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Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

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Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#51

Post by lm28469 »

dr_zoidberg wrote: post #28
emptybits wrote: post #5

This is amazing. Now just FYI, for those curious, some recent "old guard" innovations by pro camera makers for astrophotography include: 1. Leveraging the multi-axis image-stabilizing movement available to an in-camera DSLR sensor with GPS for the purpose of tracking the sky during a long-ish exposure to reduce star trails. Ricoh-Pentax Astrotracer. http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/photo-life/astro/ 2. Removing…

I didn't quite like the article. At the begining it shows a good picture of the Milky Way and it says: > The image has not been retouched or post-processed in any way. Then the whole article describes how they've automated a full astroprocessing pipeline inside the phone, that makes heavy postprocessing...

That's the only way for mobiles to get decent results though. They're so physically limited (sensor size, fixed aperture, lens size, &c.) that the original files are horrendous to look at.

What google is doing with their pixel phones is magic, they turned a normal camera into a very very good one. I'm still impressed every time I use night sight. The drawback, as always, is that as soon as you zoom in or see the pictures on a large screen (or printed) it's painfully obvious that they're heavily post processed. It almost look like an abstract painting or an AI generated image (which it almost is).

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#52

Post by lm28469 »

jakecopp wrote: post #24

If all the advancements in smartphone photography is in software, why aren't DSLR/mirrorless manufactures doing it too? I don't want my camera to have a touchscreen/social media/wifi but it'd be cool if Adobe Camera Raw/some alternative could do this stuff!

> why aren't DSLR/mirrorless manufactures doing it too?

Most of them are historical companies and are probably very old school / slow to adapt. Google has probably access to better software engineers than Nikon or Canon which seem to barely be able to develop a working bluetooth/wifi sync.

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#53

Post by anovikov »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #45
meigwilym wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I understood: I think the software uses the GPS and camera orientation to calculate which way the sky moves relative to the lens. Then uses the camera's image stabilisation to track the sky, i.e. instead of moving the camera, move the sensor.

Yeah, though obviously since this is merely image stabilisation, and not a dedicated de-rotation, there are limits to how far the system can move the sensor and thus to how long the exposure can be.

Fortunately, you can devise rotation error VERY precisely from this optical sensor data. I don't think it's actually a problem.

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#54

Post by lm28469 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #18

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…

> To get similar (albeit much, much sharper) results

Tbh it's not that hard to get sharper results, this was shot on a 40 years old camera, with a 50+ years old lens using a cheapo carbon fiber tripod ( 25+mph wind that probably rocked my camera quite a bit)

https://i.imgur.com/sdxyyEw.jpg

> And unless I missed something, they still used some tripod.

They did: "Clearly, this cannot work with a handheld camera; the phone would have to be placed on a tripod, a rock, or whatever else might be available to hold the camera steady."

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#55

Post by geerlingguy »

lm28469 wrote: post #52
jakecopp wrote: post #24

If all the advancements in smartphone photography is in software, why aren't DSLR/mirrorless manufactures doing it too? I don't want my camera to have a touchscreen/social media/wifi but it'd be cool if Adobe Camera Raw/some alternative could do this stuff!

> why aren't DSLR/mirrorless manufactures doing it too? Most of them are historical companies and are probably very old school / slow to adapt. Google has probably access to better software engineers than Nikon or Canon which seem to barely be able to develop a working bluetooth/wifi sync.

They think they're still hardware companies in a hardware-first world. The problem is we've started hitting some limits in the hardware which software can improve on dramatically, but they are terrible at software (for the most part).

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#56

Post by SiempreViernes »

anovikov wrote: post #53
SiempreViernes wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, though obviously since this is merely image stabilisation, and not a dedicated de-rotation, there are limits to how far the system can move the sensor and thus to how long the exposure can be.

Fortunately, you can devise rotation error VERY precisely from this optical sensor data. I don't think it's actually a problem.

Eh? The manufacturer datasheet states you can take at most a 300 second exposure with this rotation compensation system, are you arguing this that this limitation isn't a problem?

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#57

Post by habosa »

The photos are gorgeous and I would definitely use this mode.

Astrophotography always kind of rubs me the wrong way though because that's not how it looks. Even if you go out to somewhere that's really dark, like a large National Park, and wait for a clear night it's never going to look in your eye like it does on Instagram. Don't get me wrong, what you do see is absolutely magnificent, it's just not what's in those pictures.

Seeing the galaxy with your own eyes is one of the most majestic things you'll ever witness. It's something that has inspired spontaneous prayer throughout history. It doesn't really need a filter.

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#58

Post by dr_zoidberg »

bla3 wrote: post #40
dr_zoidberg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't quite like the article. At the begining it shows a good picture of the Milky Way and it says: > The image has not been retouched or post-processed in any way. Then the whole article describes how they've automated a full astroprocessing pipeline inside the phone, that makes heavy postprocessing...

I think what "has not been retouched or post-processed in any way" is supposed to convey is that no work is needed by the user of the camera app to get pictures of this quality. There's lots of in-camera processing of course. That's always been the case for digital cameras: sensors don't produce jpeg files.

That doesn't mean there wasn't heavy post-processing on the image. It simply means the user didn't have to do it.

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#59

Post by macintux »

_f9cu wrote: post #23

What are the possibilities that this AI camera app is not faking the image. Here is why I ask - It has gyro - so knows whether we are pointing at sky or not. - AI checks whether its a clear sky - if yes - post fake image. If no - Dont risk getting caught. - Time + geo spacing - Gives the angle, position of camera relative to the space above us.

This reminds me of the argument over the moon landing: effectively it was easier to go there than to try to fake the live coverage, because the video technology to fake it wasn't available.

https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/technology/was-the-moon-landi...

Re: Astrophotography with Night Sight on Pixel Phones

#60

Post by penagwin »

jakecopp wrote: post #24

If all the advancements in smartphone photography is in software, why aren't DSLR/mirrorless manufactures doing it too? I don't want my camera to have a touchscreen/social media/wifi but it'd be cool if Adobe Camera Raw/some alternative could do this stuff!

Idk, I feel like we have far better software on our computers, and mirrorless/dslr's will always beat our phones in terms of raw specs.

This is more of a "Now anyone can capture decent astrophotography with just their phone!" then some revolutionary new thing if that makes sense? Basically they have to push their phone's sensor as far as it'll go and use software to remove the noise, instead of using a better lens/sensor setup (which is space and cost prohibitive for a phone).

You're still welcome to do extensive post-processing on your computer (I don't want my camera doing any processing), and indeed that's what any astro-photographer will do if they wanted.

That said I've captured some amazing night/moon photos with my A6000 that I have never been able to achieve before, and that's without any extra processing.

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