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For me Samsung phones has the best hardware out there. But it is still missing something. I have been wondering why their devices have no auto exposure on the focused area just like many android devices have it now. Although I can see their S6 edge plus has it now but im not totally satisfied with it.
So my question is the auto exposure(adjusting the exposure of the photo to the area you what to receive more light to have a picture perfect) is a hardware or software limitation? if it is software probably there are third party apps out there can you guys tell me what it is. I have been using Camera FV5 but it still does not do that.
crazyraiga said:
For me Samsung phones has the best hardware out there. But it is still missing something. I have been wondering why their devices have no auto exposure on the focused area just like many android devices have it now. Although I can see their S6 edge plus has it now but im not totally satisfied with it.
So my question is the auto exposure(adjusting the exposure of the photo to the area you what to receive more light to have a picture perfect) is a hardware or software limitation? if it is software probably there are third party apps out there can you guys tell me what it is. I have been using Camera FV5 but it still does not do that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you talking a RAW format output file that you can edit/manipulate through Lightroom/PS or any third party software? If I am correct...good luck with that. Myself is using camera FV5 but figured out that what is the point and use of having a raw file coming out from this phone sensors...almost like useless. I rather side to the JPG output and put everything on auto and let the phone decide. Just imagine, Even until this day where modern dslr's, mirrorless are coming out but still having problem with noise coming out from those cameras (raw files). A micro four-thirds sensor has more noise compare to APS-C's, Apsc raw produce noise more than FULL Frame, Medium Format are less noise compare to Full frame. My point is.... The camera sensor of samsung phones are wayyyyy.... smaller than four-thirds therefore we can't expect that it will produce a better raw files, plus phones fixed lens. If there are raw files coming out from those sensors might not be usable compare to DSLR's. Even in Fuji and Sony mirrorless nowadays, specifically the XT-10 and A6000 if you go down lower to their native ISO probably not a good thing.
In short... Camera phones sensors not designed for RAW files or not yet ready maybe in the future. I am a portrait and landscape photographer (not a PRO) and uses my phone from time to time when my crappy old dslr go nuts Like you, I would love to see this feature fully functional in the future
edit: Camera FV5
You can manipulate the settings of your FV5 app by going to Menu - Shooting Utilities and click the last one, touch to capture. Make sure you switch ON your HISTOGRAM so that you can expose properly on your shot, then change your Light Metering Mode to the second one which Center Weighed (no label), That way you can expose your shot the way you want. You can also customized the exposure time by choosing the S mode and select custom for open shutter time. Kept in mind that What you See is What you Get on this app for it will give you JPG file. For me I really rely more on HISTOGRAM, if the native camera of samsung has the histogram ability then I will probably use it more. Cheers!
You'll probably see this feature in the Galaxy Camera lineup, but I doubt it'll make is way into the regular smartphone lineup.....why would it, they want us to buy their GC range too......
http://i.imgur.com/rVnFwJM.jpg
agasagas said:
Are you talking a RAW format output file that you can edit/manipulate through Lightroom/PS or any third party software? If I am correct...good luck with that. Myself is using camera FV5 but figured out that what is the point and use of having a raw file coming out from this phone sensors...almost like useless. I rather side to the JPG output and put everything on auto and let the phone decide. Just imagine, Even until this day where modern dslr's, mirrorless are coming out but still having problem with noise coming out from those cameras (raw files). A micro four-thirds sensor has more noise compare to APS-C's, Apsc raw produce noise more than FULL Frame, Medium Format are less noise compare to Full frame. My point is.... The camera sensor of samsung phones are wayyyyy.... smaller than four-thirds therefore we can't expect that it will produce a better raw files, plus phones fixed lens. If there are raw files coming out from those sensors might not be usable compare to DSLR's. Even in Fuji and Sony mirrorless nowadays, specifically the XT-10 and A6000 if you go down lower to their native ISO probably not a good thing.
