I've been using the camera and testing it for the past week. I've noticed that the 4x rarely ever activates and the phone uses the main camera with a digital zoom instead. This is consistent in videos too which defeats the purpose of a telephoto lens. Anyone else with similar experience?
I also noticed this, it has something to do with the focus and the lighting conditions. Try to vary your position/distance and you should be able to easily notice that. The phone decides on its own when the transition to the periscope lens is to be made. So sometimes it works when having 4x zoom, sometimes it only activates with 5x. Sometimes it's even a little bit less than 4x. Hopefully Google will add a manual control button later on.
No matter how good conditions are, the 4X camera lens never gets used in video mode. Anyone else with same?
The way it determines it is based on the focal distance. It's unable to focus below a certain distance so when you are too close to the subject it will zoom further with the regular lens before switching over
Soepersoeper said:
No matter how good conditions are, the 4X camera lens never gets used in video mode. Anyone else with same?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 4x zoom will only activate if you have 30 fps selected and possibly only with 4K, I had the same problem initially. Definitely should not be this way though.
mook6_99 said:
The 4x zoom will only activate if you have 30 fps selected and possibly only with 4K, I had the same problem initially. Definitely should not be this way though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That must be why all of those reviews were shot in 4k30. I kept seeing that in every single review video, and I wondered why.
dkcats3 said:
The way it determines it is based on the focal distance. It's unable to focus below a certain distance so when you are too close to the subject it will zoom further with the regular lens before switching over
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Isn't it by light too?
Soepersoeper said:
I've been using the camera and testing it for the past week. I've noticed that the 4x rarely ever activates and the phone uses the main camera with a digital zoom instead. This is consistent in videos too which defeats the purpose of a telephoto lens. Anyone else with similar experience?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had this when using the slider to get to 4x but if i use the 4x button it always selects optical.
Related
I never use HDR when taking pics on my GS4, because frankly, it doesn't need it. But I saw a couple of pictures taken with the G3 in HDR that looked AMAZING. It makes me think I'll be using HDR quite a bit. My question is, how exactly does the phone know when to use HDR and when not to? Is it somewhat intelligent about when using it would make the picture better?
Listening in.
Slash8915 said:
I never use HDR when taking pics on my GS4, because frankly, it doesn't need it. But I saw a couple of pictures taken with the G3 in HDR that looked AMAZING. It makes me think I'll be using HDR quite a bit. My question is, how exactly does the phone know when to use HDR and when not to? Is it somewhat intelligent about when using it would make the picture better?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
dondavis007 said:
Listening in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HDR is used to brighten the dark surrounds of where the lens is pointing towards a bright area.
Without HDR if you took a shot of say looking out of a window the light meter inside the camera exposes the shot for what you see outside the window but unlike our eyes which manage to 'balance the lighting' of everything else inside (surrounding walls) this non HDR shot would make these walls black.
Now take the same shot with HDR and although the exposure is still focused on what you see outside everything else inside the building has it's light lifted, so giving you an effect similar to what your eyes actually see.
The better the camera and I do mean dedicated DSLR type the better the HDR effect.
So, how does it do it......
Well, unknown to you when you take that HDR shot out of the window the sensor immediately notices the lighting is extremely bright in certain areas of the shot. So, instead of exposing the shot to either inside which would result in what is seen out of the window being washed out is extreme brightness or exposing the shot to what is seen outside which results in everything inside being extremely dark, what the sensor now does is say "Hey, let me lift the dark areas and lower the bright areas and give you are more balanced shot"!
It does this by taking two very quick successive shots, one bright areas and one dark areas and then quickly combines the two together.
All you get to see is the final shot.
Some camera apps such as Camera 360 offer a dedicated HDR section where you can control more of the shot.
There is even dedicated standalone apps which concentrate on nothing but HDR.
