Xperia Z1 camera:
Exposure is basically the AMOUNT OF LIGHT (controlled by the aperture) that is captured over a SPECIFIC AMOUNT OF TIME (controlled by the shutter speed).
A HIGH aperture number (fstop) = LESS light being recorded on your digital sensor while a LOW aperture number = MORE light being recorded on your digital sensor. apertures are called fstops.
Xperia z1 have Fstop of 2.0 which is really good and low. Sony Cybershot DSC-RX100, Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX7. Samsung EX2F, Canon PowerShot G15, Leica D-Lux 6, Nikon Coolpix P330, Olympus XZ-2 iHS all have f2.0
Shutter speed: it is the amount of time your shutter stays open when you click the button
The longer your shutter stays open the more motion it will have time to record. The shorter the time your shutter remains open, the more motion it will freeze. But at low light you need more exposure
ISO rating along with the shutter speed and aperture setting are the three elements that determine the final exposure of the photographic image.
The ISO rating, which ranges in value from 25 to 6400 (or beyond), indicates the specific light sensitivity. The lower the number, the less sensitive to light the film stock or image sensor is. Conversely, a higher number indicates a higher sensitivity to light, thereby allowing that film or image sensor to work better in low light conditions.
the lower ISO rating also meant that the photosensitive grains of salt on the film acetate were very fine, thus producing a smoother, cleaner image. A higher ISO had larger, jagged grains of salt, thus producing “rougher” or grainier images.
Lower ISO ratings produce color-accurate, smooth and aesthetically appealing images… and this requires ideal lighting conditions. However, there are some subjects that you want to photograph in low light conditions. Or, you may want to stop fast-moving objects. In both situations, you need higher ISOs to capture those images with an acceptable exposure.with the higher ISOs, you can use faster shutter speeds to eliminate motion blur and/or camera shake. In the event that you want to use motion blur creatively, then decreasing the ISO is simple, and you can then decrease the shutter speed to achieve the desired motion blur and still have smooth, noise-less images.
The size of the digital camera’s image sensor dictates what ISO setting provides the least amount of digital noise. One must understand that image sensor size is not the same thing as pixel count. Image sensor size is the actual physical dimensions of the sensor, for most of the history of digital photography the image sensor has been smaller than a 35mm film frame. On point and shoot cameras, the sensor was quite small, and on most DSLR cameras, the image sensor has been the size of APC film (23x15mm). Smaller image sensors produce much more digital noise at higher ISOs (like 800) mainly because the high pixel count means that more pixels are being packed into a smaller area, thus producing more grain at all but the lowest ISO.
Sony xperia Z1 has sensor size of 1/2.3. Most compact digital cameras used small 1/2.3" sensors. Such cameras include Canon Powershot SX230 IS, Fuji Finepix Z90 and Nikon Coolpix S9100.
Whenever you shoot in low light or use a long lens, or if you simply aren't holding a camera steady, you risk introducing camera shake into your images. This manifests itself as a blurring of details, and unlike other image quality issues it's not something that can be fixed in post-processing.
The three main image stabilisation systems on offer:
Manufacturers have different names for lens-based stabilisation, but they all largely work in the same way.
ISO based
All but the cheapest compacts offer image stabilisation, and the easiest solution from the manufacturer's point of view is one based on sensitivity. This adds nothing to the manufacturing of a camera as it's simply the ISO which needs to be adjusted, easily handled by the camera's firmware.
As this is the most basic form of image stabilisation, and as other types are preferable, manufacturers often call it 'digital' image stabilisation in press releases and throughout specification lists.
With this type of image stabilisation, the camera looks at the focal length and shutter speed being used, and decides whether the two will create a sharp enough image. If it deems them to be inadequate the camera's sensitivity will be raised, which in turn increases the shutter speed, but the resulting signal will need to be amplified to a greater extent.
So, a camera could choose to raise an image that would be otherwise captured at 1/20sec to 1/80sec, but it would need to raise the sensitivity twofold. So, from ISO 100 this would rise to ISO 400, from ISO 200 to ISO 800 and so on.
The image is still captured sharply as a more appropriate shutter speed has been used, but this process gives rise to noise which is typical with images captured at higher sensitivities. For this reason other systems are preferable in more expensive cameras and lenses. In many compacts, this method is often complemented by sensor-based stabilisation.
Sensor based
Sensor-based stabilisation also uses information such as focal length and shutter speed on which to base its calculations, but instead of adjusting the sensitivity the camera physically moves the sensor.
The sensor will typically be mounted on a platform, which will move to compensate for any movement when the camera senses it is necessary.
Minolta first introduced the feature in its DiMAGE A1 camera back in 2003, and, after merging with Konica, incorporated it into the 7D DSLR.
Sony continued the feature when it took over Konica Minolta's imaging business, and was soon joined by Pentax, Olympus and others. All three companies continue to use the system today, and it has since been adopted by other manufacturers for their own hybrid systems and compacts.
In the case of DSLRs and hybrids, this type of image stabilisation brings the significant advantage of allowing lenses to be made smaller, lighter and cheaper (as they do not need to incorporate any form of image stabilisation themselves), and is effective with virtually any mounted lens. This is particularly handy in the case of older lenses which predate image stabilisation technology, although it may be necessary to first input the focal length of the lens into the camera, depending on the lens, camera and the nature of communication between the two.
Lens based
Lens-based image stabilisation came just before digital cameras were made accessible, but the two have more or less evolved over a similar space of time.
Today, the technology is found in a range of optics manufactured by Canon and Nikon (particularly those targeted towards the professional), as well throughout the ranges from independent lens manufacturers Sigma and Tamron. Panasonic also uses the system in its lenses designed for the Micro Four Thirds system, as well as those found in its Lumix range of compacts.
Lens-based stabilisation systems typically work by shifting a lens group towards the rear of the lens on a plane perpendicular to the optical axis.
This is done with the help of two gyro sensors inside the lens, one for yaw and one for pitch. These notice the angle and speed of any movement, and this information is fed to a microprocessor which computes the necessary adjustments needed to be made by the lens group. By doing so, the light's angle of refraction is changed so that it hits the sensor in the right place.