In short... Camera phones sensors not designed for RAW files or not yet ready maybe in the future. I am a portrait and landscape photographer (not a PRO) and uses my phone from time to time when my crappy old dslr go nuts Like you, I would love to see this feature fully functional in the future
edit: Camera FV5
You can manipulate the settings of your FV5 app by going to Menu - Shooting Utilities and click the last one, touch to capture. Make sure you switch ON your HISTOGRAM so that you can expose properly on your shot, then change your Light Metering Mode to the second one which Center Weighed (no label), That way you can expose your shot the way you want. You can also customized the exposure time by choosing the S mode and select custom for open shutter time. Kept in mind that What you See is What you Get on this app for it will give you JPG file. For me I really rely more on HISTOGRAM, if the native camera of samsung has the histogram ability then I will probably use it more. Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't take raw format. I just want a point-shoot-upload phone camera with good balanced light and everything(like what iphone does so as many android devices out there). just to be clear I am not comparing phone camera sensors to dslr sensors because those are very different. im no a pro photographer and I know phone cameras are not designed for that. I just want a better(satisfying) result from what hardware it possessed.
keithross39 said:
You'll probably see this feature in the Galaxy Camera lineup, but I doubt it'll make is way into the regular smartphone lineup.....why would it, they want us to buy their GC range too......
http://i.imgur.com/rVnFwJM.jpg
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see. so it is a hardware limitation?
I never said anything about hardware limitations......
All I said was, that for Samsung, it wouldn't make financial sense to include every camera function on a smartphone, when they have other, more fully featured devices that they are selling too.....
http://i.imgur.com/rVnFwJM.jpg
keithross39 said:
I never said anything about hardware limitations......
All I said was, that for Samsung, it wouldn't make financial sense to include every camera function on a smartphone, when they have other, more fully featured devices that they are selling too.....
http://i.imgur.com/rVnFwJM.jpg
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so if it is not hardware limitation there should be an app out there. I can other OEMs that uses either Samsung or Sony sensors for there camera and theirs work like a charm. but how come Samsung does not have it. atleast some devs are making that app.
I am no dev nor a programmer but I think it would not be that hard to develop a camera that works like other OEM devices.
Yeah....your best bet is a 3rd party independent app, because I can't see Samsung implementing these features on a standard smartphone. It wouldn't make business sense for them to do so.....not if they want to continue selling their Galaxy Camera range.......
http://i.imgur.com/rVnFwJM.jpg
keithross39 said:
Yeah....your best bet is a 3rd party independent app, because I can't see Samsung implementing these features on a standard smartphone. It wouldn't make business sense for them to do so.....not if they want to continue selling their Galaxy Camera range.......
http://i.imgur.com/rVnFwJM.jpg
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah. tried every other third party apps out there can't find one that suits to my preferences. tried using custom roms, ported other rom but no luck for me yet.
they should be implementing that one especially on their flag carrier series. because every other android devices shifted to that camera functionality. they already implemented it in their s6 edge+ was hoping that upon mashmallow update they can implement it in s5.
BTW can you help me find that app? where I can just tap to anywhere and the exposure compensation for the whole image is adjusted to where I touched it.
Don't have any idea of actual, specific apps......If I want ultimate control over my image capturing, then I'll use one of my DSLR's......
But here's a good place to start looking....
http://thefluffyheads.com/techie-tony/5-android-camera-dslr-apps
http://i.imgur.com/rVnFwJM.jpg
I usually just use HDR on the Samsung camera which gives good exposure across the image. If you don't want to use that, in the settings is an option "metering modes" which let's you pick how the exposure is selected. I haven't checked to see if spot metering is based off the centre or the focus point, though.
keithross39 said:
Don't have any idea of actual, specific apps......If I want ultimate control over my image capturing, then I'll use one of my DSLR's......
But here's a good place to start looking....
http://thefluffyheads.com/techie-tony/5-android-camera-dslr-apps
http://i.imgur.com/rVnFwJM.jpg
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know smartphone cameras are not as good as DSLRs. just want a little bit more control in my device's camera. it is just so sad that we have a lot of best developers here in xda. but they are more focused on custom roms, exploits(root), ports and mods. I guess devs are not that much interested in other stuffs.
arghness said:
I usually just use HDR on the Samsung camera which gives good exposure across the image. If you don't want to use that, in the settings is an option "metering modes" which let's you pick how the exposure is selected. I haven't checked to see if spot metering is based off the centre or the focus point, though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HDR is only good for outdoors and well lit surroundings. and metering modes does not give me the satisfaction. probably need to buy mid range smartphones with good cameras and fingerprint scanner.
