Hi guys,
I have my Xperia Z1 Compact. The smartphone is advertised(and reviewed!) as having very good display quality. However I cannot agree with that. My previous phone was Iphone 4s(so 2-3 years older smartphone) and while I really loved android as a system(it has its drawbacks though) I can't say that I loved sony's display.The quality is low. I can't even call it average. Much worse than Iphone 4s' display. There are four main problems that I noticed:
1) Unrealistic colours - the most annoying problem. Tanned skin look orange or red so any photos from beach will look like basket with tomatos. Just check the picture on polish wikipedia of politician 'Janusz Palikot' and see the difference.
2) Any details completely missed in a shadow. Just watch the beggining of the video on youtube called "7. bronn the commander"
and see difference between Z1compact and 4s(or your computer):
3) viewed images quality in applications like facebook are much lower than in real(or on Iphone). When I view a picture in facebook it seem to be less sharp than if I download the picture on computer, send it to e-mail and then download it from my e-mail to smartphone,
4) When i check gamma in app called "display tester" (option: gamma detection) the result is 1.4 while i read that it should have been 2.2. What's the reason?
What's the reason of those drawbacks(the third one is the least annoying but still) and how can I fix it? Is there any way to calibrate it(someone did that?) I use app "screen adjuster" but it's solve problems only partially and it's heals only symptoms not causes.
BTW White balance DOESN'T help.
PS. Sorry that I don't post the exact links but I am not allowed to I am attaching photos anyway
my dispaly is fine. It looks same on all Z1c's. Check the pictures I attached yourself. How is that possible that smartphone advertised as having top quality display works like this and cannot even display human skin properly? Iphone 4s i almost 3 years older but the display is FAR above sony's.
Anyway is there anything I can do to fix it?
when I take a photo then view it and zoom in, the photo becomes pixelated and does the same when i viewed it in photoshop never did this on my s4 any suggestions please.....
What settings did u mess with ? Or auto everything?
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Any photo is made up of pixels, so when you zoom, you will see those pixels of course, it's expected.
So I'm confused what you mean. Are you saying that when you zoomed into the S4 pictures, you never saw any pixels? That's impossible!
Perhaps it's just different software or tools you happen to be using, maybe you somehow are able to zoom further into the G4 pictures so that you can finally see the pixels, but when you used the S4 you just never got close enough to start seeing the pixels? But trust me, every single digital picture has pixels, you can't avoid it.
Are you using the correct resolution?
You can't really change the G4's photo resolution, at least not using the included Camera app. So it's unlikely the OP is shooting at, say, 2MP rather than 16MP.
But as KingFatty said, every photo will become pixelated if you zoom in far enough, that's just the nature of the beast.
The only "exception" I can think of is if you are using the digital zoom on the G4. It handles this a bit strangely, IMO.
On my last phone, as I recall, it would save digitally-zoomed picture as a lower-resolution file, reflecting what the sensor actually captured.
But with the G4, the picture will still be saved at the normal resolution (5312x2988, if shooting in 16:9). But in reality, if zoomed fully to 8X, it only captured 1/8 of the normal area on the image sensor. It only captured what was at the middle of the image sensor, then it stretched that out, "pretending" it captured 5312x2988. When in reality, what it captured is much lower resolution.
So a digitally-zoomed picture will look much worse than normal, when you zoom in using Photoshop, etc. It'a *already* been digitally zoomed in once, when it was saved. If using the digital zoom, you may as well just take a normal picture, then crop it down later to just what you want, it's the same end result.
This is why I never use digital zoom on anything. Cropping the final picture will always give you a better result than digital zoom since the digital zoom also effectively cancels any image stabilization in use.
How far area you zooming in? If you look at a photo from a DSLR at 100%+ you easily see the pixels and you can see how soft the photo is.
Hello everyone,
I recently bought an M8 and I'm loving it so far, except for the camera.
I'm not running the stock M8 rom but the S.Team-JW-7.5.0 rom (HTC 10 to M8 port), so am I missing Duo camera features or something?
Do you guys have any tips or tricks to get better camera results? Both for video and photo.
