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Something that's been annoying the crap out of me.
I know that the T-Mobile G2/Desire Z only has a 5 Megapixel camera, but the quality of the pictures I'm taking is absolutely atrocious.
What can I do to keep my pictures from looking extremely blurry? I noticed when I try to take a picture with the camera, if I hold the primary button down for a few seconds, it clears up, but as soon as I let go of the button the camera loses focuses and picture ends up getting blurred. Am I simply doing it wrong or is there some sort of trick to this in the camera settings?
I notice the camera likes to take extremely high resolution low quality pictures, is there a way to configure the camera to instead take low resolution higher quality ones instead? I don't need my pictures to be more than 1920 x 1080 but it looks like it tries to do that all the time.
Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks.
Try holding the camera button down halfway for it to focus, then push it down the rest of the way to take a picture, that might help.
Otherwise I'm not sure of any settings you could change, maybe see if there's any 3d party apps that'll work good?
-Nipqer
or you can download 3rd party apps like camera360, WHICH I HIGHLY recommend.
I've tested ALL of the camera apps and I am quite fond of Camera360, partly because it takes the clearest pictures in my opinion.
i also have problems with pic quality with this phone. lots of grain...
I've found that using touch-to-focus and the software shutter button gives me the best pictures. Depending on where in the frame you pick your focus lighting can change dramatically. Try pointing at the horizon and shift focus from the sky to the ground - huge difference!
I always take pictures with maximum resolution and mostly just pass on a snapshot if it's not daylight.
camera360
the best camera app
Keirnoth said:
Something that's been annoying the crap out of me.
I know that the T-Mobile G2/Desire Z only has a 5 Megapixel camera, but the quality of the pictures I'm taking is absolutely atrocious.
What can I do to keep my pictures from looking extremely blurry? I noticed when I try to take a picture with the camera, if I hold the primary button down for a few seconds, it clears up, but as soon as I let go of the button the camera loses focuses and picture ends up getting blurred. Am I simply doing it wrong or is there some sort of trick to this in the camera settings?
I notice the camera likes to take extremely high resolution low quality pictures, is there a way to configure the camera to instead take low resolution higher quality ones instead? I don't need my pictures to be more than 1920 x 1080 but it looks like it tries to do that all the time.
Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The default camera app takes the shot at the last moment until you hear the click sound.
Whenever you are taking the picture just let the camera look at it and it will automatically focus, adjust exposure, etc. after that when you click the button on screen it optimizes the settings and only at the last moment it takes the picture.
It you'll change the camera position or the object moves, then the picture will appear blurry. So, the trick is to keep your hand steady and the object should also be steady and keep your hand at one position while clicking photograph until the camera is ready to take another photograph.
Another trick is to install HTC Amaze camera app for Vision available on xda and flash it.
While taking the photograph, change its mode to action, now it will take the best shot out of all possible positions of the object but it won't implement any exposure correction or face detection so efficiently.
Ok, I'm about to break out a bit of Photography 101 up in here. I'm sure a lot of you know some or all of this stuff, but I'm going to try not to assume anything and pretend I'm trying to teach a caveman from 10,000 BC how to take good pictures. I'll try not to write a book, but no promises... but since this is the internet and people have short attention spans, I'll also do a TL;DR summary at the end for the ADD people. ;p
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Note: I'm going to start by talking generally, and then I'll try to get a bit more specific about cell phone cameras, the G2/DZ camera, a specific app, and techniques you can use to create optimal pictures. So, the beginning will start out sounding obvious to most of you, but will gradually get more into some (hopefully) useful specifics.
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Alright, photography is all about capturing light. This might sound obvious, but it's useful to keep in mind when you're trying to think like a camera, so you will be able to know what it wants in different situations. Cameras want light - lots and lots of light. You can almost never have too much light. The less you have to depend on the wimpy and crappy flash, the better your pictures will look. The BEST pictures won't need to use flash at all. So IF you can, get as much light as possible on whatever you're taking a picture of. You often can't control any lighting, but what you can do is maximize what lighting there already is. This means if you're shooting outside in the sun, you want to try to have the sun shining on whatever you take a picture of. But you want the sun behind you, and shining on your subject. If the sun is behind your subject and shining towards you, you'll end up with with plenty of light, but your subject will look like a silhouette. It's the same if you're shooting inside or even outside in relative darkness - you want as much light as possible shining on your subject, but as little light as possible shining *directly* into the camera. So try not to take pictures of people or things that have lights or bright things behind them - if possible, you want those things behind you and shining/reflecting onto the subject. So, when you're inside, turn on all the lights you can, as long as they're not behind the subject or shining directly into the camera.
The way a camera makes sure it gets as much light as it needs is by adjusting how long the shutter (ok, CMOS sensor) stays open. When there's plenty of light the shutter will open and close really fast - this is generally good, and this is what you want to shoot for. When there's not a lot of light, the shutter will need to stay open for longer - this is generally bad, and this is what you want to avoid. The main reason you want to avoid this is that it's impossible to hold your cell phone completely steady in your hands, and the longer the shutter needs to stay open, the more blurry the picture will be from the motion of your hands and the subject, and the more "noise" artifacts will show up in the image because of the nature of digital image sensors. LIGHT, LIGHT and more LIGHT is the key to good pics. Light is your friend, so learn how to work with it.
But you can't always control light, so what else can you do? The answer is to practice ways to hold your phone as steady as possible when you're taking a pic. First, always hold your phone with two hands, particularly in lower light situations. Also, you can brace your arms by pressing your elbows up against your body. If possible, brace your body by standing against or leaning on a wall, or sitting down. In situations where you can, rest the phone itself or at least your hands/arm/elbows on a solid surface like a table or whatever. After maximizing the lighting, anything you can do to hold the phone steady will have the second biggest impact in the quality of your pics.
