I have noticed that sometimes camera loses focus when shooting closely. It is hard to do close shot and takes several tries and different angles. I can see that auto-focus is precise but it fails to lock and gets blurry. Why would it return to be blurry if auto-focus is right?
If there was a way to have more control over focus and lock it when it is focused enough so it won't lose lock and gets blurry.
I heard that Camera360 app takes care of macro but it does not make any difference.
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TLDR; version: Are there any apps or ROMs that implements autofocus (not continuous) for the Nexus S video mode?
Long version:
I was quite shocked when I realized that there is no way to autofocus before starting to record video in the stock ICS 4.0.4 ROM. I'm not talking about any fancy continuous autofocus here. You know, just the one that makes the video not come out all blurry. If I record things that are at a distance (I bet focus is locked on infinity), it's quite fine. But everything closer than 2 meters comes out all borked.
I can not understand the reason that it's not there. It should be dead simple to implement. I mean, prefocusing before taking a picture is there in the still camera.
Also (but this isn't quite as critical), the sensitivity seems more or less capped in video mode. Ones it goes below a certain light level (which isn't quite low) everything is just dark, the auto exposure stops compensating.
Not only this. When in video mode, before starting to record, the exposure can look OK. But, when pushing the record button exposure is set back at least -1 EV.
I couldn't care less about the "low" resolution of the camera, but at least Google (or anybody else) could fix these things that should really just be a matter of (simple) software tweaks.
My question is: are there any ROMs (or even better, applications) that fixes at least the lack of autofocus?
I'm trying to understand what makes a camera phone produce good quality pictures. Initially, I thought it was pretty much solely dependent on the camera itself: I have an HTC EVO 4G LTE and it's 8MP. I want even better picture quality so I was searching for phones that had more megapixels, since I assumed that more MP the better. But during my search, I saw more discussions centering around the camera software, and how that effects pictures, which I hadn't even known before. Can I just simply download a camera app and get better quality pictures, or will I have to get a new phone, or both?
Altom85 said:
I'm trying to understand what makes a camera phone produce good quality pictures. Initially, I thought it was pretty much solely dependent on the camera itself: I have an HTC EVO 4G LTE and it's 8MP. I want even better picture quality so I was searching for phones that had more megapixels, since I assumed that more MP the better. But during my search, I saw more discussions centering around the camera software, and how that effects pictures, which I hadn't even known before. Can I just simply download a camera app and get better quality pictures, or will I have to get a new phone, or both?
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Click to collapse
Sort of. Megapixels are a measure of resolution, which is essentially how many mini-dots of color make up an image. One megapixel is the equivalent of 1,000,000 of those little dots, called pixels. They make up every digital screen you've ever seen. The more pixels an image has, the more detailed, and the the clearer it can be.
Now, there are some issues with large amounts of pixels in a small camera. One is that each pixel in the sensor must capture light, and the smaller they are, the longer they take to capture enough light for a well-lit, clear picture. That leads to the second main issue, which is blur. When the shutter time (amount of time that the camera sensor takes in the light that forms the picture) is long, you get a well lit, clear picture... provided the subject is stable, and your hand is too. If something moves, then the sensors see it both in it's initial - "true" - position, and every position in between where it ends up when your sensors stop taking in light. This causes blur. When the shutter time is short, blur is reduced, but pictures are darker.
So, yeah, the software you use is important. Some will use smart software to correct for blur, some will automatically brighten the image (Which reduces detail), and the best ones (IMO) let you set your own shutter time depending on what you're taking a picture of. For example, if you're watching a baseball game outside, you should set a very short shutter speed so that you minimize the amount of motion blur captured, but there should be plenty of natural light provided by the sun. If you're in a dim art gallery, you may want a longer shutter time, as you need the time for lighting, and nothing's going to be moving.
Creed14 said:
Sort of. Megapixels are a measure of resolution, which is essentially how many mini-dots of color make up an image. One megapixel is the equivalent of 1,000,000 of those little dots, called pixels. They make up every digital screen you've ever seen. The more pixels an image has, the more detailed, and the the clearer it can be.
Now, there are some issues with large amounts of pixels in a small camera. One is that each pixel in the sensor must capture light, and the smaller they are, the longer they take to capture enough light for a well-lit, clear picture. That leads to the second main issue, which is blur. When the shutter time (amount of time that the camera sensor takes in the light that forms the picture) is long, you get a well lit, clear picture... provided the subject is stable, and your hand is too. If something moves, then the sensors see it both in it's initial - "true" - position, and every position in between where it ends up when your sensors stop taking in light. This causes blur. When the shutter time is short, blur is reduced, but pictures are darker.