Hi guys,
one thing I just noticed, and I'm curious wether this is the case for everyone and if there's a specific purpose behind this: When using the rear facing camera, and switching into video mode. The 3 setttings 720p, 1080p and 4K all seem to use the same of the two cameras, the "left" one when looking onto the back of the phone. They all have the same field of view which is cropped in pretty far.
Interestingly enough, the 1080p 60FPS mode uses the other sensor, the "right one" next to the flash, and has a much wider field of view - which I actually much prefer over the cropped in FOV of the other modes.
Is there any reasoning behind this, has anyone noticed a difference in quality between the two sensors in regards to video capture?
Just thought I'd share this to see what's your take on this.
Cheers!
ef_x said:
Hi guys,
one thing I just noticed, and I'm curious wether this is the case for everyone and if there's a specific purpose behind this: When using the rear facing camera, and switching into video mode. The 3 setttings 720p, 1080p and 4K all seem to use the same of the two cameras, the "left" one when looking onto the back of the phone. They all have the same field of view which is cropped in pretty far.
Interestingly enough, the 1080p 60FPS mode uses the other sensor, the "right one" next to the flash, and has a much wider field of view - which I actually much prefer over the cropped in FOV of the other modes.
Is there any reasoning behind this, has anyone noticed a difference in quality between the two sensors in regards to video capture?
Just thought I'd share this to see what's your take on this.
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Didn't notice until you just said. That's awesome. There should be a wide angle camera mode where we can use it!
Great find! Gonna use this more often now :good:
I've noticed this around a week ago as well, and I think the reason for this is because it's something to do with EIS.
Other settings are cropped so it's stabilized, whilst it could be potentially harder to stabilize 60fps electronically?
Using Galaxy S20+ for about 2 weeks but noticed the HDR processing of the camera is very bad & everything in the sky is very over exposed and blown out. Every time taking a picture in indoor having a window on the shoot ether the sky on outside is very blown out or there is no light in room & some time both happens together. I'm wondering is there any HDR mechanism at all in the camera?
Sohag0910 said:
Using Galaxy S20+ for about 2 weeks but noticed the HDR processing of the camera is very bad & everything in the sky is very over exposed and blown out. Every time taking a picture in indoor having a window on the shoot ether the sky on outside is very blown out or there is no light in room & some time both happens together. I'm wondering is there any HDR mechanism at all in the camera?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you mean by the white tint at the curtain, thats the glare from the light on the camera lens. Can't be avoided by software.
I'm the old days, hdr is obtained by taking the same shot with higher exposure setting, normal exposure setting and lower exposure setting and combine all 3 into one.
In modern camera, it is done automatically and usually only up and down a few steps.
Unfortunately for your case, it require more than just a few steps. The brightness difference is just too great between outside and inside.
If you really want to take those unimpressive shots, what you can do is focus outside and set the exposure for outside. Then switch on the flash and use it as fill in flash. The shot will come out better.
But honestly try to take something better.
Sent from my SM-G985F using Tapatalk
I'm taking about the blown out sky.
It's because the camera is exposing for the dark interior, and the sky outside is far too bright for even HDR to compensate for.
As mentioned, you can set the exposure for the sky outside, and use a fill flash to bring up the brightness of the room you're in.
Sohag0910 said:
I'm taking about the blown out sky.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. That's what I meant.
Sent from my SM-G985F using Tapatalk
Are you sure you have the hdr activated? Exynos are known to be better than the snapdragon regarding hdr, and it works flawless on my ultra.
nyttnick said:
Are you sure you have the hdr activated? Exynos are known to be better than the snapdragon regarding hdr, and it works flawless on my ultra.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HDR was activated & seen many phones handle this situation better than this. All the current Huawei, apple, Google or even oneplus phone has much better HDR processing than this
Mine s20 ultra exynos hav much better hdr than that. Think youre phone is faulty.
