The camera of the mini seems to have trouble to focus. I am getting sharp pictures at close distances (up to 2 meters or so), but the higher the distance to the object, the less focused the pictures are. Tried refocussing and focussing using the touch-focus function - still no good results. Pretty disappointing.
Anybody having the same experience?
Same issue, but i believe it is affected by spot metering. The spot metering governs the shutter speed and aperture settings. So if the spot is pointed on a dark patch on the picture the camera will either decrease the shutter speed to allow the picture to be brighter. I suggest if we are able to change the spot metering to centre or average as per the old phone, we might benefit from a sharper picture.
that is just my 2 cents. I am in London this weekend just trying to test use the HD mini camera, I do use a Leica so i have a few cents on picture taking.
I noticed: the lower the resolution, the better the focus...
Had a little bit of free-time so decided to do a simple test. What differences does the different camera modes provide in Low-Light?
Here is the album for the pictures: https://goo.gl/photos/iFc9Keoh9um1beks5
All shots were handheld, 8MP 16:9, landscape orientation. Unfortunately, I don't really have a DSLR sample for comparison but you can take my word that there wasn't much light (among the shots, SA and Handheld Twilight are closest to how dark the scene actually was but in reality, it was still a bit darker). On to the analysis:
Superior Auto - Night-Scene detected, NO tripod icon Even though it selected Night-Scene, it still seemed to select a rather high-ISO in this case, making it quite useless. How do you get the Tripod icon to appear when handheld? Do you have any tips for that or how long I have to wait for it to appear?
Manual Mode (ISO Auto, Metering Multi, Single Auto-Focus) - based on many observations, ISO in Manual mode generally is 1/2 of the ISO that is selected for Superior Auto. Most of the time I shoot stuff in this setting. Curiously, did anybody notice that the "Image Stabilizer" option disappeared?
Night Portrait - based on observations, seems to select a balance of the lowest ISO it could get with the slowest shutter-speed it can have to have a balanced exposure of the scene WITHOUT motion blur. This in contrast to the Night Scene mode.
Night Scene - based on observations, seems to prioritize getting the lowest ISO it can and slowest shutter-speed to get the best exposure BUT the main difference with Night Portrait is it does not care about motion blur! And yes, the shutter speed it selected was almost 1 sec but I have to be honest, it really took me quite a few tries to get that clear a shot without motion blur. You might also notice some wonky focus on the right-side.
Handheld Twilight - not really sure what this does but to me seems to perform like HDR? Takes a couple of pics then stitches them together to preserve detail? If you compare to the Superior Auto shot, it seems to have more detail in comparison (e.g. the frame with etched words).
Is there a best scene for shooting? I think it would depend on what you want to prioritize. For me, I would probably leave it in Manual / Night Portrait for general shooting and put it in Night-Scene mode for landscape shots. Lack of OIS is sad but not a deal-breaker for me, just have to be more patient and practice having steady hands to get that good shot.
Hope this have helped you and please feel free to add any information as needed!
Generally in most indoor scenarios, putting the camera manually into Night Portrait produces the best results - especially with flash. If you can get Superior Auto to bring up Tripod mode in Night scene, this is better but without tripod you're better off with Night Portrait, by en large (though Superior Auto has surprised me, on occasion - I'd love to recommend it but it's so dang hit-and-miss: sometimes it'll do better, sometimes worse. It's very inconsistent indoors).
Outdoors, if you can get Superior Auto showing Night Scene, snap away. If it spot meters to the brightest point, all the better. If you can get that tripod symbol up, you're really in business and this'll really do the job well.
Oddly, outdoors in low light, I've found Night Scene on manual to be just too damn tricky to get a shot without motion blur. On SA, it uses some form of stabilisation to help. IF you can get Manual Night Scene to work, it's marginally better than the Superior Auto equivalent but, in a complete reverse of the indoor results I get, you're best using Superior Auto's night modes outside. Weird.
BUT Don't use Superior Auto at night without a mode selected! It's screws everything up. The Low Light mode can be good in extreme darkness but if the lighting is moderate, sometimes Manual on automatic settings produces the cleaner image. If you've time to do it, drop the ISO on Manual to the lowest it can be while still exposing the scene correctly, if you're in a reasonably lit but imperfect area, like a streetlit housing estate, etc.
