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Night Sight for Pixel phones

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Re: Night Sight for Pixel phones

#111

Post by bohadi »

Johnny555 wrote: post #37
rdtsc wrote: post #17

> Google says that its machine learning detects what objects are in the frame, and the camera is smart enough to know what color they are supposed to have. That is absolutely impressive. The color and text on the fire extinguishers along with the texture detail seen in the headphones in the last picture are just stunning. Congratulations to anyone who worked on this project!

It's impressive, but it also means that your camera isn't always going to capture what's there -- it'll capture what it guesses was there. I wonder how easily it is fooled to capture something that's not there?

Yeah but in fact the eye does the same thing. I think a lot of people are to some degree aware of their photo biases, from color filters to ai filters, and will modify their response or not internally.

Re: Night Sight for Pixel phones

#112

Post by jrockway »

Johnny555 wrote: post #39
londons_explore wrote: post #4

I would like super sensitive cameras like this to be used inside fridges to see the very faint glow of food going off. Chemical reactions by bacteria breaking down food produce light, enough for humans to see in only the darkest of places (if you live in a city, you won't ever encounter dark enough situations). A camera simulating a 1 hour exposure time in a closed refrigerator ought to be able to see it pretty easil…

Chemical reactions by bacteria breaking down food produce light, enough for humans to see in only the darkest of places (if you live in a city, you won't ever encounter dark enough situations). Some city folk have doors and window shades. My old apartment kitchen was on the windowless side of the apartment with a door. If you close the door (and unplug the microwave), it was pitch black. Though I never saw any glowin…

I have the same kitchen setup. I develop film in there with the door closed. Nothing has ever looked fogged.

(I'm talking about developing sheet film in trays, btw... you don't need a darkroom to develop rolls or 4x5 sheets.)

Re: Night Sight for Pixel phones

#114

Post by comboy »

fla wrote: post #107
kortex wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure the first step is taking many sharper short exposure shots (as opposed to longer exposures, which blur), then doing some tensor magic to stitch into a single image. Object detection alone won't give you sharp text in low light. You need a minimum number of photons hitting pixels.

From the article: > Although it’s not one single long exposure, Google’s night mode still gathers light over a period of a few seconds, and anything moving through the frame in that time will turn into a blur of motion.

Right, but it's up to them how to process information coming in during these few seconds. Without a tripod it would be just a big blur without separating data into some frames. I don't think optical stabilization would be enough for such long exposures.

Re: Night Sight for Pixel phones

#115

Post by TheForumTroll »

krackers wrote: post #26
gwicks56 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hesitant to bring this up, for lots of different reasons, but people I know and mostly trust, who work in places where they should be in a position to know, all tell me the same thing: "Never buy Huawei anything, for any reason". Anybody have any real knowledge about this? @danielmicay is doing some interesting stuff in relation to being able to verify different Android build, but I have not tested yet to see.

I'd assume it'd be in relation to some sort of China-related backdoor or datamining. About half a year ago intelligence agencies also publicly recommended against buying Huwawei/ZTE phones, for presumably whatever reasons the people you mentioned may be privy to.

The secret: They are not made by a US company. It is called "Propaganda" outside the US.

Re: Night Sight for Pixel phones

#116

Post by TheForumTroll »

mediaman wrote: post #65
endorphone wrote: post #51

Interesting, but a tad rich with puffery. Pre-OIS Google did this with image stacking which was a ghetto version of a long exposure (stacking many short exposure photos, correcting the offsets via the gyro, was necessary to compensate for inevitable camera shake). There is nothing new or novel about image stacking or long exposures. What are they doing here? Most likely it's simply enabling OIS and enabling longer ex…

I can see your point: this basically just looks like long exposures, or stacked exposures, which is basically the same thing of letting more photons hit the sensor, aligned using OIS. Any thoughts on why Apple, as the other leading phone maker with a heavy emphasis on camera quality, has not implemented anything like it? Not to discount the difficulty, but OIS aligned long exposures kind of seems like low hanging fru…

Well, Apply has dropped the ball on camera quality some time ago.

Re: Night Sight for Pixel phones

#117

Post by ricardobeat »

endorphone wrote: post #73
dgacmu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but no - stacking is as much about dynamic range adaptation as noise, and that's why I'm arguing against your terming it a "ghetto version of a long exposure". It's not. A long exposure has a fundamental problem with saturation, as well as noise. It's not just about lack of stabilization, there's also the motion of the subject. Computational approaches can compensate for subject motion - long exposures cannot.…

"Computational approaches can compensate for subject motion" But they don't. They don't in this example. Moving subjects are a blur. As an aside, of course stacked photo frames are underexposed because it wouldn't make much sense otherwise. Computational photography can do interesting things and holds a tremendous amount of promise. However every single example that I can find of this mode -- across the many astrotur…

> But they don't. They don't in this example. Moving subjects are a blur.