Sohag0910 said:
HDR was activated & seen many phones handle this situation better than this. All the current Huawei, apple, Google or even oneplus phone has much better HDR processing than this
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is no hdr in the world that can salvage that unless you do it manually or use an dslr and adjust the steps to larger steps.
Sent from my SM-G985F using Tapatalk
So I noticed that the zoom lens only activates at 5x zoom. You can see this by covering the lens with your finger and zooming in.
I gather this must mean that the optical 4x lens is fixed at 4x, but as it only kicks in at 5x zoom you can never get 4x optical zoom shots as it is cropped to 5x ?
This would also mean that up to 5x zoom you are just getting a digital crop of the main lens?
Am I missing something here? Seems a little weird that you cant get a 4x optical shot with a 4x optical lens fitted.
rosso22 said:
So I noticed that the zoom lens only activates at 5x zoom. You can see this by covering the lens with your finger and zooming in.
I gather this must mean that the optical 4x lens is fixed at 4x, but as it only kicks in at 5x zoom you can never get 4x optical zoom shots as it is cropped to 5x ?
This would also mean that up to 5x zoom you are just getting a digital crop of the main lens?
Am I missing something here? Seems a little weird that you cant get a 4x optical shot with a 4x optical lens fitted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Googles periscope lens doesn't kick in a "fixed" manner, it uses an algorithm (ambient light, shaking, distance to object etc) to decide "on its own" when to kick in the dedicated zoom lens. You can easily test this out/replicate this by lowering the light in your room/and or change your distance to your desired object and see that the point where periscope lens kicks in, changes.
Best just try to focus on the amount of details you can see, if you play around with it, you can quickly see through the Preview when periscope kicks in, since that will improve the amount of details in your preview window significantly.
Many people here want "fixed" values, but as of now, Google doesn't offer that.
This is also a big problem in reviews, since those people don't know about this limitation and you can often see a "here, 4x shot, not looking good" and my eyes tell me "jea, that's a digital crop, you m*ron" and none are the wiser.
So your saying you never know whether you will get a crop or an optical zoom shot at 4x, this makes the 4x lens pointless imho.
Google are basically stopping you using a feature of the phone whenever you want. If every zoom shot is a gamble on cropped or optical, decided by the phone, surely they are stopping you from getting the best performance from the camera every shot/zoom length.
If I choose a 4x shot I want optical every time or I may as well have bought the 6 instead of the pro and saved some money.
The deciding factor on whether it's digital zoom or the telephoto lens is the distance of the object. I estimate the telephoto lens minimum focus distance is around 4 feet. As you go between close and far objects, you can see the stutter between the digital 4x and telephoto 4x. You could always cover the either the main lens or telephoto and figure it out too. What they really need to do is add an icon in the camera app that lets you know it's 4x digital zoom or 4x telephoto.
This isn't something that's only unique to the 6 Pro.
EeZeEpEe said:
What they really need to do is add an icon in the camera app that lets you know it's 4x digital zoom or 4x telephoto.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This. I think that's the best solution for now, let people know what they have at the moment.
rosso22 said:
So your saying you never know whether you will get a crop or an optical zoom shot at 4x, this makes the 4x lens pointless imho.
Google are basically stopping you using a feature of the phone whenever you want. If every zoom shot is a gamble on cropped or optical, decided by the phone, surely they are stopping you from getting the best performance from the camera every shot/zoom length.
If I choose a 4x shot I want optical every time or I may as well have bought the 6 instead of the pro and saved some money.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The threshold in the HAL is at about 4.3x provided that all the other requirements for the switch are met. You can see the image "jump" slightly when it crosses the threshold because the image characteristics do not match perfectly. So yes, you can definitely tell which sensor it is using.
The reason why they don't alert you to which sensor it is using is because they (gooble) think they're smarter than you and better able to pick the right sensor.
Another thing to keep in mind is if the 4x telephoto was the default, anything too close would be immediately blurry. Then how do you switch to a digital zoom?