This brings me to my app recommendation, which is called Camera Magic. I saw that two people previously recommended Camera 360 - I haven't tried it because some of the reviews and the permissions it requires scare me. A camera app needs access to personal log data? No thank you. But for all I know, it could be a real kickass and legit app, and I'm missing out... Anyway, among other things I like about Camera Magic is that it has a "Timer" and "Burst" mode. The timer mode is the key here. Using the timer will allow you to set the phone on a table or whatever and have it take a pic by itself, without having your shaky hands mucking up the image quality for pictures you want to come out extra good. For group shots, or self-pics, you can also set the timer so that you can strike a pose and get yourself in that higher quality image you'll get. And here's the really neat trick specific to our G2/DZ's that might make reading all this worth it - our phones have a built in tripod! Sort of... If you halfway open the keyboard, so that the screen and the keyboard halves are at the points farthest apart from each other, you can set the phone on a table and it will stand up on it's own!! Now be careful, because I'm not responsible for any cracked or scratched screens if your phone falls over. But I doubt that would happen even if it fell over, because it would fall flat and should be ok. Just don't do this in a precarious situation with your phone on a ledge or something it could fall off of.
Ok, I need to wrap this up for now, but here's a quick note about auto-focus. You don't usually need it. Most of the time it will just slow you down if you need to take a quick snapshot. The only time auto-focus helps is when you are taking a picture of something *closer* than 4 feet away. If you turn off auto-focus, everything farther than 4 feet away will always be in focus anyway, and you'll be able to take pictures a bit faster.
Ok, one last note about using zoom. You don't need it either. It's not a real zoom, it's just digital zoom, which just leads to lower quality images. Just take the picture (following all above guidelines) without zoom and your subject centered in the frame. You can always do any cropping or digital zooming later in Gallery, QuickPic, or even better Photoshop or whatever image editor you use, if necessary. That way, you'll have more time and control to get it framed just right.
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TL;DR for those with ADD:
- LIGHT - You want as much light as possible ON your subject, but NOT behind your subject or directly into the camera.
- FLASH - Try not to depend on it. The best pics won't need to use flash at all, because you already have plenty of light.
- STEADY - Hold the phone steady with two hands. This is extra important in lower-light situations. Brace your hands/arms/elbows against something like a wall or table, or sit down, or if you can't and there's nothing to brace against, then press your elbows up against your chest/body and try to hold as still as possible. Use the app called Camera Magic so you can take advantage of the Timer function, among other features. Also see the G2/DZ-specific "tripod" trick (bolded) above, so you can take a completely steady pic.
- AUTO-FOCUS - You don't usually need it, it's only good for taking pictures of things closer than 4 feet away, otherwise it just slows you down when you want to take a quick picture. With auto-focus off, everything farther than 4 feet away will be in focus anyway.
- ZOOM - Don't use it, it will lower quality since it's not a real zoom, and you can always crop/zoom later with software, when you'll have more time/control.
I hope this helps some of you take some better pics!
(Edit: Hmmm, I guess bold doesn't work... maybe just a new user thing?)
Try a Sense 3.0 or 3.5 rom, they tend to produce the best quality photos from their camera app.
CM7 camera picture quality is terrible. I dont know if it has been fixed but I remember reading somewhere its caused by CM7 compressing the pictures.
Apologies in advance for bringing back old posts, but I wanted to followup on this post just to see if more people have any other ideas.
Thank you to all of you for your assistance. Not sure what software touch focus was, but what I did was take some of the guidelines from voltaic's posts and also switch over to Camera360. I took some tests shots with it and they seem to be pretty decent. Loads of image altering features similar to its iOS competitor. I just needed basic picture taking and from a few test shots, they seem to be a bit clearer. It also allows me to lower the image resolution so instead of taking giant grainy shots I can take smaller clearer looking shots.
I suck at using the default Camera app. The only thing I know how to do is adjust the Flash, and zoom that are on the right side when you take a photo (horizontal orientation).
Not sure if changing the Brightness/Contrast/Saturation/Sharpness, White Balance, and Focus mode does any good. I see Continuous, Auto, Infinity, and Touch. I don't mind having to press an extra button if it will help stop these grainy looking pictures - would switching it to Touch help a bit?
I just made a long post of tips on another thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1478405
Touch focus lets you tap on the screen to focus a particular part of the screen; whereas default is center focused, with maybe face detection (don't know if 360 has face detection).
Grain or nose is a function of high ISO. Lowering the ISO will reduce the grain, but may result in not enough light for a decent shot (will be underexposed or too dark). Increase the light if possible, so you can lower the ISO. Sometimes just changing the angle of the camera, your position, or simply turning on more lights in the room can make a huge difference. Manually setting the ISO and white balance might help a bit. But the fact of the matter, is that if there isn't enough light, you are going to need high ISO to get a decent shot.
Special effects can be fun. But most (or all) of these effects can be applied to a photo after the fact (Picsay Pro and Vignette are my favorite phone apps for simple photo edits). On the other hand, if you take a picture with the effect, it can't be undone afterwards. OF course, there may be times when you don't care for the "raw" photo (
Manipulating brightness is useful if the pic looks too dark or light. For instance, the picture looks much lighter than what your eyes see (outdoor night photos is a good example). But those settings (brightness, contrast, saturation) usually won't change graininess or the overall quality of the picture (how its captured). Again, these are all things that can be fixed after the fact. However, I've found setting white balance manually to be very helpful. Setting white balance manually (while it takes time to do so for each different environment) gives much better results than Auto. Auto takes extra time to evaluate the light conditions when you hit the shutter, and sometimes does so incorrectly. Technically, white balance can be fixed after the fact. But the fact Auto white balance delays the capturing of the photo, means it can often cause a blurry picture.
