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[Q] Good quality pictures: App dependent or Hardware dependent?

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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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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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:

My real life review/experiences after 5 days

If you want TLDR skip to edits in the end and camera TLDR.
Not going to repeat what is written in tons of review + specs you can find anywhere. Bought mine for 358EUR (incl. 6EUR prepaid card to be eligible for this price at O2).
For this price you receive heavy package with 4/64 version, but there is nothing in package besides fast charger and type C cable, no earphones, no case and the heaviest item it's guidebook in dozens of languages. My version it's COL-L29 8.1.0.100(C432) out of box with April security patch, no update available. With 64GB version you have available 50GB of space, though I guess already some of my stuff taking space.
Phone it's no problem to hold on the sides/edges in hand, but back it's really slippery on any surface and will have to buy case not to protect it but to make it less slippery. Even if there is less slope on sofa it will slide down. Length of phone it's same as (wife's) Redmi Note 3, phone is just much narrower and display longer (because of big bezels in RN3, RN5 was only slight improvement in this aspect).
I've had two options between Blue and Grey color. I checked blue in the shop and personally find it childish, it's nice if you are woman or teenager I guess, but I decided to go with boring grey to be surprised it's actually light blue (can post photos later), so quite nice.
Rear lens it's protruding a lot, not understand why they don't make it flush and rather won't put bigger battery inside.
Bezels around display are THICK, I was using years old TCL S950 Alcatel Idol X), one of the smallest and very thin 5" phones and even this budget phone from years ago has thinner side bezels.
Fingeprint sensor in front can be used as navigation which I switched on since I don't like wasting screen space and sadly Huawei haven't yet implemented Edge gestures I was using through Xposed on this temporary TCL S950. If you long press it acts as Home button and you will get haptic feedback, but if you just tap it it acts as Back button without any feedback which is kinda annoying. Swiping through from either side it acts as Recents button, but that's not very convenient and honestly I practically never use Recents button, but heavily use Last app switch which I haven't found here yet.
Default launcher it's agressively switching back to default instead of Lawnchair when changing some settings, but I guess after finishing setting up the phone it should stop trying to force itself on you.
Pretty much all third party apps can be removed, but there is ton of Huawei and Google bloatware. I mean I understand Huawei not letting you to disable or uninstall some of their apps, but why they don't allow uninstallation of Google apps it's mystery to me. You can just disable some of the Google crap (I am using only Play Store and Photos, nothing else), not uninstall it and some things I never heard (on LOS/NOS with pico opengapps) of like Carrier services you can't even disable.
At first I thought also because of phone I can't install Kii 2 keyboard, but aparently it disappeared from Play store for everyone, so will have to install APK or Swype, since preinstalled Swiftkey it's annoying.
Developer options are normally accessible, you can disable animations and change more settings than on LOS15.1 including switching Bluetooth codec to aptX and aptx HD.
I immediately disabled Notch and prefer black bar hiding it, but truth it's there is zero space for notifications because of crappy EMUI, on the left side of notch I have useless VolTE icon, two signal icons, wifi icon and network speed and nothing else, on the right side I have battery with percentage in indicator and miniature clock, not sure where are supposed to be displayed notification icons they mention in settings. Notifications are also displayed as annoying heads up which seem to be impossible globally switch off without 3rd party app.
I still haven't set up any security features, so I can switch on display directly with power button and what is more annoying also by holding fingerprint sensor which seem to be impossible to disable.
Battery doesn't seem to be anything to write about home, 3400mAh should be decent but we will see with longer testing and optimization. Out of the box I've had 70% capacity, now I am on 14% pretty much just setting up phone with lots of downloading through Wifi, no BT, no mobile data, no NFC, no GPS and taking maybe 50-100 photos. Screen according settings consumed 58% of all battery (including software) with 4hrs screen on time. Oh yeah I disabled Vivid display color mode to Normal, which immediately changes colors to much warmer, though color temperature it's on default. Apps not customized for 18/19:9 you can use in full screen and stretch them, it seem to work fine. There is also smart screen resolution to save battery by automatic switching from 2280x1080 to 1520x720, but not gonna use 720P on such big display.
There is no dedicated setting for custom LED color notifications, you can set them within apps, but no system setting as in NOS/LOS, so will need 3rd party app. LED notification it's very small, brightness it's fine but quite small.
The most interesting in the end - the camera. Focus it's nice fast, tested on baby, out of 11 photos of baby moving on bed 9-10 were sharp so focus speed it's right (that was my main reason to upgrading from Xiaomi Mi4c). But post processing oh my... Huawei it's using extreme post processing to make everything extremely sharp with high contrast losing colors/details adding noise, skin smoothened even with Beautify set to zero.
And don't get me started on AI - it seem like some cheap filter which is just raising saturation by 20-30% so the grass or leaves on trees are extremely green, yellow building turn into orange, if you actually compare reality with photos the photo without AI has natural colors, AI photo is oversaturated.
When it detects people then it's one track mind - bokeh bokeh bokeh everywhere, results are quite funny with small children which are always moving, with still grown up people it's OK but it has problem with children (maybe pets too, dunno). It seem to work fine only with clothes/body, but when child held some toy motorbike in hand part of the wheel was blurred too, also a bit fingers holding it.
Basically only benefit of AI it's brightening the darker spots of picture, but otherwise colors are oversaturated and it's using too much bokeh, by my experience with those 50-100 photos in afternoon in 90% cases you need to disable AI afterwards, so maybe it's not really even worth keeping it on at all and defnitely this AI gimmick would not hold me from leaving EMUI for AOSP/LOS/RR. Pro mode works only with rear camera, not with front camera.
At selfies it's heavy postprocessing as always, if you don't shave few days your hair will be blurred and not sharp as it should be (though no AF on front camera so maybe too much expectation, but I've seen better front cameras for sure even at budget phones) because their postprocessing it's trying to give you baby skin. This is even more annoying considering my children have sometimes skin problems, so I know their skin is not perfect already at first sight at any photo. Hey Huawei, I am not 20yo Asian girl using whitening cream and umbrella, but adult caucasian man who doesn't give AF about creams!
Camera TLDR - silk/baby skin, bokeh/portrait scene for any photo of people, oversharpening, but focus it's fast. AI TLDR - oversaturating everything, but brightening dark parts it's OK.
Later can report on GPS speed, jack output quality, speaker loudness, signal, call quality, battery life etc. but for now I was just setting up phone and testing camera. As for heating haven't really noticed it except maybe one ocassion.
edit: grey color according Huawei
https://i.imgur.com/NKqgu73.jpg
full crop original vs "smart" AI - whole hand blurry, not only outer edge
edit 2: the battery life it's bad, only 6 hours SOT only on Wi-Fi without mobile data, BT, GPS, NFC, calls, gaming, with 2 active SIM, mostly at home with lower brightness, mostly Reddit and surfing, some Spotify and YouTube (both testing maximum volume of speaker and earphones but no longer than 20 minutes at max) in browser, shooting maybe 40-70 photos and about 1.5min H265 video, some with maximum brightness outside. I've had similar battery life with Mi4c running SD808 (!) though heavily optimized Nitrogen OS and smaller 5" display with basically no photos and one active SIM, I hope it's the relatively heavy use of camera although it's not shown in stats
edit 3: fingerprint unlock it's fast as any other Huawei device (didn't experience issues as in some YouTube reviews), face unlock it's even faster, when enrolling face they need only one photo which seem odd for accuracy
edit 4: OK battery life seem reasonable 6-8 hours SoT on Wi-Fi only with small use of camera. Wi-Fi reception is atrocious though, where i had average signal with Mi4c i am getting disconnected with H10, that's pertinent worst thing about this phone together with very small LED notification light almost useless. AI blur it's really stupid leaving always some areas not blurred or blurring shoes of person for example which should be in same focus