Manufacturers of these systems claim that this type of stabilisation is the most effective as it can be tailored specifically to the objective in which it us used. And, as stabilisation takes place in the lens, the photographer is able to view the effect through the viewfinder.
Typically this activates once the shutter release has been half-depressed, although it is possible on different camera/lens combinations to set when the stabilisation begins, such as only at the moment of capture, for example. This has the additional benefit of conserving power, as, left on all the time, lens-based image stabilisation systems can eat up battery power fairly quickly.
One recent development in this area is Canon's Hybrid IS system, which offers two types of correction.
The first is via an angular velocity sensor which notices rotational shake, which is found in existing image-stabilised lenses.
Canon 100mmThe second - and what makes the Hybrid IS system different - is a separate sensor for noticing camera shift (linear) movements, such as when a camera moves up, down, left or right while remaining parallel to the subject. Canon claims that by incorporating both sensors camera shake is better corrected.
I feel low noise is more important than full zoom blur..
the focal length describes the distance in millimetres between the lens and the image it forms on the sensor (or film) when it is sharply focused at infinity - the farthest possible distance.
When a ray of light passes from a less dense to a more dense medium (such as from air to glass) it slows down. If it strikes the glass surface at an angle, it is also bent a little, and this is called refraction. When it passes back into air, it speeds up again, and is again refracted if the surface is at an angle.
Thus a curved piece of glass will focus a parallel beam of light (arriving perpendicular to the lens, that is along its axis) to a point. The interesting thing happens when the light rays are parallel to each other but not parallel to the axis through the centre of the lens. This same lens will also focus these, but to a point above, below, or beside the focal point for rays along the axis, and all these points of focus of parallel rays will form a plane, called the focal plane of the lens. So, you put the sensor at this focal plane, and you've now used the lens to concentrate the light on the sensor.
As the focal length and magnification of a lens increases, the image appears more compressed, resulting in less visual distinction and separation between the foreground, middle ground, and background.
With shorter focal lengths and wider angles of view than standard lenses, wideangle lenses are employed by landscape and reportage specialists. Remember you'll need a shorter focal length on many DSLRs to get the equivalent field of view if you don't have a full-frame sensor. There's a plethora of wideangle lenses available, from 8mm ‘fisheye' lenses to 28mm lenses. Wide zooms are increasingly popular and effective.
Sony xperia Z1 uses 27mm wide angle lens... this good for parties if you need background and sceneries.
Personally i feel the problem with all sony mobile phone camera is their digital image stabilisation process. they are kicking in more ISO to make it look grainy. i cannot confirm it since i cannot get the picture sample during various stages of processing. but this is a very possible candidate. Since post processing will not induce so much issue.. even with not so professional algorithms i made using wavelength, cosine transforms and other denoising and sharpening algorithms. I can make better results.
Camera Sensor
There are 2 types of sensors CMOS and CCD
In a CCD device, the charge is actually transported across the chip and read at one corner of the array. An analog-to-digital converter turns each pixel's value into a digital value. In most CMOS devices, there are several transistors at each pixel that amplify and move the charge using more traditional wires. The CMOS approach is more flexible because each pixel can be read individually.
CCDs use a special manufacturing process to create the ability to transport charge across the chip without distortion. This process leads to very high-quality sensors in terms of fidelity and light sensitivity. CMOS chips, on the other hand, use traditional manufacturing processes to create the chip -- the same processes used to make most microprocessors . Because of the manufacturing differences, there have been some noticeable differences between CCD and CMOS sensors.
CCD sensors, as mentioned above, create high-quality, low-noise images. CMOS sensors, traditionally, are more susceptible to noise.
Because each pixel on a CMOS sensor has several transistors located next to it, the light sensitivity of a CMOS chip tends to be lower. Many of the photons hitting the chip hit the transistors instead of the photodiode.
CMOS traditionally consumes little power. Implementing a sensor in CMOS yields a low-power sensor.
CCDs use a process that consumes lots of power. CCDs consume as much as 100 times more power than an equivalent CMOS sensor.
CMOS chips can be fabricated on just about any standard silicon production line, so they tend to be extremely inexpensive compared to CCD sensors.
CCD sensors have been mass produced for a longer period of time, so they are more mature. They tend to have higher quality and more pixels.
CMOS sensors produce less noise at high ISOs, but CCD sensors tend to be sharper given a consistent scene.
These factors also contribute to the clarity of the clarity of the image and more noise in sony cameras.
front illuminated sensor
Front-illuminated digital camera sensor consists of a matrix of individual picture elements where each element is constructed with a lens at the front, wiring in the middle, and photodetectors at the back. This traditional orientation of the sensor places the active matrix on its front surface and simplifies manufacturing. The matrix and its wiring, however, reflect some of the light, and thus the photocathode layer can only receive the remainder of the incoming light; the reflection reduces the signal that is available to be captured
Backlit CMOS
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A backlit is different from a regular CMOS sensor, in that all the wiring and circuitry that's used to carry the electronic signals from each photosite or pixel is located at the back of the sensor instead of the front.
The photosites on most sensors consist of a micro lens, then some wiring, and behind that the photosites that record the light falling on the sensor. By removing the wiring and circuitry from the area between the lens and the photosite, far more light is able to reach the photosites, and this in turn means the image being captured needs far less amplification.
A back-illuminated structure minimizes the degradation of sensitivity to optical angle response, while also increasing the amount of light that enters each pixel due to the lack of obstacles such as metal wiring and transistors that have been moved to the reverse of the silicon substrate.
However, compared to conventional front-illuminated structures, back-illuminated structures commonly causes problems such as noise, dark current, defective pixels and color mixture that lead to image degradation and also cause a decrease in the signal-to-noise ratio.
This also further degrades the image quality.
Exmor-R
Sony's branding of this backlit sensor is called Exmor sensor..