I know the camera on the back is 4MP but maybe there are ways to get better pictures and video.
Thanks in advance.
This may help
Duo camera works fine on SROM. But Duo doesn't make the photos "better", it just enables the Duo effects like Ufocus, or Dimension Plus.
Hard to know what you mean by "better" unless you can be more specific. What exactly don't you like about the pics you've taken so far? Are they blurry, colors look off, too much glare, etc.?
Number of MP has little to do with image quality, especially if you are currently judging the images on the phone's screen (although cropping the pics, or looking at the pics on a monitor is a different story).
While more recent phones make it easier to take a good photo, very decent pics are quite possible on the M8. A lot can be done with technique. Despite what many folks would like to believe, a lot of photography is dependent on practice and technique, rather than hardware. A few tips:
1) Manually focus on a point (your subject) by tapping on the screen, and then press the capture button. Same goes with video. The video recording often has a tough time focusing on the subject automatically, so its often a good idea to force the focus first, then start recording.
2) Exposure (amount of light) will often change drastically, depending on the point of focus. So again, experiment by tapping on the screen, and you will see the image get lighter or darker.
3) This camera has a tough time with glare (washes out the whole frame), especially sunlight through a window, outdoors in the suns direction, etc. Changing your position, and what way the camera is facing can often (although not always) solve the problem, or at least improve it.
4) Tap on the camera settings, and see if manually forcing any of the parameters results in pics more to your liking. Although to be honest, I use the auto settings 99% of the time. But you can often get better results in certain situations (such as low light or night photos) by manually tweaking the settings. In particular, adjusting the exposure (EV) or saturation ("gear" icon>Image adjustments) may yield results more to your preference, if you find those default settings are not to your liking.
So I basically read everywhere the phones camera app is even worse than what you get on other phones (hardware is still great though).
What alternatives are there, and do they have full hardware access and raw export for all cameras without compromising on image quality?
So what a basic photo app should do (I can't believe that I have to ask for something basic like this) is that I want to set a shutter speed it supposed to use. Camera app should do the exposure and adjust ISO and aperture (if there).
Then 2nd important thing (usually first but hey, google lowered the low standards even more), settings should be saved, if I get my cam out of the pocket again I don't want to dial in the settings again. Just remember it like every real camera does.
3rd is a dreamland level of feature (also normal on real cameras): setting a base shutter speed to freeze action have the camera compensate with ISO and aperture till it reaches the upper limit and raising the shutter speed at the lower limit so I don't get overexposure but always have a fast shutterspeed to freeze movement.
So are there apps out there that do this and do they get full sensor access?
It's actually more complicated than just "hardware is great, software is crap". A lot of the technology that makes Pixels one of the best point and shoot cameras on smartphones, is actually in the google camera app (utilizing the Camera2 API). Google has recently developed a new CameraX API. Its first release was about a week ago and has a long way to go.
Unfortunately, Google has removed some of the manual settings over the years, and has moved towards intelligent processing techniques that are done automatically. For example, manual HDR modes have been removed in favor of the auto-processing used in the app.
Unless somebody develops a new app, utilizing the CameraX library extensions, you won't be finding these things you've asked for. Pixels don't have a manual mode like other phones (such has Samsung for example).
There is a new camera app that the devs behind GraphenOS have created, using the new CameraX API. Someone posted information about it recently. There's also a modified gcam mod specifically for Pixels, made by team MWP. It has some features such ISO, focus and exposure sliders (the non-beta version has more features so download that version).
The official google camera app shoots in RAW format. OpenCamera (by Mark Harman) is also a favorite for many enthusiasts. Last week a user forked it to add a few options for the Pixel 6.
So you have 3 or 4 options listed above, plus the different camera apps on the play store (such as Procam X and Manual Camera). But over the years, it seems that the official google camera app, results in the best quality (but we can now include the MWP gcam mod since it has been modified with most recent google camera versions and works with the Pixel 6/6Pro without any bugs).
Alekos said:
Unfortunately, Google has removed some of the manual settings over the years, and has moved towards intelligent processing techniques that are done automatically. For example, manual HDR modes have been removed in favor of the auto-processing used in the app.