They could just give us a way of selecting the lens in use manually. Instead of treating us all like idiots.
rosso22 said:
They could just give us a way of selecting the lens in use manually. Instead of treating us all like idiots.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good luck with that. Truly given the way the entire world is being run right now, its pretty clear that the vast majority of people *ARE* idiots. And that is putting it mildly. So best way to make money is to sell to the majority, who are stupid enough to trust government -- those people clearly can't think for themselves.
rosso22 said:
So your saying you never know whether you will get a crop or an optical zoom shot at 4x, this makes the 4x lens pointless imho.
Google are basically stopping you using a feature of the phone whenever you want. If every zoom shot is a gamble on cropped or optical, decided by the phone, surely they are stopping you from getting the best performance from the camera every shot/zoom length.
If I choose a 4x shot I want optical every time or I may as well have bought the 6 instead of the pro and saved some money.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, return your pro and get the 6. be happier.
It's worse on video. I took a supposedly 4x video of my dog and it looks terrible. Pixelated, oversharpened and unusable.
MacGuy2006 said:
It's worse on video. I took a supposedly 4x video of my dog and it looks terrible. Pixelated, oversharpened and unusable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have 4k60fps enabled?
For some odd reason, Google only allows the dedicated sensors to kick in if you use 30fps, since both the ultrawide and Tele module do not support 4k60fps.
So if you zoom in whilst having 4k60fps enabled, it will always be a digital zoom.
This is one of the most annoying features. The 4x lense can focus as reasonably close range but the "ai" deciding to either crop and main lense or switch to the periscope is crap.
You can trick it by switching to 4x and focusing on a distant object and back again and hope it's just within range.
People ask why use it so close, but the 4x can really aid in composing a shot without the wide distortions.
Another issue is if you adjust anything like HDR or temperature on the main lense and switch focal length to other options it doesn't switch to the actual lense you want anymore!!
MacGuy2006 said:
It's worse on video. I took a supposedly 4x video of my dog and it looks terrible. Pixelated, oversharpened and unusable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can't use the telephoto sensor for video. Only the other two.
86rickard said:
This is one of the most annoying features. The 4x lense can focus as reasonably close range but the "ai" deciding to either crop and main lense or switch to the periscope is crap.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my book, that's an idiotic "feature" and is in fact a bug.
It makes zooming in day-to-day use unusable in most common cases.
When I zoomed to 4x and took a video, the result (1080) was not usable. It's a joke.
I think the conclusion here is the entire camera system really needs work. The hardware is better but the software is letting it down. Jerky transitions, bugs and a processing algorithm left over from the lower quality sensor days that actually over works the 50mp images.
96carboard said:
You can't use the telephoto sensor for video. Only the other two.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you can. I just tested it by setting it to 4x, making sure I'm focused on something far enough, and blocking the telephoto lens does block the picture.
Just discussing this elsewhere, with regard to the MWP GCam mod. This is a *serious* improvement over the stock app; the one thing they could do to make it perfect is give you control over when the periscope kicks in. If anyone here knows the people working on this, please mention this. The mod is here, btw — you really should try it! The version you want is 8.3.252-V1c_MWP:
MWP GCam APKs - Google Camera Port
Modified Google Camera app by MWP.
www.celsoazevedo.com
Gnaius said:
Just discussing this elsewhere, with regard to the MWP GCam mod. This is a *serious* improvement over the stock app; the one thing they could do to make it perfect is give you control over when the periscope kicks in. If anyone here knows the people working on this, please mention this. The mod is here, btw — you really should try it! The version you want is 8.3.252-V1c_MWP:
MWP GCam APKs - Google Camera Port
Modified Google Camera app by MWP.
www.celsoazevedo.com
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That may not actually be an option. The hal only presents one logical camera on that side of the phone and transparently switches between the sensors based on the level of zoom requested, and an assortment of other data.
I haven't looked into what the hal looks like, is it open source? If it is, presumably it could be modified to present 3 or 4 logical cameras (I.e. 3 individual + 1 combined).