Hey guys,
I Love CM/AOSP ROMs but often find the camera somewhat lacking compared to the Touchwiz one, any recommendations for a good camera app?
The pre-installed snap camera is as good as it gets for cm/aosp based roms
you can get the HTC Camera (Search HTC Camera old on google) its really good. i use that on my TW rom i think its better
As far as the S5 goes - I can give you the answer, because I also have the same device. I'm using Snap Camera HDR (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.marginz.snap&hl=en). The stock CM camera lacks saturation and this app allows you to increase it. I've actually compared pictures from both TouchWiz and CM based ROMs and I can say that when you increase the saturation to 8 or 9, you absoulutelly can't tell the difference.
The stock camera that comes with ResurrectionRemix is Terrible... Especially in Low Light.
Just tried that, and it doesn't seem to be storing the photos are taking em haha. Forgot to mention i'm using a MM rom.
The only down side to snap camera (pro) is how it handles low light photos compared to TW.
Other than that I agree with the rest, snap camera is the best it gets.
PS. Looking into the HTC camera being recommended, will return with results.
I there! I can suggest two pay apps:
A BETTER CAMERA - good quality camera, the one I use with stock ROM. It supports real HDR, video recording (only 1080p) with HDR (I think it's same as Rich Tone HDR of stock camera), panorama mode, and DRO (Dynamic Range Optimization) that is very similar to Rich Tone HDR (it's a post-processing filter that fix overall exposure of the photos and can save both original and fixed shots).
PRO CAPTURE - another good camera, it's support natively Samsung Rich Tone HDR (in Scene Mode it's simply called HDR) but photos is little darker thank stock camera. I don't know if support this function with custom ROMs. Photo quality is very good, but this one not support video recording.
Greetings guys, ive seen that the camera api 2 is still broken for galaxy s6 in the android m, this can be checked easelly by running any custom camera app like camera fv 5, a better camera or proshot camera.
All of them return blurry pictures with camera api 2, while works flawlessly with old camera api.
Even though im very very happy with the galaxy default camera app finally supporting shutter speed and raw, i was hoping the camera api 2 wouldve been properly implemented in this build which unfortunatelly it wasnt.
So im trying to do get as much data as possible by asking you guys to post your phone model, android version, sensor brand/model and experience with camera api 2:
Ill go first:
Phone: G920F
Android: Android 6.0.1
Camera Sensor: Sony_IMX240 (To check your sensor install this app from google play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.finalwire.aida64&hl=pt_PT)
Testing:
ProShot(Paid) Blurry pictures,
Camera FV5(Paid)=Blurry Camera API2 (Resolution maximum of 8mp) and up to 3200 iso, but normal image quality with old camera api (Resolution maximum of 16mp) but only 800iso,
A Better Camera (Paid) Blurry Camera Api2 but normal image quality with old camera api.
This problem is included in lollipop 5.1.1
I talk with proshot developers for this problem 5 months ago and he hasn t solution
supera3 said:
This problem is included in lollipop 5.1.1
I talk with proshot developers for this problem 5 months ago and he hasn t solution
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi! I'm the dev of ProShot. I'm really stumped on the soft images issue on Samsung phones. If you shoot RAW you will see that correct focus was achieved, but the JPEG doesn't look quite right. Running a simple sharpen filter produces results closer to the stock camera app, but it's not quite 100%.
No other device has this issue, so Samsung is definitely at fault here. And only offering 8MP resolutions in Android M is a pretty bad oversight, they clearly didn't test this update that well :/
Hi all , I have to say that with CameraFV all problems said up are same here - blury detail on jpg photo , 8mpx max resolution for jpgs in MM. But in RAW everything is just right - detail and resolution. Dont know where is problem but think on 90% is base on Samsung's camera driver. Dont know also situation in S7.
A made also comparisson between RAWs in CameraFV and Stock Camera app for Sammy and may say that cameraFV take better detail at all , stock camera app has more noise and detail is more aggressive.