To overcome the disadvantages of backlit Sony has developed a unique photo-diode structure and on-chip lens optimized for back-illuminated structures, that achieves a higher sensitivity of 6dB and a lower random noise of 2dB without light by reducing noise, dark current(The relatively small electric current that flows through a photosensitive device when no photons are entering the device). and defect pixels compared to the conventional front-illuminated structure. Additionally, Sony's advanced technologies such as high-precision alignment have addressed any color mixture problems. Also it uses unique "Column-Parallel A/D Conversion Technique" and dual noise reduction.. but based on the samples i have tested in mobile sony was not able to reduce noise up to 2db and dark current is not fully filtered out. This can be seen in Xperia Arc. the first phone with this sensor. but still there was supporting circuitry. adjacent to the pixel section.
Exmor- RS
The “Exmor RS” is a CMOS image sensor that adopts a unique ‘stacked structure.’ This structure layers the pixel section, containing formations of back-illuminated pixels over the chip affixed with mounted circuits for signal processing, in place of conventional supporting substrates used for back-illuminated CMOS image sensors.this further reduces light reflection.
Xperia Z1 display:
Triluminous: all LCD display cant emit light by themselves. they need a backlight to produce the light. All displays have white backlight . White light contains all colors of visible color. LCD contains 3 Filters per pixels called subpixel which allows only one light to pass through them. one for red, one for blue and one for green. these are called primary colors. and using the combinations of these colors any color can be made. but in normal screen it passess colors other than these by passing similar colors. for eg orange for red. this produces less accurate colors. Sony changed this white light into triluminous technology. Here they use quantum dots behind each subpixel. these have different properties.the one behind red absorbs blue light, gets excited and transmits red light. green one emits green.. so the backlight used is blue. hence the colors produced are more accurate.
human can see colors between wavelengths of 400 to 700 nm. the following figure represents CIE diagram of human eye
In order to check the color reproduction of the display. pass pure red, green and blue light. mark the point in CIE diagram which gives same color. draw a triangle connecting these points. you will get all the color that display can produce. normally all displays produce sRGB color space.Which is represented in fig
If you see the figures superamoled has the widest gamut.
If you see for triluminous for mobile it is seen that it cant produce the same gamut as seen on TV. it is just a little wider. not as much as sony claims
It is better than all phone except amoled screen
X-Reality:
Hue, along with saturation and brightness make up the three distinct attributes of color.
hue refers to a pure color—one without added white or black. Hue refers to a specific tone of colour. It is not another name for colour as colour can have saturation and brightness as well as a hue.
Saturation refers to the purity, or intensity of a colour. It is the intensity of a hue from grey. At maximum saturation a colour would contain no grey at all. At minimum saturation, a colour would contain mostly grey. Pink may be thought of as having the same hue as red but being less saturated. A fully saturated color is one with no mixture of white. We increase the separation between colors to enhance saturation. As a result, an increase in saturation results in an increase in contrast, brightness, and sharpness. A change in saturation normally has a more noticeable effect on vibrant colors and less on dull colors or colors that are almost neutral.
Brightness: refers to how much white, or black, is contained within a colour.
Contrast: is defined as the separation between the darkest and brightest areas of the image. Increase contrast and you increase the separation between dark and bright, making shadows darker and highlights brighter. Decrease contrast and you bring the shadows up and the highlights down to make them closer to one another. Adding contrast usually adds "pop" and makes an image look more vibrant while decreasing contrast can make an image look duller.
Gamma Adjustment: nonlinear adjustment to the distribution of midtones in the image. What this means is that you can adjust the middle tones of the image without changing the darkness of the shadows or the lightness of the highlights.
Sharpness:Sharpness can be defined as edge contrast, that is, the contrast along edges in a photo. When we increase sharpness, we increase the contrast only along/near edges in the photo while leaving smooth areas of the image alone.
Image noise: Reducing this noise can greatly enhance your final image or print. The problem is that most techniques to reduce or remove noise always end up softening the image as well. Some softening may be acceptable for images consisting primarily of smooth water or skies, but foliage in landscapes can suffer with even conservative attempts to reduce noise. There are various techniques to achieve this.
Color Temperature is a measurement in Degrees Kelvin that indicates the hue of a specific type of light source. You can use a Color Temperature (as shown in the chart below) to suggest realistic colors for the lights.
During decoding of an image or a single frame in the video. we divide image into 8x8 blocks and apply certain algorithm. After this they analyses these frame to understand the type of content in the image after this they change saturation, brightness, contrast, gamma, enhance the brightness and reduces the noise. this continues till the entire frame is processed. After this the ambient light sensor calculates the type of room in which we are seeing the video and applies a filter. For different scenarios we get different values of the parameters used. this is a dynamic proprietary algorithm. If we put standard color space image to check this, we always get the same result. as the content is not changing. hence it is not possible to decode the algorithm used easily. Battery consumption will be more during this mode due to increased processing.
Panel Technology
Thin Film Transistor
Liquid crystal displays, which are used in calculators and devices with similarly simple displays, have direct-driven image elements; and therefore, a voltage can be easily applied across just one segment of these types of displays without interfering with other segments of their displays. That would be impractical for a large display because it would have a large number of (colour) picture elements (pixels) and thus, it would require millions of connections, both top and bottom for each one of the three colors (red, green and blue) of every pixel. To avoid that issue, the pixels are addressed in rows and columns, reducing the connection count from millions down to thousands. The column and row wires attach to transistor switches, one for each pixel. The one-way current passing characteristic of the transistor prevents the charge that is being applied to each pixel from being drained between refreshes to a display's image. Each pixel is a small capacitor with a layer of insulating liquid crystal sandwiched between transparent conductive ITO layers. This type of arrangement if used the display is called TFT.. all mobile phone displays use TFT active matrix.
Low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS )
The circuit layout process of a TFT-LCD is very similar to that of semiconductor products. However, rather than fabricating the transistors from silicon, that is formed into a crystalline silicon wafer, they are made from a thin film of amorphous silicon that is deposited on a glass panel.