Long story short, learning the basics of how a camera works, and simple camera techniques (angle and position) have much more influence on photo quality than messing with different apps or effects. Aside from settings that fundamentally change how the photo is captured (ISO, focus, white balance), the rest is just frosting on the cake. And you can't polish a turd.
I'd noticed battery drain with Camera360, even if I've cut the localisation.
Anyone else?
Try using HDR Camera+ it's been HIGHLY recommended by PocketNow.com to get the best quality pictures out of your android phone.
Available in the android market.
Hey guys/gals,
Just wondering on how the quality of the pictures are with this phone. I've seen pics taken by reviewers, but it's always better to look at it from a user's perspective. Has anybody tried playing around with the camera?
Also, can someone be kind enough to upload some sample pictures of random shots, like daylight shots, night time, and macro shots? I know the camera is supposedly very good, but it'll be nice to actually see a few real samples, especially the night time shots.
bump, anybody? hehe
Actual pics to come, but from my own experience as both a previous user of the Nexus One AND a hobby digital photographer are;
All of this is using the default Camera, default settings (except for turning OFF the shutter sound).
1. The Nitro does a rather good job in low light situations. Opting to raise the ISO more than use Flash. On more than a few occasions where I expected to see flash, it didn't. When blown-up you certainly can see the picture is grainier without the flash, but for web/facebook viewing the results are quite good and a LOT LESS harsh from not using flash.
2. LONG shot-to-shot time! I wonder what the buffer size with the camera is, IF there's even a buffer that comes with it! Because it takes me about 6 seconds between taking one picture before I'm able to take the next. Even when I try using a 3rd party app (Camera Zoom FX) I only got the time down to 3 seconds. Do NOT plan on using this phone's camera for any kid's birthday parties!!
That's all I've got for the moment, will add more when I've done more playing/testing.
Guess I can upload a bunch I took.
A note, some are taken with HDR + and others with Camera Zoom FX.
http://thewisedumbass.tumblr.com/post/14540968432 (Had to make it a post on Tumblr, pics kept messing up here)
The photos looks decent for a phone, nothing spectacular, at low light is more like "meh" - an average or slightly above, but when it comes to movies at low light I'd prefer have grain (Atrix 4G / Nitro) rather then ghosting (any other phones). On Nitro and Atrix 4G regardless of the light the picture is smooth 30fps, as opposite to Skyrocket or ANY HTC phone with 5fps and all smugged.
Here are some shots to compare:
Nitro with flash (left), no flash (right):
Atrix 4G with flash (left), no flash (right):
Also note Nitro has much lower lens focal length, which makes it capture wider surroundings. The photos were taking from 4 feet away and Nitro's photos captured much more surroundings then Atrix. Even when you hold both phones side by side the image at Nitro looks at pretty much correct distance, rather then on Atrix it looks like zoomed in. Yet, in low light Atrix's ISO captures much more light.
This is first phone camera that beat Atrix's (IMO). /me very happy with it.
Nice!! thanks guys for the details comparisons. I am liking wat i see with the Nitro. Do any of u guys find the auto focus annoying, or is there an option to do manual focus, like the atrix??
Not sure what manual focus you are talking about, but the camera does allow you to touch to pick the area to focus. Still auto-focus to the region, but better than the normal.
aquariuz23 said:
Nice!! thanks guys for the details comparisons. I am liking wat i see with the Nitro. Do any of u guys find the auto focus annoying, or is there an option to do manual focus, like the atrix??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Neither stock nor MIUI camera has manual focus on Atrix...In fact Atrix doesn't allow you pick which part on the picture you want it focus to, it's always at the center.
Hey guys,
I am having trouble taking good pictures with indoor lighting. The first problem is that the viewfinder (or the image on the screen) is not very smooth. It's jittery and lags and its super annoying. How can I improve the speed of the viewfinder so I can frame shots better?
I also hear that the LG has fantastic low light capability. However, with indoor lighting (fluorescent bulbs) I find the images have a lot of noise and the details appear very muddy and very oil painting-ish.
I don't have any problems during sunlight but indoors, the G4's camera is a mess. It's slow, jiterry and all round annoying to use. Any help would be appreciated!
mufaa said:
Hey guys,
I am having trouble taking good pictures with indoor lighting. The first problem is that the viewfinder (or the image on the screen) is not very smooth. It's jittery and lags and its super annoying. How can I improve the speed of the viewfinder so I can frame shots better?
I also hear that the LG has fantastic low light capability. However, with indoor lighting (fluorescent bulbs) I find the images have a lot of noise and the details appear very muddy and very oil painting-ish.
I don't have any problems during sunlight but indoors, the G4's camera is a mess. It's slow, jiterry and all round annoying to use. Any help would be appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't tried it on my G4. But on other digital cameras, I have seen the displayed preview screen image get jerky in low-light when aiming the camera around.
My theory is that, to make the image bright enough, the camera needs to take a longer preview exposure. Capturing the image for the preview screen works the same way as taking an actual picture, of course. In bright light, maybe the sensor takes a 1/500 second exposure to generate the preview. But in low light, maybe it needs a 1/5 second exposure to make the preview image bright enough to be useful on the sccreen. So now it can only take a max of 5 preview images per second, and the screen will look jerky.
The muddy details, and looking like an oil painting, are at least in part due to the image sensor's ISO value being turned way up, due to the low-light conditions. Some of it may be due to the JPG compression settings, and perhaps noise-reduction. Pictures taken with the flash should help with this, as you're providing more light, and therefore the camera can use a lower ISO value, for better image quality.