If u want i can upload reaults here to discuss
Cheers !
edee1337 said:
Hi! I'm the dev of ProShot. I'm really stumped on the soft images issue on Samsung phones. If you shoot RAW you will see that correct focus was achieved, but the JPEG doesn't look quite right. Running a simple sharpen filter produces results closer to the stock camera app, but it's not quite 100%.
No other device has this issue, so Samsung is definitely at fault here. And only offering 8MP resolutions in Android M is a pretty bad oversight, they clearly didn't test this update that well :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your contribution people, both camera fv5 and proshot are excelent camera apps. I actually love the ability to disable ois in proshot and the very nice ui. It is indeed a shame that samsung didnt pay more attention to fix buggy camera api 2. I really like the stock app in MM it has pretty much everything and im very happy with it but the phone camera couldve been even more perfect than it already is with proper support for custom camera apps :/
edee1337 said:
Hi! I'm the dev of ProShot. I'm really stumped on the soft images issue on Samsung phones. If you shoot RAW you will see that correct focus was achieved, but the JPEG doesn't look quite right. Running a simple sharpen filter produces results closer to the stock camera app, but it's not quite 100%.
No other device has this issue, so Samsung is definitely at fault here. And only offering 8MP resolutions in Android M is a pretty bad oversight, they clearly didn't test this update that well :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does this happen in S7 or S6E+ Marshmallow?
Yesterday I borrowed my friends LG G4 and found out they still have best implementaion of camera2 api.
Smasung photos will have always have grennish yellowish tint.
sarvesh563 said:
Does this happen in S7 or S6E+ Marshmallow?
Yesterday I borrowed my friends LG G4 and found out they still have best implementaion of camera2 api.
Smasung photos will have always have grennish yellowish tint.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still haven't been able to get the MM update on my S6, but from other reports I hear it still might be there.
I use ProShot and I get blurry shots on my S6 but to be honest some pictures come out awesome, as if shot using a DSLR, and some it's just too soft. It's not the dev's fault, it's Samsung's.
I use ProShot on my LG G4 also and it doesn't have an issue with that. Noise Reduction removal is better in the G4 as well. In the S6 you see some type of weird over sharpening effect.
What I love about ProShot (with low noise reduction) is that it removes Samsung's over sharpening effect and extreme contrast so pictures come out natural.
---------- Post added at 06:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:03 PM ----------
edee1337 said:
Hi! I'm the dev of ProShot. I'm really stumped on the soft images issue on Samsung phones. If you shoot RAW you will see that correct focus was achieved, but the JPEG doesn't look quite right. Running a simple sharpen filter produces results closer to the stock camera app, but it's not quite 100%.
No other device has this issue, so Samsung is definitely at fault here. And only offering 8MP resolutions in Android M is a pretty bad oversight, they clearly didn't test this update that well :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's the interesting thing, when you disable noise reduction on the S6, the pictures are sharp and not blurry.
TheWarKeeper said:
Greetings guys, ive seen that the camera api 2 is still broken for galaxy s6 in the android m, this can be checked easelly by running any custom camera app like camera fv 5, a better camera or proshot camera.
All of them return blurry pictures with camera api 2, while works flawlessly with old camera api.
Even though im very very happy with the galaxy default camera app finally supporting shutter speed and raw, i was hoping the camera api 2 wouldve been properly implemented in this build which unfortunatelly it wasnt.
So im trying to do get as much data as possible by asking you guys to post your phone model, android version, sensor brand/model and experience with camera api 2:
Ill go first:
Phone: G920F
Android: Android 6.0.1
Camera Sensor: Sony_IMX240 (To check your sensor install this app from google play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.finalwire.aida64&hl=pt_PT)
Testing:
ProShot(Paid) Blurry pictures,
Camera FV5(Paid)=Blurry Camera API2 (Resolution maximum of 8mp) and up to 3200 iso, but normal image quality with old camera api (Resolution maximum of 16mp) but only 800iso,
A Better Camera (Paid) Blurry Camera Api2 but normal image quality with old camera api.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a app called cinema 4k which also uses camera2 api. It didn't work on marshmallow so i had to downgrade to lollipop, after downgrading it worked without any problems
the tech blog on insta said:
There is a app called cinema 4k which also uses camera2 api. It didn't work on marshmallow so i had to downgrade to lollipop, after downgrading it worked without any problems
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats because when you downgraded the camera api 1 was used by the app bu default instead of camera api 2
TheWarKeeper said:
Thats because when you downgraded the camera api 1 was used by the app bu default instead of camera api 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whats the difference between camera1 api and camera2 api
Camera FV-5 fixed. (16Mpix available, etc...)
atherion said:
Camera FV-5 fixed. (16Mpix available, etc...)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which version you use
don_gori said:
Which version you use
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Latest 3.15.1
I have some issues with RAW capturing on 3.15.1 , on 10 photos only 1 had DNG file ?
