensor.
Your f number controls light and the depth of field (area that's in focus) - a smaller f number is more desirable because it allows more light to the film/sensor.
The only thing different here than fine that I can see is the size/diameter of the lens related to the f number. A larger f number, like f 8 or f16 increases the depth of field and sharpness, but at the cost of light hitting the film/sensor. That results in a longer exposure time.
A wide open f stop means more light and shorter exposure times.
One thing we gained with sensors over film is a wider range between highlights and shadows... You could get more shadows and more highlights. Film could get only so much of that before shadows went black and highlights blew out to white. But you still have a limited range. You can't get it all. In order to keep the highlights from going completely white you have to trade off some of the shadow range.
It's early and I'm probably explaining this horribly. Your spectrum between black and white or shadows and highlights is very long. But your camera sensors capability can only encompass a range of that spectrum. If the spectrum were a line of shades of grey from black to white that was, say, 10 units long, the range you could get in one image might be six units long. You've gotta give up somcombo of four units either at the black end of the spectrum or the light side.
If the cameras loaing details in the shadows that's because it's opting to the highlight/light end of the range.
So lens doesn't play a huge role in what chunk of the spectrum the film/sensor can encompass. But does play a role in how quickly the sensor can collect that info. Higher f number = smaller amounts of light on the sensor = longer exposure times.
My guess would be that the sensor or software is biased toward highlights because it results in faster exposures making life easier for snap shots and selfies.

M1810 said:
Anyone tried to mod the camera to enable debug mode? You can disable noise reduction from there
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If you guys paid attention for once on this XDA, you might have seen my damn thread or the chromatixx thread https://forum.xda-developers.com/g5-plus/how-to/workaround-noise-reduction-t3744031
https://forum.xda-developers.com/g5-plus/themes/modcamera-aggressive-sharpening-noise-t3604458

Moto G7 worse the G6 phones?

I have some concerns about the new Motorola G7 phones particularly:
Screen - The screen tends to have a blue/cool tinge, the overall display calibration is "off".
Camera - Colours can be washed-out, zoom has many artifacts & noise and poor dynamic range at night. Stabilization needs a lot of work (for both front & back) and overall sharpness/detail/colour could be better.
Does this mean the actual lens is of inferior make & quality?
Will a GCam port be enough to compensate for the otherwise poor camera image quality?
Need help. Thank you.

Unlike G6 and Z3 Play, you cannot change the color temperature.
However, you can install CF Lumen if yours rooted.
I did it on both G6 (compensate green) and G7 to keep the color temperature consistent.

gino_76ph said:
I have some concerns about the new Motorola G7 phones particularly:
Screen - The screen tends to have a blue/cool tinge, the overall display calibration is "off".
Camera - Colours can be washed-out, zoom has many artifacts & noise and poor dynamic range at night. Stabilization needs a lot of work (for both front & back) and overall sharpness/detail/colour could be better.
Does this mean the actual lens is of inferior make & quality?
Will a GCam port be enough to compensate for the otherwise poor camera image quality?
Need help. Thank you.
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Click to collapse
For the screen, I usually use night light. Corrects it easily
I know our maintainer is working on a gcam port last I knew. If you have twrp you can always flash gapps with gcam
But to answer the thread title: no its not worse with more RAM, more storage, better SoC, etc than the g6

gino_76ph said:
I have some concerns about the new Motorola G7 phones particularly:
Screen - The screen tends to have a blue/cool tinge, the overall display calibration is "off".
Camera - Colours can be washed-out, zoom has many artifacts & noise and poor dynamic range at night. Stabilization needs a lot of work (for both front & back) and overall sharpness/detail/colour could be better.
Does this mean the actual lens is of inferior make & quality?
Will a GCam port be enough to compensate for the otherwise poor camera image quality?
Need help. Thank you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't noticed where the screen seems to be blue, mine looks fine to me and other colors seem just fine.
As far as zoom goes this device does not have optical zoom, so of course it's going to be bad. May as well take picture normal then crop, it achieves the same thing. I think stabilization is amazing, definitely a lot better than the G6.
I use the Google Camera port and it definitely takes good pictures but I haven't noticed and differences between them. Night sight is amazing too.

Bluemgt06 said:
I haven't noticed where the screen seems to be blue, mine looks fine to me and other colors seem just fine.
As far as zoom goes this device does not have optical zoom, so of course it's going to be bad. May as well take picture normal then crop, it achieves the same thing. I think stabilization is amazing, definitely a lot better than the G6.
I use the Google Camera port and it definitely takes good pictures but I haven't noticed and differences between them. Night sight is amazing too.
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I have a replacement screen and the video looks fabulous over my g4. That died. Get a case or you're going to be looking on eBay for a picture of the exact same ribbon cable printing for about 29 bucks. If the photo doesn't show same printing on the black, don't get it! Real on left, not gorilla glass 3 on the right. I used silicone on the very edges instead of getting that 3M stuff because this model of phone uses the REALLY thin stuff. Did my pic upload?

Absolutely NOT! I feel as though the G7 is USA's G7 Plus with those specs. Lenovo really screwed up not bringing the G6+ to the USA last year. My OG Pixel was trashed (throwing it at a concrete wall) and my closest option to purchase an Unlocked Device was at Walmart. All the devices they had on display were last years models and the very non-knowledgeable sales Rep didnt know what was in stock, so i said forget the display models and lets head over to the storage box and see what there is to choose from. When he opened the box, a bright light shined over and they're were about 8 G7s (non of which was on display). "Oh we cant sell them yet" WTF??? Go I got stuck taking a G6, but I was NOT a happy customer. Contacted Walmart Customer Support and 2 days later i returned the G6 for my awesome Moto G7.

oldhead775 said:
I have a replacement screen and the video looks fabulous over my g4. That died. Get a case or you're going to be looking on eBay for a picture of the exact same ribbon cable printing for about 29 bucks. If the photo doesn't show same printing on the black, don't get it! Real on left, not gorilla glass 3 on the right. I used silicone on the very edges instead of getting that 3M stuff because this model of phone uses the REALLY thin stuff. Did my pic upload?
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I do repairs so I see complaints about color accuracy on devices all the time, but you can take devices straight out of the box and there will be variations because there is an acceptable tolerance otherwise they'd be throwing out so many screens. The ones that tend to get the most complaints are the ones at the edge of the tolerance.
3m tape is awful for screen replacement, we use the black Tessa tape, it's super sticky and doesn't like to let go.
(Not seeing a picture)