For DPI above 200 the use of amorphous silicon is not possible hence it is replace by Polycrystalline silicon. The “low temperature” part is important because it means this process can create screens using low temperatures, allowing low-cost substances such as plastics to be used as the backing material on which the display panel is infused or created. As a result, it also means you can create more flexible display panels. Hence LTPS is a description of a manufacturing process, not a display technology.
It is AMVA Panel.. did tests will show my findings,,,
(To be continued)
I have ordered a xperia Z1 for myself.I love it and will use it for one year. only thing i want is better contrast on screen.. rest are really good... the phone i reviewed is not mine..OIS is not that much of an issue. A thing sony could add is support for changing ISO manually in superior Auto...
Do not forget to hit Thanks Button
Excellent review thank you for the information it was educational.
How would you rate the Z1 camera against the other smart phones?
I tried the camera and i am satisfied.. it was not using final firmware hence do not know about any iso restriction or other features in early firmware.. waiting for final product
Out of the 3 image stabilization you mentioned: ISO, lens and sensor, are these the categories of OIS or any image stabilization?
According to many web sites, the Z1 does have image stabilization but not OIS... What's the difference
How does the BIOZ image processor come into play?
gwuhua1984 said:
Out of the 3 image stabilization you mentioned: ISO, lens and sensor, are these the categories of OIS or any image stabilization?
According to many web sites, the Z1 does have image stabilization but not OIS... What's the difference
How does the BIOZ image processor come into play?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OIS is lens image stabilisation and ISO is is digital image stabilisation that sony Z1 has...
jos_031 said:
OIS is lens image stabilisation and ISO is is digital image stabilisation that sony Z1 has...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From the photo samples I've been looking at recently after a software update on the Z1. I don't think missing OIS put Z1 at a disadvantage, the photos are still grainy but a lot better than before. What's your overall opinion on Z1's camera when comparing to other phone? My main reason for getting the Z1 is for the camera, dedicated camera button, Z1 impressed me the most when I'm comparing the samples between the current flagships. The daylight photo's colors looked more natural to me, even the low light photo looked better when compared to HTC One and the Nokia cameras.
I was never into AMOLED because the color of the display feels a bit unrealistic to me sometimes, thanks to your explanation, that's probably due to the contrast being too high for my preference.
I think that's the reason why I always loved HTC's phones because the contrast is not too high for me. The only thing right now is that the 4MP ultrapixel camera is way too unacceptable to me because of how grainy it is without HDR. If comparing the camera between the 4MP ultrapixel and Z1, which one would you say is better?
gwuhua1984 said:
From the photo samples I've been looking at recently after a software update on the Z1. I don't think missing OIS put Z1 at a disadvantage, the photos are still grainy but a lot better than before. What's your overall opinion on Z1's camera when comparing to other phone? My main reason for getting the Z1 is for the camera, dedicated camera button, Z1 impressed me the most when I'm comparing the samples between the current flagships. The daylight photo's colors looked more natural to me, even the low light photo looked better when compared to HTC One and the Nokia cameras.
I was never into AMOLED because the color of the display feels a bit unrealistic to me sometimes, thanks to your explanation, that's probably due to the contrast being too high for my preference.
I think that's the reason why I always loved HTC's phones because the contrast is not too high for me. The only thing right now is that the 4MP ultrapixel camera is way too unacceptable to me because of how grainy it is without HDR. If comparing the camera between the 4MP ultrapixel and Z1, which one would you say is better?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
About that overall opinion, i guess its what phone you want to compare it to... I got to tell you the pictures i've seen compared to some pictures i took personally on a lumia 1020 do not support some people's claims that the z1 can rival the 1020. I also compared some pictures to pictures i took on the galaxy note 2 and the z1 is worlds ahead of that for sure. Also can you link the latest images from the newest z1 firmware? I'd like to take a look at them.
P.S. Jos: you're really nailing these explanations. Thanks for taking the time to post here.
Here are some youtube videos that also explain some sony technologies, they are pretty informative and the host is pretty cute too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M51KPcYKZP8&feature=c4-overview&list=UUB2527zGV3A0Km_quJiUaeQ - Triluminous Technology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M51KPcYKZP8 - X Reality Technology
systoxity said:
About that overall opinion, i guess its what phone you want to compare it to... I got to tell you the pictures i've seen compared to some pictures i took personally on a lumia 1020 do not support some people's claims that the z1 can rival the 1020. I also compared some pictures to pictures i took on the galaxy note 2 and the z1 is worlds ahead of that for sure. Also can you link the latest images from the newest z1 firmware? I'd like to take a look at them.
P.S. Jos: you're really nailing these explanations. Thanks for taking the time to post here.
Here are some youtube videos that also explain some sony technologies, they are pretty informative and the host is pretty cute too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M51KPcYKZP8&feature=c4-overview&list=UUB2527zGV3A0Km_quJiUaeQ - Triluminous Technology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M51KPcYKZP8 - X Reality Technology
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you could find the new pictures from GSMArena's hands on. The updated photo samples were supposedly taken after the new software update, altho not mentioned by GSMArena. I personally think the photos that were taken on the 6th from GSMArena were a lot less grainy than the samples taken during the first day of Z1's announcement from other sites like phonearena.
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z1_ifa_2013-review-977p3.php
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Sony-Xperia-Z1-photo-and-video-samples-show-off-its-20.7MP-camera_id47086#5-
---------- Post added at 02:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:03 PM ----------
systoxity said:
About that overall opinion, i guess its what phone you want to compare it to... I got to tell you the pictures i've seen compared to some pictures i took personally on a lumia 1020 do not support some people's claims that the z1 can rival the 1020. I also compared some pictures to pictures i took on the galaxy note 2 and the z1 is worlds ahead of that for sure. Also can you link the latest images from the newest z1 firmware? I'd like to take a look at them.
P.S. Jos: you're really nailing these explanations. Thanks for taking the time to post here.