Hi!
I'm on stock marshmallow with the august security patch. According the the manual camera test app my phone does not have raw capabilities. What could be causing this? (I can capture raw with the default camera app just fine)
4k issue on galaxy s7 shots 3264x2448 instead of 3840x2160 using Proshot. Please fix this. No 60fps for FHD option as well.
I am using CM 13 build 6-26
currently camera fv-5 doesn't read the phone as capable of taking raw pics.. and reduces low light picture quality.
using OOS 3's camera i can do both of those... i just prefer the ui and option in camera fv-5.
what would trigger the app to register the phone to be able to do both of those?
build.prop tweaks or?
also.. the phone reports itself as a one.. not a two. ..
thoughts? info?
thanks
Hello,
Actually I noticed the same issue, camera FV5 recognize manual settings and can use camera 2 capabilities only on OxygenOS which is pretty disappointing.
I'm also forced to use the OxygenOS camera port which lack lot of settings and save jpegs with lot of compression...
Maybe CM lack some stuff.
After google announced that they have no plans to bring RAW support to the device I was curious to see what sort of quality the DNGs would be. Unfortunately I've found that the RAW files from different apps provide different results.
Apps used
Stock Camera App JPEG
Camera NX
Camera FV-5
Test 1: Straight out of camera RAW quality
All camera applications were left on full auto with touch focus on the far buildings.
Stock
https://imgur.com/a/ae575
Camera NX
https://imgur.com/a/UlR4s
Camera FV-5
https://imgur.com/a/ANvw5
As can be seen the RAW from Camera NX though very noisy is pretty standard looking. On the other hand Camera FV-5 is just awful with a stupid amount of noise.
This is interesting as inspecting the photos shows that the ISO for FV-5 was the lowest at 400 whilst NX and Stock used ISO 875.
Test 2: JPEG vs RAW quality
For this test I tried to use Camera FV-5 but it refused to take any pictures in the low light. Based on the previous test it's pretty obvious it would have fared worst anyways.
In this test I have tried to show the dynamic range of the files. Both were brought into Adobe Camera RAW, sliders for shadows and blacks cranked to max with the brightness and whites to lowest. I have also applied some sharpening and noise reduction to both.
The edits to both are identical
Stock Edit
https://imgur.com/a/9WPSy
NX Edit
https://imgur.com/a/UDEs9
The resulting images show that the RAW file is brighter and retains more detail. This can clearly be seen in the roof where JPEG artifacts are visible and the brickwork where detail is lost.
This can more clearly be seen when I brighten the JPEG so that it matches the brightness of the RAW
Stock Edit Brighter
https://imgur.com/a/N7YFz
Conclusions
I'd grown used to shooting RAW on my S7 Edge, luckily the new Pixels fully support Camera API 2. However it is interesting to see that the RAW readout is different per app. In regards to quality I will definitely be shooting the Camera NX in the future when I want a RAW file; however the JPEG quality is very impressive and lives up to it's hype.
Edit: 26/11/17 (From reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/7fb9vu/technical_camera_test_raw_vs_jpeg/)
Test 3: LR vs Camera NX
Tried out LR in both 'Professional' and 'HDR' RAW modes. All photos have the same sharpening, noise reduction, white point applied. Blacks and shadows are maxed out with whites and highlights at minimum. LR HDR has exposure boosted to +2.65EV to match brightness.
NX Edit https://imgur.com/a/oUBhd
LR Professional Edit https://imgur.com/a/CsBa3
LR HDR Edit https://imgur.com/a/nuSNa
I was expecting LR RAWs to be significantly better. Unexpectedly the 'Professional' LR RAW looks similar to the FV-5 RAW, very blue with a whole bunch of noise.