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An alarming trend, smartphone camera software has never been the most useful and not its getting even worse.
No amount of AI magic is going to recognize that a now still standing person is going to do something fast the next second that I would like to capture with a shutter speed of 1/1000. Also not going to anticipate the cat jumping and me wanting to get that unblurred.
I don't care about AI processing, photo editing has nothing to do with a camera software in my opinion and should happen after the shot was taken and not during. I'm old, I do my own edits. But I would like to have the full quality sensor readout in a DNG file and no compromises on image quality.
nurps said:
An alarming trend, smartphone cameras have never been the most useful and not its getting even worse.
No amount of AI magic is going to recognize that a now still standing person is going to do something fast the next second that I would like to capture with a shutter speed of 1/1000. Also not going to anticipate the cat jumping and me wanting to get that unblurred.
I don't care about AI processing, photo editing has nothing to do with a camera software in my opinion and should happen after the shot was taken and not during. I'm old, I do my own edits. But I would like to have the full quality sensor readout in a DNG file and no compromises on image quality.
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Similar as you, I am 65 and shooting with Canon DSLR for longer than I can remember, I always want to control everything myself. I am now shooting with an app called "ProShot" on the P6P which you can get for I think $5 from the Play Store. It almost worked like a DSLR or mirrorless. I don't care about the AI, I shoot in raw and edit all the photos in Photoshop after moving them to my computer. I think you can download it as a free trial before you made a decision.
Have you noticed any quality differences between stock and ProShot raws on any of the 3 cameras? I remember ProShot from my S8 days.
nurps said:
Have you noticed any quality differences between stock and ProShot raws on any of the 3 cameras? I remember ProShot from my S8 days.
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For raws, I don't see any difference. Jpeg is different story due to Google's AI. Anyway, download it and give a try and see the results if they are your liking.
I'm still on the level what phone to buy for best camera experience, so I don't own it yet.
nurps said:
I'm still on the level what phone to buy for best camera experience, so I don't own it yet.
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I see! If just based camera hardware, you have a lot choices, Xiaomi, Samsung perhaps better than the pixel. I don't shoot with phone that much. I came from Samsung Galaxy 21 Ultra to the P6P, it is because I need to root the phone to enable I can use call recorder.
IP68 is must, Samsung S22U raws look really awful though, not much detail there, oversharpeing artifacts at raw level.
Wedding photographer here and personally i find it a breath of fresh air to just point and shoot and get something without resorting to raw and messing about in an editing package, swings and roundabouts i guess.
On a side note the aperture of the lenses on a smartphone are that wide you tend to get really fast shutter speeds anyway even with pretty mediocre light, i took a photo the other day, it was a bright'ish day with about 50% cloud and the shutter speed was 1/5814 at f2.2 using the wide angle lens.
nurps said:
Have you noticed any quality differences between stock and ProShot raws on any of the 3 cameras? I remember ProShot from my S8 days.
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I use exclusively ProShot when shooting RAW. RAW files from the Google camera app miss information. That's why the size of its DNG files are smaller (about half) and vary from shot to shot. With RAW this should not be the case. However, ProShot only supports RAW for the default back lens like any other 3rd party app I am aware of. I hope that Google enables 3rd party access to the other 2 back lenses for RAW in the future.
In fact, my default app is now ProShot. The dev is very responsive and addressed several issues I brought up with him.
Thing is If you are going to shoot raw and disown the Google camera app then there is not much point in owning a pixel really. The whole point of a Pixel from a photography point of view is Googles computational photography, without that the camera hardware is pretty average and surpassed by a number of other phone manufacturers.
stbxxl said:
I use exclusively ProShot when shooting RAW. RAW files from the Google camera app miss information. That's why the size of its DNG files are smaller (about half) and vary from shot to shot. With RAW this should not be the case. However, ProShot only supports RAW for the default back lens like any other 3rd party app I am aware of. I hope that Google enables 3rd party access to the other 2 back lenses for RAW in the future.