One of these days Sony will produce a camera that you can just point and shoot. One day.
PS: I've always found Handheld Twilight to be generally useless.
Timaustin2000 said:
Generally in most indoor scenarios, putting the camera manually into Night Portrait produces the best results - especially with flash. If you can get Superior Auto to bring up Tripod mode in Night scene, this is better but without tripod you're better off with Night Portrait, by en large (though Superior Auto has surprised me, on occasion - I'd love to recommend it but it's so dang hit-and-miss: sometimes it'll do better, sometimes worse. It's very inconsistent indoors).
Outdoors, if you can get Superior Auto showing Night Scene, snap away. If it spot meters to the brightest point, all the better. If you can get that tripod symbol up, you're really in business and this'll really do the job well.
Oddly, outdoors in low light, I've found Night Scene on manual to be just too damn tricky to get a shot without motion blur. On SA, it uses some form of stabilisation to help. IF you can get Manual Night Scene to work, it's marginally better than the Superior Auto equivalent but, in a complete reverse of the indoor results I get, you're best using Superior Auto's night modes outside. Weird.
BUT Don't use Superior Auto at night without a mode selected! It's screws everything up. The Low Light mode can be good in extreme darkness but if the lighting is moderate, sometimes Manual on automatic settings produces the cleaner image. If you've time to do it, drop the ISO on Manual to the lowest it can be while still exposing the scene correctly, if you're in a reasonably lit but imperfect area, like a streetlit housing estate, etc.
One of these days Sony will produce a camera that you can just point and shoot. One day.
PS: I've always found Handheld Twilight to be generally useless.
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Thanks for the tips I haven't yet encountered the tripod icon in Superior Auto mode except when I placed my Z5 on the table.. But handheld seems to be just impossible. Any tips to do it in handheld, aside from keeping my arms steady? I can keep my arms steady in manual Night Scene. How long do I have to wait to make it appear / what triggers does it look for based on your experience?
bloodfire1004 said:
Thanks for the tips I haven't yet encountered the tripod icon in Superior Auto mode except when I placed my Z5 on the table.. But handheld seems to be just impossible. Any tips to do it in handheld, aside from keeping my arms steady? I can keep my arms steady in manual Night Scene. How long do I have to wait to make it appear / what triggers does it look for based on your experience?
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I wish I could tell you, lol. Tuck your elbows in against your ribs - that helps. If you can, lean your elbows on a arm rest or lean against a wall. You just need to be as steady as possible but it's tricky to do.
One tip; half pressing the camera key re-sets Superior Auto when released. If you do this a few times, it means that the mode is more active in looking for changes in exposure and behaviour and may help it come up quicker.
Once it does come up, half press and hold it and it should lock the mode so that you can find your focal point and take the shot.
Hope this helps.
I would add from myself the best results especially in detail are available throght Maual Mode 8mpx.
The autofocus is fast, low manual ISO and the usage of white balance gives really detailed pics even in low light.
It's also good to use tap-to-focus and consciously use light metering.
---------- Post added at 04:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:26 PM ----------
bloodfire1004 said:
Thanks for the tips I haven't yet encountered the tripod icon in Superior Auto mode except when I placed my Z5 on the table.. But handheld seems to be just impossible. Any tips to do it in handheld, aside from keeping my arms steady? I can keep my arms steady in manual Night Scene. How long do I have to wait to make it appear / what triggers does it look for based on your experience?
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Tripod appears actually only when the phone is set on a completely stable surface/stand.
Otherwise the phone detects any movement. Which is logical.
Thanks both for the helpful tips! Can't wait to try out and do my best to practice my 'tripod mode' Btw, what metering do you leave your phone at?
I've found to get tripod to appear reliably, shoot either while sitting or leaning/braced on something. I found it was the body swaying, and not the hands, that was causing most of the movement for me. If the tripod icon does not at first appear, take an initial shot in SA (without tripod icon), and it should then appear for the next shot.
Twilight mode means taking around 6 photos and interpolate the data between them all to create one final image. Samples are taken at high ISO and relatively fast shutter speed which it tries to keep fixed while changing ISO between samples. This results in a photo that has less noise, less chroma and preserves color and detail. Anti motionblur mode works similarly except parts of the samples with no blur are kept of each sample and then stitched together for final output.