The 'HDR' LR RAW looks much closer to the NX RAW, however there are some strange hot(white) pixels spread throughout.
Conclusions 2
I'll still be sticking with the NX RAWs for now, 'HDR' LR files are close but detail isn't any better and those white pixels are pretty noticeable.
Test 1 and 2 Full resolution and dng files: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e2_sD7D1IiOg9Ety_8IsHAfhcKAVf9Eq/view?usp=sharing
Test 3 Full resolution and dng files: https://drive.google.com/open?id=17EIhsPAX5efHXPiz_cfkov3AKaDkREvg
Anyone got suggestions for more apps for me to try?
For my aesthetically pleasing photographs please visit my Instagram
Interesting post, thanks for sharing. Have you considered doing stock v nx v LR v manual cam & compare in lightroom side by side? I know with my 5X the hdr auto was visibly worse wrt detail than hdr on, and dng was another step up to that, basically incredibly detailed.
Does nx raw use hdr with the new 8.1 update enabling the visual core? Or will say manual camera use hdr+enhanced in it's raw outputs?
randomhkkid said:
Anyone got suggestions for more apps for me to try?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting read thanks. Did you try open camera? I experimented a bit and found the dng offered more flexibility in fixing exposure and white balance but needed a lot of noise processing to be as good as the jpg. But have been shooting both just in case I wanted to post process anything. So far haven't.
It never occurred to me that raw differed by app. That seems just wrong.
Linwood.Ferguson said:
It never occurred to me that raw differed by app. That seems just wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does seem wrong. RAW data should be just that, all the data from the camera before anything like an app tweaks it out. So yeah, it makes zero sense.
Hi, good thread!
I have somehow given up on RAW on Android because the implementations are so clumsy and the results are pitiful.
Indeed, to me too, the idea of having different quality raw from different cameras is plain stupid! Though I might admit it could be true given how lame the 3rd party Android cameras are. Such a shame a huge ecosystem such as Android cannot produce a fully featured and functional camera.
Btw you could also try one of the modified GCam versions with RAW enabled. Here is a nice page where you could fetch one such. Go for the stable ones, in red.
https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/
Looking forward for your results!
You clearly don't understand what RAW is, or how ****ty phone cams are under the hood
The fact that you think that FV5 is the one giving bad results just shows that you don't understand what RAW files are supposed to be.
Phones, even our allegedly amazing DSLR killing wonders of today have ridiculously tiny sensors and take garbage photos. NO qualifications here, they take garbage photos.
Through magic, detail smearing software processing, we get some usable results.
Camera FV5 is outputting a real RAW file, complete with the stupid amount of noise captures by the tiny, crappy sensor in your phone.
Camera NX is evidently doing almost as much processing as the default engine and not outputting a real RAW file at all.
If you're wondering why Google downplays RAW support, it's because they know that for most people it will just reveal how crappy the camera really is and how much software trickery is going on.
Bingley said:
Interesting post, thanks for sharing. Have you considered doing stock v nx v LR v manual cam & compare in lightroom side by side? I know with my 5X the hdr auto was visibly worse wrt detail than hdr on, and dng was another step up to that, basically incredibly detailed.
Does nx raw use hdr with the new 8.1 update enabling the visual core? Or will say manual camera use hdr+enhanced in it's raw outputs?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't tried since the 8.1 update. A little busy at the moment with my Master's unfortunately. I will try to do more comparisons in a few weeks after finals. For now I've updated the OP with some results from Lightroom's camera.
Linwood.Ferguson said:
Interesting read thanks. Did you try open camera? I experimented a bit and found the dng offered more flexibility in fixing exposure and white balance but needed a lot of noise processing to be as good as the jpg. But have been shooting both just in case I wanted to post process anything. So far haven't.
It never occurred to me that raw differed by app. That seems just wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
pixelsquish said:
It does seem wrong. RAW data should be just that, all the data from the camera before anything like an app tweaks it out. So yeah, it makes zero sense.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't shoot the messenger! The RAW files are definitely different, unsure why, likely due to API differences and when the RAW files is read in the image pipeline.
dehnhaide said:
Hi, good thread!