You could try taking the same picture in Auto, then in Manual mode. Turn the ISO value down in Manual mode (to maybe 200, 400, something like that), and slow the shutter speed as needed for a proper exposure. In the Gallery, you can check the Details for the picture taken in Auto, to check the ISO value that the camera used. Use a lower ISO value for the Manual mode picture, and see if the results look better. Doing this with the flash turned off should help make the difference more apparent.
You can also capture JPG + RAW in Manual mode. The RAW files do not exhibit JPG compression, or other processing, they are straight from the image sensor. So you may get less muddiness and oil-painting effect.
..
mufaa, can you post any example indoor pics you've taken? That might help provide some context for what you're seeing.
What are your requirements for the picture?
Do you have a moving subject that demands a fast shutter, or can you afford to use a slower shutter speed?
RedOCtobyr said:
mufaa, can you post any example indoor pics you've taken? That might help provide some context for what you're seeing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, here's one for starters. This is the only non-personal image I can share at the moment (I am at work!) but if it's not enough I will snap one tonight and post it for you.
http://i.imgur.com/5mpaT2h.jpg
Zoom into the picture and you will find details buried in blurry oil painting like smudges. This happens in bright pictures as well. Is this how the sensor on the camera is?
KingFatty said:
What are your requirements for the picture?
Do you have a moving subject that demands a fast shutter, or can you afford to use a slower shutter speed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I usually shoot with subjects (my family, nephew, etc.) and I need the viewfinder to be fast. Because the viewfinder is so slow, subjects come out blurry even with the slighest movement. I also have to have a super steady hand.
This wasn't the case with the iPhone 6 i had. I just turned on the camera and snapped away.
phineous said:
Reboot or try force stop on the camera app. I've had mine get like this occasionally but force closing the app or rebooting fixed it when I opened it again.
If that doesn't do it, you could have a bad camera. There were some people complaining about camera problems in early June.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh boy. I will try that. I have rebooted my device multiple times and the result has been the same though.
..
somebodyyy doesn't know how to use manual mode for iso
iiEatTurdz said:
somebodyyy doesn't know how to use manual mode for iso
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any tips?
phineous said:
Maybe try clearing the cache and data on the camera app. Also, check that the laser window next to the camera lens is clean and unobstructed. Most of my pictures, even in lower light are very sharp when zoomed in.
Gotta be a bad camera or focusing laser.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you share some low light/indoor pictures of yours, and what settings you used to take those pics with?
That sample pic does not appear to have the EXIF data where we could check the ISO and shutter speed etc. that you used, can you check on your camera or source image what the settings were?
..
mufaa said:
I usually shoot with subjects (my family, nephew, etc.) and I need the viewfinder to be fast. Because the viewfinder is so slow, subjects come out blurry even with the slighest movement. I also have to have a super steady hand.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The sample picture looks fairly normal to me. That is, it looks like ones I've taken on my G4. I believe the effect you're seeing is partially noise-reduction done by the camera processing, but I'm not 100% sure. A high ISO value will also contribute.
Now I'm wondering if maybe I misinterpreted what you meant in your original post. When you say the viewfinder is slow, do you mean just the jerky image if you move the camera around? Or that the pictures themselves come out blurry?
With only so much light available, the camera typically needs to use a longer exposure to get a bright-enough picture. A steady hand helps, as does OIS, Optical Image Stabilization. But neither of those can help if your *subject* is moving, of course.
You have 2 choices to make a moving subject sharper in low-light:
- Add more light. Use the flash if you aren't already, assuming the subject is within reach of the flash (probably around 10 feet, max). This will change the look of the picture, making it look more "harsh", but the added light should improve the image quality. With more light, the camera can use a quicker shutter speed.
- Raise the sensor's sensitivity, by using a higher ISO value. Effectively turning up the amplification, and allowing a quicker shutter speed. But as most of us have experienced, when you turn up a weak/noisy signal (car radio, etc), you observe more of the low-level background. Static, hiss, and so on. In a picture, this shows up as "noise" in the details of the image, and will typically result in pictures with more of the oil-painting look.
The lens on the G4 is f1.8, and should let in more light than the iPhone 6, at f2.2. It's certainly possible the iPhone does better noise reduction, or things along those lines. I'm not saying the G4's camera is perfect. But it shouldn't be woefully worse in low-light, anyways.
To get a comparison of how ISO affects things, try taking the same, stationary-subject picture, at maybe ISO 200, ISO 800, and ISO 2000. Then zoom in and look at the details of each picture. BTW, every camera will exhibit this behavior.
mufaa said:
Any tips?
Can you share some low light/indoor pictures of yours, and what settings you used to take those pics with?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it has nothing to do with the cache and stuff lol they sound stupid. just play with the settings. i typically use my outdoor iso from 100-500 depending on what kind of lighting or colors are present. for indoors i set it 500+. just don't go within the thousands if there's no vivid colors or bright lights. try like 500-800 for the iso and 1-1/8 for the shutter.
RedOCtobyr said:
The sample picture looks fairly normal to me. That is, it looks like ones I've taken on my G4. I believe the effect you're seeing is partially noise-reduction done by the camera processing, but I'm not 100% sure. A high ISO value will also contribute.
Now I'm wondering if maybe I misinterpreted what you meant in your original post. When you say the viewfinder is slow, do you mean just the jerky image if you move the camera around? Or that the pictures themselves come out blurry?
With only so much light available, the camera typically needs to use a longer exposure to get a bright-enough picture. A steady hand helps, as does OIS, Optical Image Stabilization. But neither of those can help if your *subject* is moving, of course.