Gnaius said:
Just discussing this elsewhere, with regard to the MWP GCam mod. This is a *serious* improvement over the stock app;
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How is it an improvement?
Testing zoom, it still uses the main lens on 1x, 2x ad 4x. Just like the stock camera does.
This is another reason to dislike this phone and to recommend against buying it.
Hi all. I am debating the switch from the regular 6 to the pro.
Looks I will be getting bigger higher refresh screen (pro) which is curved (con) and with worse battery life.
One thing that is not clear to me - is the zoom lens used in any other situations than when actively selecting it? For example - which of the lenses is being used when you select the portrait mode in the camera app? Is it using the telephoto lens to battle the fish eye effect?
monocay said:
Hi all. I am debating the switch from the regular 6 to the pro.
Looks I will be getting bigger higher refresh screen (pro) which is curved (con) and with worse battery life.
One thing that is not clear to me - is the zoom lens used in any other situations than when actively selecting it? For example - which of the lenses is being used when you select the portrait mode in the camera app? Is it using the telephoto lens to battle the fish eye effect?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have never gotten the telephoto lens to show up in gcam. Only the 50MP wide cam and the 12MP ultra wide cam. The 50 gives you zoom options but the 48MP telephoto never shows up
monocay said:
Hi all. I am debating the switch from the regular 6 to the pro.
Looks I will be getting bigger higher refresh screen (pro) which is curved (con) and with worse battery life.
One thing that is not clear to me - is the zoom lens used in any other situations than when actively selecting it? For example - which of the lenses is being used when you select the portrait mode in the camera app? Is it using the telephoto lens to battle the fish eye effect?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a 4x telephoto, which is a lot for portraits (so portraits are taken using main camera at 2x magnification).
No, it's not being used for enhancing ultrawide. I suppose it's also because if the same reason mentioned above (OnePlus uses it's 2x tele for this as well).
Telephoto is really only useful for zooming 4x and up all the way to 20x, when photos are still kinda useful (depending on a scenario), thanks to being a 50 MP sensor and some Google's AI magic.
I take a lot of zoomed pictures and I don't mind curved display. Battery is okay, 6 hours of SOT are real for me, usually on social networks and news scrolling. Sometimes I play a League of Legends, than it will drop to 4-5 hours.
Zoom lens is for... zooming in. I would think that would be self-explanatory?
It kicks in when the magnification reaches about 4.5x. Switching between sensors is exclusively a matter of changing the magnification level, not by "selecting" a particular camera. There are other details considered before switching sensors, such as exposure requirements.
You can tell which sensor is in use by briefly blocking sensors with your finger. When you see your finger on the screen, you found the sensor that is in use.
Yeah, thanks
What was not clear to me was if it is being used when shooting portrait photos, as some phones (e.g. Oneplus) do.
Looks like this is not the case.
I will stick with my vanilla 6 then, not missing out on much, subjectively.
monocay said:
Yeah, thanks
What was not clear to me was if it is being used when shooting portrait photos, as some phones (e.g. Oneplus) do.
Looks like this is not the case.
I will stick with my vanilla 6 then, not missing out on much, subjectively.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Portrait photos can be made with ANY lens, depending on the distance and direction to the subject(s).
96carboard said:
Portrait photos can be made with ANY lens, depending on the distance and direction to the subject(s).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is it so? How does the portrait UI looks on Pixel 6 Pro? On the vanilla pixel I have the options to shoot it in 1x and 2x only. Does the pro version offer a higher magnification, using the zoom lens instead of main one?
monocay said:
Is it so? How does the portrait UI looks on Pixel 6 Pro? On the vanilla pixel I have the options to shoot it in 1x and 2x only. Does the pro version offer a higher magnification, using the zoom lens instead of main one?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No. 1x and 2x are the only options available. The telephoto lens isn't used in portrait mode.