I have somehow given up on RAW on Android because the implementations are so clumsy and the results are pitiful.
Indeed, to me too, the idea of having different quality raw from different cameras is plain stupid! Though I might admit it could be true given how lame the 3rd party Android cameras are. Such a shame a huge ecosystem such as Android cannot produce a fully featured and functional camera.
Btw you could also try one of the modified GCam versions with RAW enabled. Here is a nice page where you could fetch one such. Go for the stable ones, in red.
https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/
Looking forward for your results!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CameraNX is the same as the modded Google camera with RAW support.
lordfarqaud said:
The fact that you think that FV5 is the one giving bad results just shows that you don't understand what RAW files are supposed to be.
Phones, even our allegedly amazing DSLR killing wonders of today have ridiculously tiny sensors and take garbage photos. NO qualifications here, they take garbage photos.
Through magic, detail smearing software processing, we get some usable results.
Camera FV5 is outputting a real RAW file, complete with the stupid amount of noise captures by the tiny, crappy sensor in your phone.
Camera NX is evidently doing almost as much processing as the default engine and not outputting a real RAW file at all.
If you're wondering why Google downplays RAW support, it's because they know that for most people it will just reveal how crappy the camera really is and how much software trickery is going on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah this is where you're wrong. The actual RAW files you seem to be talking about are not debayered or processed in any way, the RAW files we traditionally talk about (DNG, NEF, CR2) are all already processed by the app or camera logic in some way to be as flat and neutral as possible whilst containing more info in shadows, highlights etc.
That's why we see difference in the output, the apps are processing the RAW output differently. The camera in the Pixel is still a good sensor, just that the software magic makes it the best in the industry. There is still merit to shooting in RAW compared to the jpeg output.
I am surprised that you guys don't know the difference.
Google's HDR+ captures multiple images (allegedly up to 8 or 10) in order to improve the image quality(noise, colors, dynamic range). But when you take a raw photo with a 3rd party app, you get worse image quality because usually the raw file relies on a single image.
Adobe's HDR raw automatically combines raw files (probably two or three) for a better dynamic range.
The NX app is a modified Google camera app. Therefore the app contains Google's HDR+ algorithm. Apparently Google's camera app has the option to use HDR+ for the raw files (so multiple raw files are combined for a much better image quality), but Google hasn't activated the feature yet. But apparently the developer of the NX app found a way to activate it.
I hope that Google activates this feature soon, so then we don't need a 3rd party apk anymore.
Ah this is where you're wrong. The actual RAW files you seem to be talking about are not debayered or processed in any way
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A raw file contains, or should contain raw, "undebayered" sensor data. The processing software (lightroom, camera raw, etc, does the demosaicing.
the RAW files we traditionally talk about (DNG, NEF, CR2) are all already processed by the app or camera logic in some way to be as flat and neutral as possible whilst containing more info in shadows, highlights etc.
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It's true that most camera makers probably mess with their raw data prior to some degree prior to saving the data, but it's not correct to say that the files are already processed by the app. Most apps will apply a default profile when you open the file, but nothing is processed until you, er, process it.
That's why we see difference in the output, the apps are processing the RAW output differently.
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They certainly are, in that Camera NX is processing it to such a degree that it's can hardly be claimed to be a RAW file anymore, and FV5 is giving something that appears to have been barely touched, as it should.
The camera in the Pixel is still a good sensor, just that the software magic makes it the best in the industry.
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It's a good sensor compared to other smartphone sensors, but it's still a piece of garbage in absolute terms, which is why it only looks good with that software "magic".
There is still merit to shooting in RAW compared to the jpeg output.
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Agreed, nothing to do with the point I was making, which is that Camera NX is not giving better RAW output, it's not giving RAW output at all. And if you truly do want to see what the sensor is actually capturing, and work with that, only Camera FV5 in this comparison appears to be giving you that.
Should anyone be following this thread the new Pixel 3 camera apk is available and works on the Pixel 2 - it now has native raw support, and frankly it's great - jpegs still look ****e up close, whereas raw/dng files it produces are so clear it's amazing how Google manages to mangle the jpegs in cam!