In fact, my default app is now ProShot. The dev is very responsive and addressed several issues I brought up with him.
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Shooting Raw on Google's camera app is giving you compressed raw files, which when compared to uncompressed raw there's virtually no difference. Unless you mess up the exposure by like 5 stops, you ain't gaining anything more by shooting Raw with a seperate app.... especially on a phone.
Bwyan Benton said:
Shooting Raw on Google's camera app is giving you compressed raw files, which when compared to uncompressed raw there's virtually no difference. Unless you mess up the exposure by like 5 stops, you ain't gaining anything more by shooting Raw with a seperate app.... especially on a phone.
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I have found that the DNG files produced with Google's camera app are missing certain metadata. For example GPS location etc. The DNG file from ProShot has this info. While this is not important to everybody, it is important to me.
Additionally I prefer using ProShot since it has more manual controls, offers a histogram and allows setting separate exposure and focus points. Even when "only" shooting in JPG I find the pictures more pleasing than the ones from Google's camera app which tend to be over processed to some extend as far as I am concerned.
stbxxl said:
I have found that the DNG files produced with Google's camera app are missing certain metadata. For example GPS location etc. The DNG file from ProShot has this info. While this is not important to everybody, it is important to me.
Additionally I prefer using ProShot since it has more manual controls, offers a histogram and allows setting separate exposure and focus points. Even when "only" shooting in JPG I find the pictures more pleasing than the ones from Google's camera app which tend to be over processed to some extend as far as I am concerned.
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When I take photos with my 6 pro and edit the RAW files in Lightroom, my GPS location is still attached after I export the image. Perhaps you should check the settings in Lightroom (if that's what you use) when exporting the photo and see if it's off. I believe by default it is off. I used proshot a lot back in the day, but now I find it totally incomparable to google camera, not to mention buggy AF. But to each their own.
Bwyan Benton said:
When I take photos with my 6 pro and edit the RAW files in Lightroom, my GPS location is still attached after I export the image. Perhaps you should check the settings in Lightroom (if that's what you use) when exporting the photo and see if it's off. I believe by default it is off. I used proshot a lot back in the day, but now I find it totally incomparable to google camera, not to mention buggy AF. But to each their own.
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In my experience, the GPS location is only embedded in the JPG file that comes with the DNG file when using Google's camera app. I checked with several programs including ACDSee Ultimate (I switched from Lightroom years ago because of its better editing tools and no annual subscription). Btw, Google Photos also doesn't show the location of the DNG file but does for the JPG file.
stbxxl said:
In my experience, the GPS location is only embedded in the JPG file that comes with the DNG file when using Google's camera app. I checked with several programs including ACDSee Ultimate (I switched from Lightroom years ago because of its better editing tools and no annual subscription). Btw, Google Photos also doesn't show the location of the DNG file but does for the JPG file.
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Interesting, I'm looking at photos I took just yesterday, dngs and they have the location info attached in Google photos. As well as photos I took a few days ago.
Bwyan Benton said:
Interesting, I'm looking at photos I took just yesterday, dngs and they have the location info attached in Google photos. As well as photos I took a few days ago.
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Interesting indeed. I don't know what's different with my 6 Pro. I have never gotten location info for DNG files. When I use the 19 mm lens for RAW photos (not supported by 3rd party apps) I also copy the JPG file into ACDSee Ultimate and copy and paste its metadata into the DNG file. Not a big deal, but why is this necessary (at least for my setup)?
stbxxl said:
Interesting indeed. I don't know what's different with my 6 Pro. I have never gotten location info for DNG files. When I use the 19 mm lens for RAW photos (not supported by 3rd party apps) I also copy the JPG file into ACDSee Ultimate and copy and paste its metadata into the DNG file. Not a big deal, but why is this necessary (at least for my setup)?
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I just went back to the beginning of Feb looking through photos, not all of them were dngs, but I know which ones were, and they all have my location info attached. I like to have that as well as you, so know you have me double checking and making sure lol. But for me it's all there.
I've always used the google camera app when I'm in a hurry. Otherwise, I use
Camera FV-5