Here are some youtube videos that also explain some sony technologies, they are pretty informative and the host is pretty cute too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M51KPcYKZP8&feature=c4-overview&list=UUB2527zGV3A0Km_quJiUaeQ - Triluminous Technology
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M51KPcYKZP8 - X Reality Technology
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh yeah, here's the camera samples for comparing Z1 and 1020.
http://www.tbreak.ae/features/camera-comparison-nokia-lumia-1020-vs-sony-xperia-z1
1020's night time full zoom was better, but I didn't like how there was a yellow tint to the night time photos. Day time photos both looked pretty good. I think ultimately I may be getting the Z1, but I will probably confirm that decision once I see a more in depth camera review on the retail units from GSMArena.
Need Help
I need help from someone.. I returned the test phone.. can anyone install apps like System Panel App, Android Status or any app that support plotting RAM and processor utilisation. install that turn on time shift mode do not click photo take screenshot of change in RAM and processor utilisation. next click a photo and take change in RAM and processor utilisation. repeat same in AR mode and normal mode. And send me those Pics. This will help in avoiding a travel to do these..
gwuhua1984 said:
I think you could find the new pictures from GSMArena's hands on. The updated photo samples were supposedly taken after the new software update, altho not mentioned by GSMArena. I personally think the photos that were taken on the 6th from GSMArena were a lot less grainy than the samples taken during the first day of Z1's announcement from other sites like phonearena.
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z1_ifa_2013-review-977p3.php
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Sony-Xperia-Z1-photo-and-video-samples-show-off-its-20.7MP-camera_id47086#5-
---------- Post added at 02:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:03 PM ----------
Oh yeah, here's the camera samples for comparing Z1 and 1020.
http://www.tbreak.ae/features/camera-comparison-nokia-lumia-1020-vs-sony-xperia-z1
1020's night time full zoom was better, but I didn't like how there was a yellow tint to the night time photos. Day time photos both looked pretty good. I think ultimately I may be getting the Z1, but I will probably confirm that decision once I see a more in depth camera review on the retail units from GSMArena.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the update, the pictures do look improved from previous ones. This is purely speculation but from what i've seen in the past with post processing effects, the older shots look like sony is trying to smooth the grain away and then over sharpening the picture to compensate. You can see a few artifacts in the older pictures (when you view them 1:1). Another possibility is that whatever digital stabilization sony is using is going nuts on the photos.. Either way more software updates could theoretically improve picture quality further. Does anyone know if the z1 camera menu lets you shoot raw or manipulate image stabilization?
jos_031 said:
I need help from someone.. I returned the test phone.. can anyone install apps like System Panel App, Android Status or any app that support plotting RAM and processor utilisation. install that turn on time shift mode do not click photo take screenshot of change in RAM and processor utilisation. next click a photo and take change in RAM and processor utilisation. repeat same in AR mode and normal mode. And send me those Pics. This will help in avoiding a travel to do these..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should make this request a new thread to get more attention. By the way how did you get a review unit? I'm just curious about the process and requirements.
i can not tell exactly how i got the review unit. the guy will lose his job for allowing me to test during nights ...And i do not want to bother him again..
jos_031 said:
i can not tell exactly how i got the review unit. the guy will lose his job for allowing me to test during nights ...And i do not want to bother him again..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand, I thought you got it directly from Sony to review.
systoxity said:
Thank you for the update, the pictures do look improved from previous ones. This is purely speculation but from what i've seen in the past with post processing effects, the older shots look like sony is trying to smooth the grain away and then over sharpening the picture to compensate. You can see a few artifacts in the older pictures (when you view them 1:1). Another possibility is that whatever digital stabilization sony is using is going nuts on the photos.. Either way more software updates could theoretically improve picture quality further. Does anyone know if the z1 camera menu lets you shoot raw or manipulate image stabilization?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, could be possible that software updates could improve picture quality. I think HTC One had a update within the first two days improving the photo quality by a lot, but without HDR, the photos still look pixelated and oversharpened when viewing at full size.
X-Reality updated
jos_031 said:
X-Reality updated
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Been waiting for you to give more updates. Can't wait to see this thread completed. I'd love to know how X-Reality affects everything, but you gave me pretty good confidence that I won't be disappointed if I get this device (altho I'm still waiting to decide).
jos_031 said:
X-Reality updated
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that is relly good rewiev by you thank you very much
Updated panel and sensor technology
Very informative post OP.
Just one question, how did you come to the conclusion that the display is e-IPS? Apart from e-IPS I have heard some people say it's ASV, S-PVA & MVA.. Don't know which one is correct
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This is a great post but people need to understand that all sensors and lenses have a unique character , in noise and sharpness. From what I've seen Sony has lost sharpness due to its image stabilization and favoring high ISO. I think this can be fixed with updates. Thanks to op for the basics this is a great thread needs a sticky for sure.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
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I really hope nokia fixes this.
"Despite what reviews say, this isn't only a problem with daytime shots. Nighttime shots suffer from this "soft" look too. The night shots are good at capturing lots of light, but still poor on the sharpening part.
It sucks because before taking a picture, when I push the camera button down to focus, the image in the screen looks BEAUTIFUL and very sharp/detailed. As soon as I take the picture, it completely changes the look and makes it very soft and takes away detail."
They are saying it will be a software fix. They meaning Nokia.
Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Board Express
I dont like it as well but you can easily fix it with the built in autofix in windows or just use nokia creative studio app.
The main thing though for me is although the phone takes amazing low light shots.. they are only good for static objects as if your subjects moves even a bit they will become blur because of the slow shutter speed..
I guess you cant have everything
To be honest I'm not seeing the problem when taking photos of objects near. I suspect that on landscapes f2.0 aperture creates a shallow depth of field and so things in the distance aren't sharp compared to cameras with a much smaller aperture.
This is physics at work, can't do much about that with a fixed aperture.
Sure you can, set the focal point on whatever the distance is to the landscape (in effect, "infinity" by photography definition). Now, if you try and photograph a scene with things at different distances, some of them will be out of focus and look soft, yes. That is absolutely a case of "physics at work". It may be that the camera is too eager to focus on something in the foreground - even something meaningless, like the ground at your feet - when trying to take landscape shots.
