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Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

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Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#11

Post by tigershark »

rbritton wrote: post #7

Zoomed out, those photos aren’t terrible, but if you click to view a higher resolution version, you can see the softness created by the noise removal algorithm. Based on my experience, the image quality is comparable to DSLRs of about ten years ago. Noise removal is a bandaid. In astrophotography, it will virtually always look softer than reality actually is, and it will also have removed actual stellar objects. Ther…

Not exactly, noise level is inversely correlated with the photosensitive element size. The smaller they are, the more noise you have. For example an 8MPX APC sensor should have less noise than a 40MPX full frame sensor.

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#12

Post by peignoir »

baq wrote: post #10
rbritton wrote: post #7

Zoomed out, those photos aren’t terrible, but if you click to view a higher resolution version, you can see the softness created by the noise removal algorithm. Based on my experience, the image quality is comparable to DSLRs of about ten years ago. Noise removal is a bandaid. In astrophotography, it will virtually always look softer than reality actually is, and it will also have removed actual stellar objects. Ther…

that's exactly what is amazing about this tech - 10 years ago you'd have to carry a backpack, now the same quality pictures can be taken with a multi-purpose device which fits in your pocket. nothing to complain about if you ask me!

Meh, I used to take better photos with a disposable pocket camera where you take off the shutter to allow for long exposure. But it’s a step in the right direction. Ultimately you would indeed need to filter a lot of thermic noise to allow for longer exposure on a CCD. (I started digital Astro photo years ago with an ST6 that needed to be cool down to -60C using a Pelletier module)

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#13

Post by oceanofsolaris »

ganitarashid wrote: post #2

As long as you manually control the exposure and exposure time, the same can be achieved with an iPhone camera. This is not specific to Pixel.

They mention a couple of features that are not just "long exposure" in the post:

* Compensating for moving stars

* "Live viewfinder" during exposure

* Selectively darkening the sky

* Dark current compensation (though that is probably needed for all long-exposure photography...still, not a simple "more exposure" feature)

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#14

Post by ganitarashid »

oceanofsolaris wrote: post #13
ganitarashid wrote: post #2

As long as you manually control the exposure and exposure time, the same can be achieved with an iPhone camera. This is not specific to Pixel.

They mention a couple of features that are not just "long exposure" in the post: * Compensating for moving stars * "Live viewfinder" during exposure * Selectively darkening the sky * Dark current compensation (though that is probably needed for all long-exposure photography...still, not a simple "more exposure" feature)

All easy software implementations. This is not a hardware story.

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#16

Post by jillesvangurp »

rbritton wrote: post #7

Zoomed out, those photos aren’t terrible, but if you click to view a higher resolution version, you can see the softness created by the noise removal algorithm. Based on my experience, the image quality is comparable to DSLRs of about ten years ago. Noise removal is a bandaid. In astrophotography, it will virtually always look softer than reality actually is, and it will also have removed actual stellar objects. Ther…

This not just simple noise removal but combining multiple photos with the noise appearing in different places (aside from the hot pixels). So, it's a strategy to get much of the same effects of a really long eposure with much less noise than you'd expect based on the tiny sensor because it averages out over multiple shots. In principle of course possible to do with a DSLR as well. E.g. Hugin might be able to do this.

Of course regular noise cancellation and other very lossy processing still kicks in after that (which may explain the blurry result). It would be interesting to look at the raw image produced by this.

I use open camera on my cheap Nokia 7 plus (which uses two cameras) and have been getting OK-ish results in Darktable. The dng file you get combines information from both sensors. One of them is black and white so these look really flat until you fix it in post processing. The raw photos have lots of noise (as you would expect) but noise filtering is pretty effective.

I imagine for this it would produce a dng with information from the different stills combined but none of the other post processing (except maybe hot pixel removal).

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#17

Post by konart »

baq wrote: post #10
rbritton wrote: post #7

Zoomed out, those photos aren’t terrible, but if you click to view a higher resolution version, you can see the softness created by the noise removal algorithm. Based on my experience, the image quality is comparable to DSLRs of about ten years ago. Noise removal is a bandaid. In astrophotography, it will virtually always look softer than reality actually is, and it will also have removed actual stellar objects. Ther…

that's exactly what is amazing about this tech - 10 years ago you'd have to carry a backpack, now the same quality pictures can be taken with a multi-purpose device which fits in your pocket. nothing to complain about if you ask me!

I still get better photos with my almost 10 year old camera though.

UPD: oops, XT-1 is just 5 years old, actually. I guess I have to take my words back, sort of.

Still, the point is the same - as long as you make a shot for your Instagram account - your smartphone is alright. For anything bigger you still need a camera with decent lens.

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#18

Post by saiya-jin »

As a full frame DSLR shooter (Nikon D750 + 20mm F1.8), this is wild considering those crappy tiny sensors on phones. To get similar (albeit much, much sharper) results, I have to lug around 2kg of camera and lens plus bulky tripod.

Even with this, to get those dark dust clouds and stark colors some heavy postprocessing is required (which I mostly don't do because I consider it too much an alteration of original image, but it creates more interesting image). Don't think for a second that those superb images you can see everywhere are not literally over-painted in Photoshop (look at online tutorials on how to do it if you don't believe me).

I guess to make things impressive, google guys went to some proper remote desert far from any artificial light. And unless I missed something, they still used some tripod. In european alps, this kind of result is practically impossible - there is always some tiny village in every valley, and even if not light pollution seeps from far. One night panorama I have has quite strong glow coming from village of Chamonix some 15km far, that is on the other side of massive Mont Blanc range [1]. Anything can be achieved if you start playing a lot with Photoshop brushes, layers etc. but for me its one step too far.

Imagine what results can be had when such algorithms are paired to a full frame (or bigger) sensor!

[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/99251154@N04/22790364795/in/al...

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#19

Post by kccqzy »

oceanofsolaris wrote: post #13
ganitarashid wrote: post #2

As long as you manually control the exposure and exposure time, the same can be achieved with an iPhone camera. This is not specific to Pixel.

They mention a couple of features that are not just "long exposure" in the post: * Compensating for moving stars * "Live viewfinder" during exposure * Selectively darkening the sky * Dark current compensation (though that is probably needed for all long-exposure photography...still, not a simple "more exposure" feature)

I think the point of GP is that astrophotography as demonstrated here is mostly implementable in software. If Google wanted, they could very well produce an app for iPhone that does all of the above.

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#20

Post by jeen02 »

ganitarashid wrote: post #14
oceanofsolaris wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mention a couple of features that are not just "long exposure" in the post: * Compensating for moving stars * "Live viewfinder" during exposure * Selectively darkening the sky * Dark current compensation (though that is probably needed for all long-exposure photography...still, not a simple "more exposure" feature)

All easy software implementations. This is not a hardware story.

If they're so easy, why haven't Apple implemented them?
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