You have 2 choices to make a moving subject sharper in low-light:
- Add more light. Use the flash if you aren't already, assuming the subject is within reach of the flash (probably around 10 feet, max). This will change the look of the picture, making it look more "harsh", but the added light should improve the image quality. With more light, the camera can use a quicker shutter speed.
- Raise the sensor's sensitivity, by using a higher ISO value. Effectively turning up the amplification, and allowing a quicker shutter speed. But as most of us have experienced, when you turn up a weak/noisy signal (car radio, etc), you observe more of the low-level background. Static, hiss, and so on. In a picture, this shows up as "noise" in the details of the image, and will typically result in pictures with more of the oil-painting look.
The lens on the G4 is f1.8, and should let in more light than the iPhone 6, at f2.2. It's certainly possible the iPhone does better noise reduction, or things along those lines. I'm not saying the G4's camera is perfect. But it shouldn't be woefully worse in low-light, anyways.
To get a comparison of how ISO affects things, try taking the same, stationary-subject picture, at maybe ISO 200, ISO 800, and ISO 2000. Then zoom in and look at the details of each picture. BTW, every camera will exhibit this behavior.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"do you mean just the jerky image if you move the camera around? "
Yup. I hate the jerkiness but I guess there's no way to work around that other than decreasing shutter speed and increasing ISO which results in super grainy pics.
I will try the flash light and see if its any better. Usually, I dislike using flash in normally lit indoor places. It doesn't feel natural.
iiEatTurdz said:
it has nothing to do with the cache and stuff lol they sound stupid. just play with the settings. i typically use my outdoor iso from 100-500 depending on what kind of lighting or colors are present. for indoors i set it 500+. just don't go within the thousands if there's no vivid colors or bright lights. try like 500-800 for the iso and 1-1/8 for the shutter.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, it has nothing to do with the cache. I will try those settings. Thanks!
..
Just run into this older post.
My two cents: to avoid high iso muddiness in indoor lower light portraits, you should turn on the flash (or better, use an external led panel to create off camera light)
Indeed flash photos are unappealing, but you can improve them with Snapseed's selective editing, by lowering exposure and warming temperature on your subject faces.
You could also selectively increase exposure on one side to create a less flat picture.
mufaa said:
Hey guys,
I am having trouble taking good pictures with indoor lighting. The first problem is that the viewfinder (or the image on the screen) is not very smooth. It's jittery and lags and its super annoying. How can I improve the speed of the viewfinder so I can frame shots better?
I also hear that the LG has fantastic low light capability. However, with indoor lighting (fluorescent bulbs) I find the images have a lot of noise and the details appear very muddy and very oil painting-ish.
I don't have any problems during sunlight but indoors, the G4's camera is a mess. It's slow, jiterry and all round annoying to use. Any help would be appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am a photographer and am trying to change over to the new mobile camera trend that started years ago but I do know that with LG, since my friend has one, doesn't have a good sense of lighting, period. I am not trying to put down your device, I do not think you need a new one. A good artist can make art from anything and everything to their best of the ability with what they have. I think you should start trying to do things like opening blinds to a window, putting white sheets of paper around or maybe some gray or black sheets of paper to balance your lighting. Is it at all possible for you to share a visual load of what you're doing with the community? I think it would be valuable to have multiple sets of eyes and have many different minds working with you to solve your problem.
Had my first day out with the V30 yesterday and just imported the photos and videos from it to my laptop for a closer look to make some initial evaluations. With some very interesting things to note and a lot to dig into further. There's definitely some realities that need to be addressed to better manage expectations.
1) I have no f'n clue what the HDR setting is doing other than making crappy photos. Which is about the same as it was on the V20. It's completely the opposite of what it was on the Nexus 6. On the Nexus 6, if you wanted the best photos out of the Google Camera you could get, you turned on HDR and forgot about it. With LG's Camera app, it's the exact opposite. Turn it off and forget it was ever there.
I still need to figure out the mess that the Google Camera app port has become and DL a copy and see how it does with this sensor.
2) If you shoot manual, there's a noise reduction on/off switch now. Unless you have some decent NR software though or know what you want to do with grainy photos (and I think it will have its uses, I just have to find the right subject), leave it on in very low light conditions. Not only does it tame grainy noise, it also tames a bit of purple fringe that will show up in high gain (high ISO) photos once the electronics start heating up around it.
3) As to that last part of #2: We have to be realistic here. This is a tiny cellphone camera packed in with A LOT of other electronics. If you're shooting several shots in a row or long exposures, either in dark conditions at high ISO, you will see amp glow or purple fringing. It's just a reality. Even DSLRs see it.
4) Digital zoom is digital zoom. If you aren't using just the standard view of each sensor, then you are going to see the limitations of a small sensor. I don't care what cellphone you're using. None of my larger/dedicated cameras have it for many good reasons. You shouldn't expect miracles from a smaller camera.
5) The wide angle sensor actually takes pretty good shots now in most conditions! The wide angle camera on the V20 was full of so many compromises that I avoided it at all costs. If I wanted a wider view than the standard lens, I would use the pano setting on the standard lens. Which is still a great option if everything in the frame is going to sit still but it takes time and patience. It still has distortion though, just not as much as before. You can't focus the wide angle in manual mode but you can in auto. Weird. It doesn't like to focus pointing directly overhead. That was hit or miss. Same rules about the NR and HDR apply here.
6) Video AF in low low light does miss sometimes. Again, just remember this phone doesn't have all the high end AF sensors that some DSLRs have to make sure focus is nailed every single time. Somewhere there's an article about the useful range of all the AF systems on the V20, I assume it still applies to the V30. I'll dig it up if I can to help manage expectations. If I remember right, laser AF is short range, maybe 7 feet.