EQ2000 said:
Twilight mode means taking around 6 photos and interpolate the data between them all to create one final image. Samples are taken at high ISO and relatively fast shutter speed which it tries to keep fixed while changing ISO between samples. This results in a photo that has less noise, less chroma and preserves color and detail. Anti motionblur mode works similarly except parts of the samples with no blur are kept of each sample and then stitched together for final output.
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Wow didn't know that before. Might be interesting to have a play around with those settings when I get the chance!
EQ2000 said:
Twilight mode means taking around 6 photos and interpolate the data between them all to create one final image. Samples are taken at high ISO and relatively fast shutter speed which it tries to keep fixed while changing ISO between samples. This results in a photo that has less noise, less chroma and preserves color and detail. Anti motionblur mode works similarly except parts of the samples with no blur are kept of each sample and then stitched together for final output.
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Interesting,.. but I've never once managed to get it to produce usable results.
i keep testing different settings in low light conditions (manual 8 mp and 20 mp and s. auto 8 mp and 20 mp) and manual 20 mp keeps winning for me. color reproduction is just the best.
i don't see why everybody seems so happy with s. auto 8 mp
Barthlon said:
i keep testing different settings in low light conditions (manual 8 mp and 20 mp and s. auto 8 mp and 20 mp) and manual 20 mp keeps winning for me. color reproduction is just the best.
i don't see why everybody seems so happy with s. auto 8 mp
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I am totally for Manual 8mpx.
Just because in real low light it's more crisp than 23mpx.
Other than that Manual 23mpx is great.
I can bring up the tripod quite consistently after the first shot (it keeps showing all those running, walking icons first time due to almost unavoidable initial motions).. Thanks to some helpful tips here, I'll have to try to get it up before the first shot.
One off-topic tip that could be pretty convenient. I'm pretty sure most of the Xperia shooters already know this. I leave the camera in my fav. manual mode (basically favorite ISO/res. & everything else set to auto or you could just pick a scene mode). I launch the camera using the awesome shutter button to get to auto mode directly. I tap the icon to launch the camera only when I need to get directly to my favorite manual 'preset'.
If we lock the iso as 200 in manual mode, I guess it is like a tripod mode, because the camera will adjust the shutter speed to match the iso , and it takes good pics in most circumstances.
I think we can all agree that the camera's auto mode can be a little weak on low light, fast moving objects, and focus.
However, I have gotten ridiculously amazing results using manual settings. To the point where I wish (if anyone from oneplus is seeing this, please please implement it) I could set up various quick-access custom manual mode presets. It would be a very good feature (does anyone know an app that has that btw?).
With a little tweaking, you can find a super sweet spot for a picture on certain conditions.
The following are examples on a very low light scenario with no image movement and minimal hand movement (exact same environment conditions on all):
- Normal mode
- Normal mode with HDR
- Normal mode with HQ
- Manual mode with ISO at 400, and shutter speed at 4s. Then touch and raise finger on screen to place exposure point, and then touch same spot and drag to place focus point.
I was shocked to see that this camera could actually capture something like that last shot in my home's corridor at 2am, when the normal modes barely gave me anything visible.
That setting is working very well for me on multiple very low light situations. Really wish we had some quick-access presets.
There are also settings which can capture images with fast moving targets (with low shutter speeds and a little higher ISOs), and usually I don't get blurry shots with focus on infinite or when selecting focus point.
Things to avoid are super high ISO's like 6400 which for some reason the normal mode is very fond of using even though on manual we can only get up to 3200.
Not sure why you would prefer blurry 4s shot over noisy high ISO shot? Yes auto mode isn't as good as the one compared to LG or Samsung flagships but even manual mode has its limitations. 1/8s is pretty much the limit of what you can shoot with OIS and that is only if you have super steady hands. Most phones with OIS can give quite good results at 1/16s and ISO 100 onwards depending on the lighting. Anything else like 1s or longer exposure and you'll need a tripod . By the way max ISO is only 3200 so you can't go higher.
Oneplus 3T noise reduction algorithm is quite bad and even at 100 ISO which should be super clean in daylight is probably one of the worst in the class.
gedas5 said:
Not sure why you would prefer blurry 4s shot over noisy high ISO shot? Yes auto mode isn't as good as the one compared to LG or Samsung flagships but even manual mode has its limitations. 1/8s is pretty much the limit of what you can shoot with OIS and that is only if you have super steady hands. Most phones with OIS can give quite good results at 1/16s and ISO 100 onwards depending on the lighting. Anything else like 1s or longer exposure and you'll need a tripod . By the way max ISO is only 3200 so you can't go higher.