Hello @PeterMarkoff,
Thank you for the detailed and well structured review of the Honor 10. I really appreciate the effort you put in to write this and now I'm following you to get any updates you might have related to the device.

Stock camera app auto-mode tips

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.
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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.

P40 pro telephoto lens problem

Hi
While making a video of close objects Whenever the system shifts to zoom lens the saturation increases and colors become over saturated.
I make videos of gems and stones. and for that purpose i bought this camera.
Especially the blue stones become too blue when i zoom in and zoom lens turns on.
Is there a way where we can select individual lens manually so that the zoom lens doesn't turn on unless I want it.

Try with turned of AI. If nothing changes after that I don't know what can you do.
When the device switching between camera modules maybe is normal to have problems with saturation. All three camera modules have different apertures and they receive a different amount of light.

The only solution that I found is by using the pro mode and setting the white balance manually when the zoom lens turns on. By doing that the camera keeps the selected saturation even when the lens gets changed.
This is what I think. Need to confirm it with different color items.
You guyz check it aswell.

I hope mate 40 doest have the same problem. Quite disappointing bug considering the price of the phone and camera quality.

Question Camera and noise reduction

Good morning! From the moment I bought this device, I noticed that the noise reduction behaves too aggressively. Since some time, it has become more aggressive, it is impossible to shoot something with a macro lens (an example is attached below), it is easier to take a screenshot of the camera. On the main lens, the situation is better, but only in ideal conditions. What can be done about it? Without root, as I understand it, I can’t cope, and Samsung support does not see the problem, they write that it should be so.

Try turning off scene optimizer.
Get closer to the subject (not responsible if it jumps at you).
Shoot at a lower iso or in brighter light.
Shoot in raw mode if you have this option.

blackhawk said:
Try turning off scene optimizer.
Get closer to the subject (not responsible if it jumps at you).
Shoot at a lower iso or in brighter light.
Shoot in raw mode if you have this option.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A53 don't shoot in raw (cam2api limited cmn)
All enhancements are disabled. Problems in image post-processing, noise reduction behaves too aggressively. In night shots, for example, you can’t see digital noise, but you can see the results of processing work - objects merge into a mess.

Enot-XD said:
Good morning! From the moment I bought this device, I noticed that the noise reduction behaves too aggressively. Since some time, it has become more aggressive, it is impossible to shoot something with a macro lens (an example is attached below), it is easier to take a screenshot of the camera. On the main lens, the situation is better, but only in ideal conditions. What can be done about it? Without root, as I understand it, I can’t cope, and Samsung support does not see the problem, they write that it should be so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
install manually the latest firmware, has some fixes in performance and camera

Enot-XD said:
A53 don't shoot in raw (cam2api limited cmn)
All enhancements are disabled. Problems in image post-processing, noise reduction behaves too aggressively. In night shots, for example, you can’t see digital noise, but you can see the results of processing work - objects merge into a mess.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's Gcam too.