7) During my import of files from my phone to my laptop, some of my videos lost their audio tracks. Not sure what that's about. I don't remember which ones were auto and which ones were manual but I suspect that's the problem. All videos have sound on my phone though.
8) I suck at video. Kinda hoping to kick myself in the rear with this phone and learn more about it. There's a lot more to manage and I probably won't be happy until I figure out the whole color grading thing and get the look I want. So the log file option ought to be a nice addition.
9) I remember telling someone that I swear I saw a video somewhere of a pre-unit that had the directional mics settings in manual video. Well, I can tell you that I must have imagined that because the unit I have does not have that setting. Just sliders and windcut.
10) And I don't know where LG is hiding it but I don't see 240 fps in any settings anywhere. The fastest video setting I see is 120fps. (Remember, only at 720p) I'm guessing 240 fps is reserved for the slo-mo mode and not available in manual or auto video modes.
11) Selfie camera. Yeah, I've seen the complaints. Are you sure your ugly mugs aren't breaking the camera? I posted this in the first impressions thread and I'll post it here. First thing I suggest doing is turning down the "skin toning" and skin lighting settings. Whoever renamed skin smoothing to skin toning should be shot as that's not what I thought that setting was at all. My first thought is that it adjusted the white balance of the skin to give you a rosier glow. Nope. Skin toning will butter face the heck out of you even on basics settings. Set it to zero. After that, the image held up well to some post processing and consistently gave me selfies I actually like. They actually remind me of something that might come from..... film.
I'm going to do some more shooting today and I'll try to figure out how to post examples without making you all click through to some other site. I also need to figure out how to get the videos over sound and all so I can give them honest assessments.
Ah, I just remembered something else to look out for.
12) If you shoot in manual and have the RAW option turned on, it isn't like on a real camera where you get the RAW file and a processed version of the RAW file. It shoots two photos. This does two things. One, it means you will see lag as it is shooting two photos for each press. This gets worse with longer shutter speeds. Two, this means unless you're shooting a still life that the RAW and JPG will not match. If you're shooting action like I was last night, you will get two completely different photos.
Interesting. Thanks for you observations.
I'm a pixel owner and I love the camera. It's ace. I really want to like the v30, but so far the real world observations and initial reviews haven't sung the praises of the camera. Are you happy with the camera or is it not worth the hype?
The camera is better than the V20 and I liked that a lot. Here's the issue in a nut shell. This phone is for those that aren't happy to just let the device to everything for you like an Apple product would. If that's what you want, that's what Pixels are about. Pixel is Google's iPhone. If you want control over the creative process, that's why the V's exist. The V series is more akin to using a DSLR and Pixels are more like a point and shoot. The Pixel series they're kinda hoping you're ok with whatever the phone spits out. The V series you tweak the initial settings and decide what the phone is even going to shoot so you can tweak it more to your liking later. The V30 gives us even more control than the V20 does.
CHH2 said:
The camera is better than the V20 and I liked that a lot. Here's the issue in a nut shell. This phone is for those that aren't happy to just let the device to everything for you like an Apple product would. If that's what you want, that's what Pixels are about. Pixel is Google's iPhone. If you want control over the creative process, that's why the V's exist. The V series is more akin to using a DSLR and Pixels are more like a point and shoot. The Pixel series they're kinda hoping you're ok with whatever the phone spits out. The V series you tweak the initial settings and decide what the phone is even going to shoot so you can tweak it more to your liking later. The V30 gives us even more control than the V20 does.
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Interesting. Thanks for the summary
I would like to but V30, all because camera. But I don't know is this camera one of the best in 2017 or it is just average camera. I see many bad comments on internet. And is front face camera really bad?
isko01 said:
I would like to but V30, all because camera. But I don't know is this camera one of the best in 2017 or it is just average camera. I see many bad comments on internet. And is front face camera really bad?
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I probably still have a few more days of testing but just based off of what I've seen in my standardized shooting at the museum, LG has pulled off a miracle with this tiny little sensor.
Like I said above, you have to have realistic expectations and know what the limits are of your gear. That's what a really good photographer does though. They know how the gear works and how to use what it does but also know when it's time to use something else or accept not getting a shot.
This is a tiny sensor. The largest sensor on this whole phone is only 1/3.09". It's smaller than the main one on the V20 but it looks better. That in itself is amazing but I'm not expecting a sensor that's 1/3 the size of the sensor of my smallest camera to match it. Yet that's what some people seem to expect . Which is asinine.
Really the only "failing" I had yesterday was trying to shoot overhead in extremely dark conditions with the wide angle camera and shooting performers wearing all black on an outdoor stage in the dark with just stage lighting (which was changing colors constantly) while moving around quickly. Neither of those surprised me at all. The second condition really is the realm of DSLRs still. The first one, I'm ok with too. That said, what I did get from the second condition, I'm still surprised with.
I've only had one day with it but I think I'm going to get some surprising images out of this camera. Now to teach myself more about video editing.
And again, about the front camera. Once you set those stupid settings to the bottom, you can get more skin detail out of a photo than most people would like to see. Every crease and furrow in my brow line and forehead ,pock mark in my nose, and hairs on my head and beard. From shooting models, I can tell you a lot of people wouldn't want to see that level of detail on their face. So I have no idea what people are complaining about. It's an f'n vanity camera that most people wouldn't want to use to its full potential.
Uploaded a couple of shots. All shots are my normal workflow with a cellphone camera. Shot with the V30 and the jpegs processed in Snapseed. First one is shot with the main camera overhead in a room not known for being well lit at the museum I used to work at. In fact the only real lighting is from some LEDs in the pearl at center. The LEDs are designed to be very soft so they don't degrade the paint and woodwork. The other two shots are selfies taken with indirect sunlight being the only light source indoors. The one with back background is indirect sun through clear glass. The one with the light background is indirect sunlight through very milky glass.