So, yeah, the software you use is important. Some will use smart software to correct for blur, some will automatically brighten the image (Which reduces detail), and the best ones (IMO) let you set your own shutter time depending on what you're taking a picture of. For example, if you're watching a baseball game outside, you should set a very short shutter speed so that you minimize the amount of motion blur captured, but there should be plenty of natural light provided by the sun. If you're in a dim art gallery, you may want a longer shutter time, as you need the time for lighting, and nothing's going to be moving.
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Click to collapse
Wow, thank you for that very detailed answer Creed I understand this much better. So basically (let me know if I'm wrong here) a large number of MP won't make much of a difference if your software and settings suck? So, on average, what is a decent amount of MP? I have 8 right now on my HTC EVO 4G LTE. Can you also suggest a good camera app? Thanks very much in advance :good:
Has anyone else experienced a slow shutter when hdr and/or ai are enabled?
If your taking a photo of a moving object like a dog, the camera takes a second before the shutter goes and the picture is blurry or you miss the shot.
It's like the camera has to think too much before it snaps the shot. When I turn these option off I find the camera very quick and responsive.
The same happens to me ..
Hello,
I have been using my Mi Mix 3 for a couple of weeks and I noticed something annoying when taking pictures. If I shoot someone who is moving a little there is a strong blurry effect, as if the shutter speed wasn't quick enough. I have the same issue with other camera apps that I have installed.
Is there a specific setting to solve this matter ?
Thanks!
Shutter speeds depends of light conditions, like in any other camera. Do this in sunny day, on the beach, in park and You will do picture without blur. When the conditions get worse, it's mainly the light, in evening, in the darkened places, the shutter needs to open for a long time to record a sufficient bright picture. The consequence of this is blur when the object is moving. It's normal.
PanMarcinPL said:
Shutter speeds depends of light conditions, like in any other camera. Do this in sunny day, on the beach, in park and You will do picture without blur. When the conditions get worse, it's mainly the light, in evening, in the darkened places, the shutter needs to open for a long time to record a sufficient bright picture. The consequence of this is blur when the object is moving. It's normal.
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Click to collapse
Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately I have the same issue with good light conditions. I'm going to try again but it starts worrying me.
Try turn off hdr and AI
Here a a few tips on controlling the stock camera app in auto-mode that you may or not be aware off.
Just thought it may be of help to other owners.
We know we can control pretty much all aspects of camera in manual mode (focus, metering, ISO, WB, etc).
However, on the Xperia 5 the manual mode generates more noise in the images than the auto-mode, especially noisy in non-HDR mode whith dark environments on the photo background areas, edges and faces.
So I end up using mostly the auto-mode except to force HDR or for long-exposure shots.
In auto-mode, there are quite a few things I found frustrating compared to manual mode, but for which there are solutions:
Control scene detection: sometimes you don't want auto Backlight (HDR), Document, Food, etc. >> To temporarily disable scene detection in auto-mode, simply click on the sun icon on the left. When the icon is blue all photos are taken in standard mode: no HDR or special color processing.
1st Edit: Condition: you must use tap to focus. (If you just focus with the shutter software button, the hardware button or object tracking, scene detection won't disengage unless you actually change brightness or tint.)
Control focus: eye focus works quite well for faces. To focus on other objects, auto-mode has 3 options:
1. Auto-focus (the large green rectangle that appears when you click on shutter soft or hardware button): This tries to guess what the subject is and often leads to unpredictable results.
2. Object tracking (yellow rectangle): This is useful for moving objects. I don't use it for anything else because it typically detects and focuses on the outer edges of objects instead of the center of objects, making for blurred subjects. Also it works really bad for very small objects or when it's darker.
3. Tap to focus (blue circle): This lets you choose precisely the focus point. Much better focus results in general than method 1 or 2 above.
Control exposure: Auto-exposure is pretty good if you just point and shoot. But if you use the precise tap to focus method in auto-mode, light metering is measured on the point you clicked, and you also loose scene detection and HDR, so that's not often what you want, unless you want your black cat to turn white on the photo ! The problem is that in auto-mode there is no option in settings "Touch to adjust: Focus only" (option only available in manual mode). ...Well in fact there is a way: enable "Touch capture" in camera settings. This in fact lets you tap on screen to focus (and shoot), while still doing light-metering on the whole scene and keeping scene detection ON.
1st Edit: When touch capture is ON, tapping on screen sometimes fails to focus because the picture is taken before the camera has time to focus, especially in low light. In this case you have to take the picture twice or use the timer so it has time to focus. Well this pretty much makes this "tip" useless !