If you stack the original exposures together, you'll get ghosting and not a blur. The natural-looking blur is a result of computation.

> of course stacked photo frames are underexposed, wouldn't make sense otherwise

Except it does make sense if you want to capture more shadow detail, this is how HDR images are made.

You're severely underestimating the amount of computation involved in getting these shots. These are all handheld, and as @dgacmu mentions can benefit from exposure bracketing which gives much better results than a single long exposure.

Of course you could already get similar shots from a good camera and technique - the fact these are handheld shots coming from a mobile device, and straight out with the camera is the impressive part.

Re: Night Sight for Pixel phones

#118

Post by endorphone »

shaklee3 wrote: post #100
endorphone wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, I've been a serious photographer (amateur, not professional, but with all of the gear) for two decades, and actually made a pretty popular computational photography app for Android. I honestly don't know which part you're doubting. Long exposures? Do you doubt that other cameras can do long exposures? Do you doubt that they can do noise reduction? Do you doubt that OIS allows for hand-held long expo…

I think it's already been said many times to you, but it's not just long exposure. They take many exposures, throw out the over-exposed (which slrs don't do), and use AI to do smart color mapping in very dark regions. There are no cameras or software out there that produce results like this. Period. There are now plenty of night sight pictures compared next to the new iPhone. The iPhone looks objectively terrible com…

There are no cameras or software out there that produce results like this. Period.

The Huawei P20 has a night mode that in many cases is superior. So much for the "period". Further it's gimmicky and has downsides that make it pertinent for a tiny percentage of pictures. Which is why it's hidden behind a "more" option. Apple doesn't have it because Apple is about making everything easy for the 99%.

Image stacking is not difficult. It is not new. Image stacking is effectively a long exposure (I've said this probably a dozen times, but still it's like people are correcting me), with some unique advantages, and some unique disadvantages. In every one of the examples given it is indistinguishable from a long exposure.

Re: Night Sight for Pixel phones

#119

Post by usrusr »

simias wrote: post #108
Johnny555 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impressive, but it also means that your camera isn't always going to capture what's there -- it'll capture what it guesses was there. I wonder how easily it is fooled to capture something that's not there?

I think the article is factually correct but makes it sound a little more complicated or advanced that it probably is. I mean, depending on how you interpret it you could think that it does basically "hey, this looks like a fire hydrant, let me paste a fire hydrant in there" which is obviously not exactly something AI can do reliably today, especially on phone hardware. I'm guessing that it works similarly to low-bud…

> which is obviously not exactly something AI can do reliably today, especially on phone hardware

But do we know that it runs on phone hardware? If voice interfaces have taught us anything, it's that we can't ever make that assumption again.

The amount of data you'd have to send to run this off board would be enormous, but hey, anything for a jawdropping hype feature, right? It just works, those preview pictures literally made me check the price and size of the pixel 3, and I haven't been interested in anything but a Sony Compact since the z1c came out.

Re: Night Sight for Pixel phones

#120

Post by shaklee3 »

endorphone wrote: post #118
shaklee3 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's already been said many times to you, but it's not just long exposure. They take many exposures, throw out the over-exposed (which slrs don't do), and use AI to do smart color mapping in very dark regions. There are no cameras or software out there that produce results like this. Period. There are now plenty of night sight pictures compared next to the new iPhone. The iPhone looks objectively terrible com…

There are no cameras or software out there that produce results like this. Period. The Huawei P20 has a night mode that in many cases is superior. So much for the "period". Further it's gimmicky and has downsides that make it pertinent for a tiny percentage of pictures. Which is why it's hidden behind a "more" option. Apple doesn't have it because Apple is about making everything easy for the 99%. Image stacking is n…

See my other comment in this thread. The Huawei does not have anything close. Look at the dxomark review. The Huawei is comparable to both the pixel 2 and iPhone in the dark shots, and may be better or worse depending on the photo. Now look at this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/9qzyry/pixel_2...

I know this is true because I've tried it. I have the camera loaded on a pixel 2, and the iPhone is pitch dark in images where the pixel is fully illuminated with night sight.

More details here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12676/the-huawei-p20-p20-pro-...

And remember anandtech did not have night sight. The p20 quality is attributed to the larger sensor.

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