So, my problem is that my camera does not seem to focus an Objekt, even when I "touch " it in the camera app. It is still a bit blurry when I view the taken shot. When I look at my friends Nexus 4, colors are much better and everything is sharp. Is it possible that I have a broken camera? The settings are exactly the same...
It may be helpful to post some example shots.
1st thing to look for is to make sure that the glass covering the lens is clean. And shoot in good lighting.
Known problem, please star the issue http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=43153&thanks=43153&ts=1359017856
AW: Bad camera focus
And the washed out colors? Max it be the fault of rev10 devices? A friend of mine said something like that
//edit
Here's a sample. If you zomm in you will see the Blurry borders. They are really annoying because when I look at the pic on a PC, I am able to notice it. Maybe it's the cameras fault or Googles fault for bad drivers and software.
http://db.tt/QSb8F0KE
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app
It seems to me like the hardware is perfectly capable of the focal lengths to get clear focus, it's just the autofocus implementation that's broken. Is autofocus a driver level implementation? If so, would it be feasible to try and create a custom driver to at least allow for true manual focus?
There are several things that can be going on here. 1.) it ain't a great lens, so not all areas of the picture are going to be razor sharp. I see a good degree of softness in the corners.
2.) I have noticed the camera's default behavior is to use lower ISO, and longer shutter speeds in less than ideal light, making camera movement a major factor in blurry photos. If you're gonna test under less than ideal light, rig up some kind of tripod.
3.) Auto-focus algorithms decide focus based on maximum contrast. If the area of your focus reticle is over an area that has poor contrast, focus will be compromised. Low light also lowers contrast.
4.) Depth of field. It is limited with this lens. Make sure areas you are checking for focus are on/near the same plane with shots that have reasonable distance separating foreground/background objects. They all can't be in focus.
With all that said, reasonable photography skills can get pretty reasonable results from this camera, as is exhibited in the photos posted in the photo thread of the "general" forum.
It does focus, but has a small delay tho..
actually the focus on N4 is slow a little bit ..
Is there any new piece of information about the bad camera focus?
anyone else have a pink haze when capturing white objects
Hi Everyone,
Have a look at attached example image to see what I mean.
Please try to take a manual shot with your wide lens in a very dark environment with very high ISO (3200 in example) and exposure time of 5secs plus (20 secs in example).
Everyone who has tried that so far has the same issue, a big purple shadow on the top. It's most likely the laser and it won't happen with the normal lense.
Do you have the same result? Any suggestions what we can do about it?
Whoa! I haven't seen that in a long time. I think maybe around the time of the Nikon D80. I can't currently try this out personally but by the sounds of it what has happened is called Amp Glow. It's when you kind of start getting out of the bounds of what is really acceptable shooting conditions for a given sensor. In this case, if you really are shooting in conditions that call for high ISO AND still need a shutter speed of 20 seconds and the image still comes out that dark, then you're way beyond realistic expectations for shooting with a cellphone. In the older DSLRs, people would see it when doing star trail photos that were 10 minutes or longer. Frame stacking software became the solution to this problem by taking a lot of shorter photos and stacking them up and pulling through the new dots of light. (And this is still used by a lot of photographers as it also gets rid of other forms of noise.)
So what is happening? ISO is pretty much the gain. It's the amplification being applied to the signal coming off of the sensor. Ideally with ANY camera, you want to stay as close to the base ISO of a given sensor. That's usually the lowest ISO number. (There are some exceptions where some camera manufacturers have done some trickery to get a lower ISO to show up but that was short lived as it didn't really help things.) Unfortunately, image sensors are not hanging in space. They're packed in with a ton of other stuff. Stuff that gets warm. If that stuff is near an edge of the sensor, that heat bleeds into the sensor and then those warmed pixels get amplified by the higher ISO and next thing you know, Amp Glow. Well, that's the simplified version at least.
A cellphone, any cellphone, is not designed for those kinds of shots. If they were, they would have a tripod mount, a much better flash, and a much larger sensor. (Yeah, the flash on your cellphone is not meant to light up stuff much past 5 feet. Even the ones built into a DSLR aren't meant for much past about 15-20 feet.) The reality is that cellphones are designed for handheld shots with decent light. Even the larger sensor used in some cellphones shouldn't be expected to pull any miracles that top end DSLRs are just barely pulling off cleanly. For that shot, you would want to use a dedicated camera locked down on a tripod using base ISO and long exposure at the very least. Although, personally, I'd probably just take a pass on that shot.
someone on reddit has the exam same issue with the wide angle. and someone said it's in the regular too. weird. my s7 never had this purple hue when I did even 30 second exposure at night.
Sent from my LG V20 US996
something obstructing the lens maybe, or just camera went bad
Better hope this isn't the same problem the HTC one m7 had with the purple haze. The culprit was a light sensor on the camera would overhear and give a purple haze on the screen in low light. Place the phone face down and with the camera on and see if the purple comes back.
Sent from my LG-H910 using Tapatalk
Dark Jedi said:
Better hope this isn't the same problem the HTC one m7 had with the purple haze. The culprit was a light sensor on the camera would overhear and give a purple haze on the screen in low light. Place the phone face down and with the camera on and see if the purple comes back.
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No, it won't happen with the same ISO/Shutter settings I took the previously attached photo. But maybe that's because it's not dark enough. Did the M7 issue only happen in dark enviornment as well?
CHH2 said:
Whoa! I haven't seen that in a long time. I think maybe around the time of the Nikon D80. I can't currently try this out personally but by the sounds of it what has happened is called Amp Glow. It's when you kind of start getting out of the bounds of what is really acceptable shooting conditions for a given sensor. In this case, if you really are shooting in conditions that call for high ISO AND still need a shutter speed of 20 seconds and the image still comes out that dark, then you're way beyond realistic expectations for shooting with a cellphone. In the older DSLRs, people would see it when doing star trail photos that were 10 minutes or longer. Frame stacking software became the solution to this problem by taking a lot of shorter photos and stacking them up and pulling through the new dots of light. (And this is still used by a lot of photographers as it also gets rid of other forms of noise.)