Oneplus 3T noise reduction algorithm is quite bad and even at 100 ISO which should be super clean in daylight is probably one of the worst in the class.
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maybe RAW is a solution here?
I have been trying Open Camera for the last couple of days. Seems to take much better low light photos. Not as good as my 6p but at least the photos dont look over processed and washed out.
After having the Honor 8 for a while, I just started doing more photos and videos.
One problem I have seen with video and photo is focusing on distant objects, either moving or stationary.
It tends to be blurry and focuses wrong, even when touching the screen on the item I want it to focus on.
A photo issue I have noticed, (mostly this christmas) is when someone is opening a gift Most of the image taken is fine, but then have a
blurry hand or someone moving too fast. Problem is it really isnt that fast. I can probably do pro mode and decrease shutter but then may get under exposure issues.
Any tips I can do to avoid these issues or any tips on photo taking will be helpful.
Thank you.
The problem there's no OIS (optical image stabilization), that's why objects get blurred when moving.
I'm no expert but I've found that the more you can steady this cam the better off you'll be. Anchoring your hand on a solid surface helps tremendously and I've also had some luck using burst mode, then you can at least pick the one with the least blur.
CronaMell said:
The problem there's no OIS (optical image stabilization), that's why objects get blurred when moving.
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FYI, OIS won't help you with taking pictures of moving objects. It only helps steady the camera, which only helps if you're not holding the camera steady enough for the shutter speed.
OIS is a must for a high-end phone, I hate to stabilize every time I take a photo, even a slight movement ruins the quality
CronaMell said:
OIS is a must for a high-end phone, I hate to stabilize every time I take a photo, even a slight movement ruins the quality
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The images are great, just the one thing that is bothersome.
I believe the blur effect on moving objects could be due to low light. Shutter speed on Auto mode could be at higher value for a moving object. Try increasing the ISO all the way to 3200 and setting S at 1/80 (or 1/60).
Sent from my FRD-L04 using Tapatalk
Even at daylight, the blur is present when object is moving
You need to use manual mode as mentioned by others
After taking a few pictures with the tele camera I noticed some really weird artifacts. After testing a little bit more I noticed that the tele camera is not always used.
So today I did some controlled tests. Set up a close scene, took a picture with the wide camera (from approx 25 cm), switched to 2x, then switched back to 1x and zoomed in by getting the phone closed.
While I was taking the 2nd picture the phone was clearly switching between cropping the wide camera and using the tele camera (with a slight change in frame size and angle).
The result is that many times the phone uses only the wide camera or switches to the tele camera at will, without providing any information to the user. Accordingly, one's pictures might only be cropped versions of the data from the wide camera, with the inherited artifacts.
Am I the only one noticing this?
Here are the three pics:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/3e4169610070483
http://www.imagebam.com/image/b01c20610070533
http://www.imagebam.com/image/116deb610070573
PS: The phone is running Oxygen OS v4.5.10
redo the test.
A guy did a lot of test on a tri-pod and then compared the pictures very closely on a computer.
Both camera are always used, but most of the time one add a little bit of sharpness in the picture.
Not because you cover on lens, that it means it's not working. It only means that the pictures wont be as sharp, but the difference is very minimal.
Here how it works;
In good light conditions, the 20Mp sensor is used for the x2 zoom. It does not switch to 16Mp. On the other hand as soon as the light becomes insufficient it switches on the 16Mp to zoom at x2. And uses the 20Mp to improve the photo; giving it more details.
When the light condition is average and the 20Mp is hidden, at this time it switches to the 16Mp, but without hiding it, it stays on the 20Mp and uses the 16 for more detail and exposure.
This as been said, in some condition, such as very dark scene, the 20mp, could not be used at all, hard to see since the pictures are too dark.
Has anyone found out how to decouple the two back cameras on stock oos?
Sometimes I'd like to make that lens choice myself, but still be able to use the OOS Camera at other times.
On stock, the two back cameras behave as one with all the third party apps I've tried.
On custom ROMs, the phone shows three cameras.