2nd Edit: Sometimes the camera fails to focus if there no contrast on the clicked zone, but touch capture is not the cause. Try to tap on a zone with more contrast to improve focus success.
So in summary here is how I set for most pictures:
1. Use auto-mode (better noise-reduction than manual mode)
2. Disable object tracking (enables the more precise tap to focus).
3. Enable Touch capture (preserve HDR, multi-metering and scene detection with tap to focus. 1st Edit: when it actually manages to focus before picture is taken, basically only in good light it seems.).
In some special situations, I adjust the following:
4. Click on sun icon, 1st Edit: then tap to focus (when I want to disable scene detection / HDR)
5. Use the lamp flash (only for macro shots in very dark condition to get usable ISO/speed)
6. Use the flash (only when necessary to get usable ISO/speed or to compensate huge backlit situation)
7. Adjust brightness with slider (if I really need to tweak brightness)
All in all I find that all the above settings allow for flexible controls and good results in auto-mode.
Of course you may have a different usage and set yours completely differently.
chgr said:
Here a a few tips on controlling the stock camera app in auto-mode that you may or not be aware off.
Just thought it may be of help to other owners.
We know we can control pretty much all aspects of camera in manual mode (focus, metering, ISO, WB, etc).
However, on the Xperia 5 the manual mode generates more noise in the images than the auto-mode, especially noisy in non-HDR mode whith dark environments on the photo background areas, edges and faces.
So I end up using mostly the auto-mode except to force HDR or for long-exposure shots.
In auto-mode, there are quite a few things I found frustrating compared to manual mode, but for which there are solutions:
Control scene detection: sometimes you don't want auto Backlight (HDR), Document, Food, etc. >> To temporarily disable scene detection in auto-mode, simply click on the sun icon on the left. When the icon is blue all photos are taken in standard mode: no HDR or special color processing.
Control focus: eye focus works quite well for faces. To focus on other objects, auto-mode has 3 options:
1. Auto-focus (the large green rectangle that appears when you click on shutter soft or hardware button): This tries to guess what the subject is and often leads to unpredictable results.
2. Object tracking (yellow rectangle): This is useful for moving objects. I don't use it for anything else because it typically detects and focuses on the outer edges of objects instead of the center of objects, making for blurred subjects. Also it works really bad for very small objects or when it's darker.
3. Tap to focus (blue circle): This lets you choose precisely the focus point. Much better focus results in general than method 1 or 2 above.
Control exposure: Auto-exposure is pretty good if you just point and shoot. But if you use the precise tap to focus method in auto-mode, light metering is measured on the point you clicked, and you also loose scene detection and HDR, so that's not often what you want, unless you want your black cat to turn white on the photo ! The problem is that in auto-mode there is no option in settings "Touch to adjust: Focus only" (option only available in manual mode). ...Well in fact there is a way: enable "Touch capture" in camera settings. This in fact lets you tap on screen to focus (and shoot), while still doing light-metering on the whole scene and keeping scene detection ON.
So in summary here is how I set for most pictures:
1. Use auto-mode (better noise-reduction than manual mode)
2. Disable object tracking (enables the more precise tap to focus).
3. Enable Touch capture (preserve multi-metering and scene detection with tap to focus).
In some special situations, I adjust the following:
4. Click on sun icon (when I want to disable scene detection / HDR)
5. Use the lamp flash (only for macro shots in very dark condition to get usable ISO/speed)
6. Use the flash (only when necessary to get usable ISO/speed or to compensate huge backlit situation)
7. Adjust brightness with slider (if I really need to tweak brightness)
All in all I find that all the above settings allow for flexible controls and good results in auto-mode.
Of course you may have a different usage and set yours completely differently.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Quite useful tips, thanks! Especially considering that camera quality appeared to be below my expectations (coming from Pixel devices, Huawei Mate 20 Pro, P30, Galaxy Note 10+). There are few complains about X5 camera system with which I can't do anything about. Firstly, quite slow camera app start up time and its overall performance compared to other devices. Secondly, focusing system is clearly inferior too. Main camera struggles to focus on objects a way too often in situations where others do it easily. Thirdly, HDR mode nearly useless (absolutely useless compared to, say, Pixel 2). Also camera has difficulties to make decent pictures in conditions different from ideal - blown out skies, crushed dark areas, overexposure problems are not something rare here. Finally, low light performance is a way below the competition. Making good pictures in low light from handheld phone is nearly impossible. Blurry mess or aqua painting effect is guaranteed. I hope that Sony will address these issues in future updates.