So what is happening? ISO is pretty much the gain. It's the amplification being applied to the signal coming off of the sensor. Ideally with ANY camera, you want to stay as close to the base ISO of a given sensor. That's usually the lowest ISO number. (There are some exceptions where some camera manufacturers have done some trickery to get a lower ISO to show up but that was short lived as it didn't really help things.) Unfortunately, image sensors are not hanging in space. They're packed in with a ton of other stuff. Stuff that gets warm. If that stuff is near an edge of the sensor, that heat bleeds into the sensor and then those warmed pixels get amplified by the higher ISO and next thing you know, Amp Glow. Well, that's the simplified version at least.
A cellphone, any cellphone, is not designed for those kinds of shots. If they were, they would have a tripod mount, a much better flash, and a much larger sensor. (Yeah, the flash on your cellphone is not meant to light up stuff much past 5 feet. Even the ones built into a DSLR aren't meant for much past about 15-20 feet.) The reality is that cellphones are designed for handheld shots with decent light. Even the larger sensor used in some cellphones shouldn't be expected to pull any miracles that top end DSLRs are just barely pulling off cleanly. For that shot, you would want to use a dedicated camera locked down on a tripod using base ISO and long exposure at the very least. Although, personally, I'd probably just take a pass on that shot.
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Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. My question here would be, why doesn't it happen to other phone-cameras with similar settings?
Kujoja said:
No, it won't happen with the same ISO/Shutter settings I took the previously attached photo. But maybe that's because it's not dark enough. Did the M7 issue only happen in dark enviornment as well?
Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. My question here would be, why doesn't it happen to other phone-cameras with similar settings?
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Yes the m7 only happened in low light / dark environment. Do a Google search for HTC one m7 purple haze. What caused me not to buy another htc phone
Sent from my LG-H910 using Tapatalk
Kujoja said:
No, it won't happen with the same ISO/Shutter settings I took the previously attached photo. But maybe that's because it's not dark enough. Did the M7 issue only happen in dark enviornment as well?
Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. My question here would be, why doesn't it happen to other phone-cameras with similar settings?
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Click to collapse
Settings aren't the only part of the equation. The other par is the placement of other components within the device. I need to look at the tear downs to see how the various parts are placed next to each other but something is heating up and passing that heat to the sensor. Just off the top of my head there are four parts together; the two camera sensors, the laser focus module, and the flask module. Each one of those on its own will generate heat if used enough.
Dark Jedi said:
Yes the m7 only happened in low light / dark environment. Do a Google search for HTC one m7 purple haze. What caused me not to buy another htc phone
Sent from my LG-H910 using Tapatalk
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It's the same issue. I haven't looked at the HTC issue but from your description of it, it's the same. Amp glow is what it is called in digital photography. (OK, silly that I said digital as you don't get amp glow in film.) The glow will show up because there is no other data coming off of the sensor for those pixels and the heat is amplified as "data".
---------- Post added at 05:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:59 PM ----------
Ok, just watched the JerryRigEverything repair tear down. The flash module sits right next to the wide angle and the laser focus next to the regular sensor. There is no mention as to what is sitting next to the sensors on the main board but I see silver boxes on each side with one having some sort of black and yellow warning sticker. Not sure what they are so I can't rope them in as culprits. So for now, I'd say it's a combo of the four units of the camera assembly.
Were you running the flash or one of the cameras a lot while you were playing around? Shooting a lot of long exposure shots in a row?
I'll get to test out some night shots and video tonight at a lighting ceremony but I'm still not expecting to shoot 3200 for 20 seconds type shots. Again, that's pretty extreme.
I expected a decent camera (having used a 3t before) and back then 3t could hold its own 70% of the time against the S7edge and iPhones, but had lacked the oomph/wow factor in the images it produced. The 5t is a huge improvement over 3t (I guess this is due to the fact that i did not use op5). The images are crisp, well lit and razer sharp in good to average lighting conditions. More often than not I have been mighty impressed with the OOB images from the camera and I have not been editing them on snapseed because I didn't feel the need to - thats a testament to the camera processing on this phone (OnePlus has come a long way here).
Note: Click on the images to view full size versions of them. All images posted here are straight out of the camera without any editing/post-processing done to them.
Good lighting:
Moderate/Tricky Lighting and conditions:
I expected things to go down south as it did on the 3T on similar lighting conditions. Seattle is a particularly tricky place to get good evening shots as its mostly grey and gloomy and camera's dynamic range becomes a big factor when shooting in Seattle. The camera did a good job detecting the need for HDR on the streetcar shot below (It notifies on the camera UI that its using HDR). Given the gloomy and dim conditions I was very impressed with the picture. I was unsure about composition when the streetcar was moving so I long pressed the shutter - With HDR on, it took about 4 shots in very quick succession (Thats impressive speed, slightly better than S7edge camera). The other 2 images below are in bright to moderately dim indoor conditions with multiple colorful stuff in the frame to meter. I have to admit that in indoor warm lighting the blue tones take a serious hit and ends up grey-er than normal. On the 3rd image below there was so many small tiny details on those objects and I was blown away by the sharpness and details on that image given that the lighting was only moderate.
Low Light and severely-low/dark lighting conditions:
I did read the op5 reviews early on and part of the reason why i skipped that was due to the low light camera performance (and lack of 18:9 screen). I wouldn't say they have blown me away here but I was getting more wow-worthy images out of this camera setup than the previous oneplus phones. 7/10 times I ended up not having to re-shoot the image or edit for sharpness and noise reduction. The first image below is a 7 AM (yeah thats how Seattle is in the morning) night lit building shot of the amazon bioshperes - the shot came out very very sharp and with excellent details. The lights were too bright so I am not surprised by the blown highlight spots, but the details on the greens/plants inside could have been better.
The next 2 images were taken in very poor lighting conditions. The first one is from under the kitchen cabinet where its the darkest corner and I know there is nothing going on here, but this is was shot i was MOST impressed with from this camera. there was absolutely no light in there but the outcome was a very pleasingly clear and crisp/usable image of my shiny cookie jar and hot chocolate cups.