Main camera: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/36870848874/
Dark background selfie cam: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/37322765870/
Light background selfie cam: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/23728950428/
Seriously, I'm not sure I'd really want more detail than that. I'm actually quite please with how all of these images turned out so far. I'll try to work up some more shots from the main and wides.
Can you post some pics in a room at night with just a lamp on or something in auto mode?
EVOme said:
Can you post some pics in a room at night with just a lamp on or something in auto mode?
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I'll have to see what I can set up. That's not really a normal shot I have set-up or sitting around. I might be able to do something at work tomorrow before everyone else gets in and the whole place is blasted with light. Unfortunately, I no longer work at the museum but I might be able to make something work.
isko01 said:
I would like to but V30, all because camera. But I don't know is this camera one of the best in 2017 or it is just average camera. I see many bad comments on internet.
And is front face camera really bad?
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I'm not hijacking this thread, but you asked a specific question. There's another thread where the camera is discussed, along with other features, and @keithleger took all his in "auto" mode, to compare the two V30 back cameras, and he also compared it to the Note 8 camera which he's decided to sell.
Camera
-Excellent camera but not on par with Pixel line or Samsung. Don't get me wrong, it is a great camera and in the sunlight it is fantastic but low light it does not do as well as Note 8. Video or Stills. But it is very adequate for my needs and I prefer having the wide-angle lens over the zoom lens any day.
-The one thing that really bothered me was shutter lag at times. Sometimes when I snapped a photo it was almost instant and others I had to wait a second or so. Long enough to think I might not of pressed the button. Not sure if others have had this issue but it is troublesome. It was not isolated to taking multiple photos fairly quickly either. Sometimes first shot.
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However, he's selling the Note 8 to keep the LG V30.
He posted an album of his first weekend pictures, as well as the comparison shots to the Note 8. The V30 outside shots look FANTASTIC, and even though the Note 8seemed to do better indoors the LG V30 won at least one of the indoor shots, in my opinion.
As for selfies, he gives the same advice as @CHH2.. Turn off the enhancemet crap on the selfie camera.
keithleger said:
For selfies, if you set the skin tone and lighting effects to 0 then it is ok.
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CHH2 said:
Selfie camera. . First thing I suggest doing is turning down the "skin toning" and skin lighting settings.
Skin toning will butter face the heck out of you even on basics settings. Set it to zero.
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See, they say the same thing. The only reason I'm mentioning the other thread -- and I do not mean to hijack @CHH2 camera thread -- is because @keithleger has direct comparisons to the Note 8 camera was well as the f/1.6 and wide angle cameras on the V30. Plus he only shot in auto, and didn't do any post processing (to my knowledge).
I appreciate all the work @CHH2 has put into this thread!
CHH2 said:
I'll have to see what I can set up. That's not really a normal shot I have set-up or sitting around. I might be able to do something at work tomorrow before everyone else gets in and the whole place is blasted with light. Unfortunately, I no longer work at the museum but I might be able to make something work.
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Thanks! You don't have to go out of your way. I will have my phone tomorrow.
EVOme said:
Thanks! You don't have to go out of your way. I will have my phone tomorrow.
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I shot this real quick this morning. It's completely SOOC. Yes, you might notice something rather odd and be asking yourself, "Why didn't he rotate the image?" Well, I didn't rotate it because on my phone the image is upright and correct. Somewhere between the phone and Flickr, it got rotated. I'll be deleting this one at the end of today as it's not really something I'd normally shoot even as a reminder or novelty.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/36882784984/
And just because I got lucky this morning, a little close up:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/37593620881/
Going to add one more photo. This one shot in probably one of the most challenging places to shoot, a jazz club. This is probably the cleanest shot I've taken in there with a cellphone. I'm impressed.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/36883443574/
CHH2 said:
I shot this real quick this morning. It's completely SOOC. Yes, you might notice something rather odd and be asking yourself, "Why didn't he rotate the image?" Well, I didn't rotate it because on my phone the image is upright and correct. Somewhere between the phone and Flickr, it got rotated. I'll be deleting this one at the end of today as it's not really something I'd normally shoot even as a reminder or novelty.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/36882784984/
And just because I got lucky this morning, a little close up:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/37593620881/
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Wow man! I have restored faith in the camera. That office shot is very sharp. For the grasshopper, are you using one of the installed filters or is a post render?
Thank you for taking those.
EVOme said:
Wow man! I have restored faith in the camera. That office shot is very sharp. For the grasshopper, are you using one of the installed filters or is a post render?
Thank you for taking those.
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You're welcome. For photos, I never use the filters in the camera apps. I always use Snapseed. It has a lot more control and much more power once you learn how to apply the various filters in combination. The grasshopper only had typical post processing that most photographers would apply; a tad sharpening that is only really noticeable when zoomed in, B&W conversion, bump in contrast, and a bump in shadows to make them a tad darker. Oh, and a crop, maybe threw away a little more than half the overall pixels from the frame as I didn't want to scare it off.
And yeah, for being such a tiny sensor, I'm impressed with the low light shooting. I still want to try shooting in the basement of the jazz club. That's usually territory that I need at least my smaller dedicated camera if not my DSLR. I won't get to try that again until this next weekend.
Decided to try something a little different. This isn't final by any means but this shows what playing around for a couple of minutes in Snapseed with just a couple quick shots can get you: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/37605204891/
Looking forward to showing this to my curator friend and watching him fall off of his barstool when I tell him it was all done on one cellphone in under five minutes. (He's pretty much a film guy as is the guy who is the inspiration for this photo. Bonus points if you can name the photographer I'm copying for this photo.)