The last one below is a photo with a faint one LED light source on a toy, i have linked the full lighting image for comparison of colors on the toy - in short: yeah it does better, but image processing needs lot of work on super dark conditions color noise and smudgy artifacts are visible.
Regular lighting shot of the above toy for comparison: https://i.imgur.com/cM9dPnMh.jpg
Portrait mode and Macro:
This is an exciting feature and I was completely not expecting such results (DSLR-esque bokeh). Granted this is my first portrait mode equipped camera phone (as a daily driver), and I was thinking that the G6s wide angle was the best second camera option until this happened. I am going to let the sample images speak for itself.
In short:
Very pleasing subtle bokeh
Color rendition on macros is "phenomenal"
Sharp... sharp as a needle.
No glaring smudgy artifacts on portrait mode when lighting is good.
very close focusing distance
did I say sharp.. its freaking sharp - just look at the chipmunk picture below, those hairs can give you a paper-cut by just looking.
Nice shots! Can't wait to get my 5T next week. Had the 5 before but sold it and now I'm borrowing a friend's 3T. So technically I've upgraded, then downgraded, and now will be upgrading again:laugh:
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OnePlus 5T User Opinions and Reviews
The highlighted thing about g5 plus was also the reason for bad camera. The 1.7 aperture and wide angle camera are the cause here. Though it is good for shots within a certain distance like 10-15 feet. But any further the pictures loose sharpness and gets noisy due to which moto decided to use high denoising due to which the photos look soft. My father's redmi 4 clicks better distance pictures than this. It has 2.0 aperture and little less wide angle lens.
Don't forget that G5 Plus have the same camera sensor as HTC U11 or Asus Zenfone 4 (which takes good pictures on stock software).
Worse photo quality is caused by software (Motorola/Lenovo screw it up).
Did you tried any mods/apps? You can find a lot of these, but I suggest you to try Google camera app port.
.czarodziej said:
Don't forget that G5 Plus have the same camera sensor as HTC U11 or Asus Zenfone 4 (which takes good pictures on stock software).
Worse photo quality is caused by software (Motorola/Lenovo screw it up).
Did you tried any mods/apps? You can find a lot of these, but I suggest you to try Google camera app port.
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I use bacon camera on stock Android without root.
I disabled noise reduction and use hdr with manual mode and stable hands to get though grainy but nice pictures. Though the app is not perfect but it works
When I first got the G5+ I thought the camera was too dark... While a lower aperture may help in low light shots it does cause a bit of trouble for highly illuminated scenes.
HDR does compensate but it's nothing like HDR+ from Google.
Plus, terrible sharpen and overdone Noise Reduction excessive Color NR.
I felt quite dissapointed comparing it to my old Titan (G2)
Anyone tried to mod the camera to enable debug mode? You can disable noise reduction from there
ugupta100 said:
The highlighted thing about g5 plus was also the reason for bad camera. The 1.7 aperture and wide angle camera are the cause here. Though it is good for shots within a certain distance like 10-15 feet. But any further the pictures loose sharpness and gets noisy due to which moto decided to use high denoising due to which the photos look soft. My father's redmi 4 clicks better distance pictures than this. It has 2.0 aperture and little less wide angle lens.
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Coming from an old school enthusiast of photography background - you're aperture on your lens (in this case f1.7) isn't going to cause noise - that's a function of the sensor. A lot changed when we went from film to digital sensors, but the impact of the f number of the lens did not.
You might be on to something with the with loss of sharpness though. Typically a fixed focal length lens is at it's sharpest at it's only setting... but they very well could have forked this up.
Given that the camera does pretty adequately with other camera software or other hacks - I don't think it's a hardware issue or lens issue. It could be a cut rate sensor...
It could also just be that whomever chose the default settings for this camera did a bad job
pwag said:
Your aperture on your lens (in this case f1.7) isn't going to cause noise - that's a function of the sensor. A lot changed when we went from film to digital sensors, but the impact of the f number of the lens did not.
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What about shadows in bright scenes such as outdoor scenery?
I mean, wouldn't lens aperture like f2.2 preserve more of these details?
That's a function of the film/sensor.
Your f number controls light and the depth of field (area that's in focus) - a smaller f number is more desirable because it allows more light to the film/sensor.
The only thing different here than fine that I can see is the size/diameter of the lens related to the f number. A larger f number, like f 8 or f16 increases the depth of field and sharpness, but at the cost of light hitting the film/sensor. That results in a longer exposure time.
A wide open f stop means more light and shorter exposure times.
One thing we gained with sensors over film is a wider range between highlights and shadows... You could get more shadows and more highlights. Film could get only so much of that before shadows went black and highlights blew out to white. But you still have a limited range. You can't get it all. In order to keep the highlights from going completely white you have to trade off some of the shadow range.
It's early and I'm probably explaining this horribly. Your spectrum between black and white or shadows and highlights is very long. But your camera sensors capability can only encompass a range of that spectrum. If the spectrum were a line of shades of grey from black to white that was, say, 10 units long, the range you could get in one image might be six units long. You've gotta give up somcombo of four units either at the black end of the spectrum or the light side.
If the cameras loaing details in the shadows that's because it's opting to the highlight/light end of the range.
So lens doesn't play a huge role in what chunk of the spectrum the film/sensor can encompass. But does play a role in how quickly the sensor can collect that info. Higher f number = smaller amounts of light on the sensor = longer exposure times.
My guess would be that the sensor or software is biased toward highlights because it results in faster exposures making life easier for snap shots and selfies.
M1810 said:
Anyone tried to mod the camera to enable debug mode? You can disable noise reduction from there
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If you guys paid attention for once on this XDA, you might have seen my damn thread or the chromatixx thread https://forum.xda-developers.com/g5-plus/how-to/workaround-noise-reduction-t3744031
https://forum.xda-developers.com/g5-plus/themes/modcamera-aggressive-sharpening-noise-t3604458