Main camera: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/36870848874/
Dark background selfie cam: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/37322765870/
Light background selfie cam: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/23728950428/
.[/QUOTE]
What camera was used for those selfies? I'm not a fan of selfies but love the ones you've taken. I'd like to experiment with it and my fiance would too.thank you. Btw love you test album. Talent for sure
lg3FTW said:
Main camera: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/36870848874/
Dark background selfie cam: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/37322765870/
Light background selfie cam: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chimphappyhour/23728950428/
.
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What camera was used for those selfies? I'm not a fan of selfies but love the ones you've taken. I'd like to experiment with it and my fiance would too.thank you. Btw love you test album. Talent for sure[/QUOTE]
I used the front selfie camera with all of those silly settings at the bottom of the frame turned off, set to zero, whatever their values are. Then I just did some quick processing in Snapseed. That's pretty much it. I don't get too complex. And thank you.
Finally figured out a work around so I can hear the audio on the videos I'm importing from the phone to my laptop and can't believe I didn't think of this before. Pulled the videos from their folder over into an empty Chrome browser window and Voila! they played complete with their soundtrack!
So the following is from shooting in a dark jazz club. (Notes, not footage yet. I'll try uploading something to youtube when I figure out what, when, and how.)
Probably the most important observation I see about video from the V30 (and this actually applied to the V20 too) is that loud music can end up jostling the OIS and introduce more shake than it removes.
Another observation is that recording video while in Auto mode, you better make sure you have plenty of somewhat decent light. Tonight while playing around, the screen would be plenty bright all the way up until I hit that little red record button. Then the screen squeezes down and went dark enough that the footage was unusable. Shooting in manual video mode, I was able to get some footage. It wasn't exactly ideal settings that I was shooting with though so the footage is so-so. (Best settings I could get were ISO 3200 and a shutter speed of 1/25. My understanding is that since I had my frame rate at 24fps, I should have had a shutter speed of 1/50 but that just wasn't happening inside that place.)
In manual video mode, it really doesn't like ISO 3200 for some reason. I'd play with a setting and come back and the ISO would be set to 3150 for some reason. I'd bump it back up to 3200, go do something else, come back to 3150. I would have to make sure that's the last thing I tweaked before hitting the record button.
The audio picks up pretty much all the sounds I'm hearing. I need to sit down with headphones and see if there's extra noise being introduced. I suspect dragging the videos into the Chrome browser is exactly the best quality test. It just lets me know the audio tracks are intact in the file which I was a little worried about at first.
I still have a lot more playing around with the video as most of it is new to me.
Is anyone having camera issues?
For whatever reason, when I try to take a photo of my dog, the face looks smeared. Roughly 80-90% of the time. While on my iphone it looks great...I'm kinda bummed out about this and wondering if this is either an issue with my unit, or if this is a common thing with Samsung.
Also, just for some more info, I've tried turning on/off hdr, scene optimizer, and whenever I am ready to take a picture, it looks stunning. Then I hit the shutter button, and it turns out like poop. Barely half the quality of what it looked like before I hit the shutter button.
Here are two pics to compare so you can see what I mean. If anyone has any info regarding this please let me know, thanks.
Samsung
Iphone
resetoriginal said:
Is anyone having camera issues?
For whatever reason, when I try to take a photo of my dog, the face looks smeared. Roughly 80-90% of the time. While on my iphone it looks great...I'm kinda bummed out about this and wondering if this is either an issue with my unit, or if this is a common thing with Samsung.
Also, just for some more info, I've tried turning on/off hdr, scene optimizer, and whenever I am ready to take a picture, it looks stunning. Then I hit the shutter button, and it turns out like poop. Barely half the quality of what it looked like before I hit the shutter button.
Here are two pics to compare so you can see what I mean. If anyone has any info regarding this please let me know, thanks.
Samsung
Iphone
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I have always seen this happen on Samsung phones (S8, S9, and S10) when taking pictures in certain lighting situations. Especially inside when taking pictures of a rug or anything slightly fluffy. It is as if it is trying to apply the beauty mode to everything.
Try to get the AF to lock on to the animal's eyes.
A good pro cam can most times; it's a small but high contrast target.
-If you don't grab the eye(s) you lose the shot-
I haven't done any research how this cam's AF works; normally you would point focus AF although it may still target the hair as it's a high contrast target too.
There are a lot of high contrast targets in this shot, the dog's nose, that chair, the dog's hair and the floor boards. Try to limit potential AF targets by keeping the composure simpler and less cluttered with high contrast targets if you intend on capturing a face with the eyes in focus.
Getting closer to the subject makes an AF lock on the eye more likely. Try punching up the yellow focus/tracking square.
Worse with this cam's large aperture it makes for a shallow DOF which means a spot on focus is needed. The aperture setting is fixed so you can't stop it down to something reasonable like f/5.6 however this cam is sharpest at it's fixed aperture. Backing up therefore may help get more of the subject in focus. You need to learn to see through the camera's eye, as it sees rather than your eyes.
It is much more limited than the superb human visual system...
Manual focus is sometimes the only sure fire way to do it. In the pro mode it does have manual focus but lacks the smooth ring control of a good piece of glass found on stand alone cam systems.
A trade off... it's only a smartphone.
First, nice looking dog.
A couple of questions.
What were the lighting conditions?
Was your dog moving?
Sent from my SM-T727V using Tapatalk
Samsung applies way to much noise reduction destroying the details of a photo. This is why it appears like that. Also, there's nasty shutter lag with the stock cam...so you press the shutter to take the pic but it doesn't happen right away simply because hdr is always on no matter if you have the switch off or not. Basically Samsung have rendered there stock camera useless. Get the latest GCam port from arnova....all problems solved.