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Low Light and High Dynamic Range photography in the Google Camera App

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Re: Low Light and High Dynamic Range photography in the Google Camera App

#61

Post by personZ »

Someone1234 wrote: post #58
personZ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course. I'm not saying that SLRs don't have a place. If you're a wedding photographer, you probably shouldn't bring your iPhone to the job. But the post I replied to took it to the point of absurdity, where people questioned whether these were really "cameras", and you either have the fools amazed by their crummy results, or the pros who see through that ruse. That is nonsense. I've owned a number of SLRs thr…

That article doesn't support your conclusions. The graphs is totally worthless as the article admits: > The graph is misleading at first glance because the phones and the cameras sit on different scales. So it’s not saying that the phones are better than current DSLRs, despite scoring higher. So your conclusion: > Further, just to put this into perspective, an iPhone 6 or a recent Lumia, with its tiny little sensor a…

"Splitting the difference between candlelight and daylight, around 6 years of technology has made up for the massive difference in the size of the lenses and sensors between the best phone and the $2,000 DSLRs."

"Phil Askey from DPReview described it as “the absolute best in its class, with the best image quality, lowest high sensitivity noise, superb build quality and excellent price.” He described the “Excellent resolution”, the “Noise free ‘silky smooth’ images”, with “very low noise levels even at ISO 1600.” The EOS 10D ran rings around the film that we’d been using for 50 years in terms of clarity and freedom from grain.

Yet it’s comprehensively humbled by modern phones. The iPhone out-shoots it, and the Nokia out-resolves it, all by huge margins."

Should I continue? Did you actually read it? Did you just rush to it to find a confirmation that SLRs are better? Of course they are better. Its point is that the same SLRs we lauded as extraordinary a mere decade ago -- and in some cases much more recently -- are now humbled, badly, by standard smartphones. Do you think the SLR owner of a decade ago was saying "yes, my device is junk. Just sticking with the form factor until it gets decent."?

As to the chart that you seemed to take offense at, its point was demonstrating the extremely rapid improvement in smartphone cameras. Each year the camera is significantly better than the year before, still in the tiny, integrated little module.

Re: Low Light and High Dynamic Range photography in the Google Camera App

#62

Post by potatolicious »

piyush_soni wrote: post #50
potatolicious wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The other group are people who argue the details of a phase detection autofocus in the Canon DSLR and the 51 point field autofocus of the Nikon DSLR and can't believe that the handset makers are allowed to actually call these things 'cameras' in their advertisements." This demographic can be safely ignored. The people who get the most up in arms about the "purity" of photographic tools are also the ones producing…

Really, I don't see anything good in his photos. All these post-processed photos lack a lot of detail, even from a smartphone standards.

And this is part of the problem - it was never about detail, or more generally technical perfection. But yet that's where the conversation starts and stops. The conversation around cameras focuses on noise level, dynamic range, or lens sharpness - none of which are particularly critical traits for producing great photography.

The Tank Man[1] photograph would not pass muster even by low-end cell phone standards today, but it's as powerful now as when it was shot.

Nor Cartier-Bresson's famous "leaping man"[2] - more dynamic range, more sharpness, less noise, less grain, would not have made the image any better.

Even moving into modern times, Bruce Gilden didn't need perfect sharpness or dynamic range to document the yakuza from the inside[3]. Not only did he not fuss over focus points and phase-detect vs. contrast-detect autofocus, he didn't even have autofocus!

Like Weegee said: "f/8 and be there". It's about the picture, not the gear. You only care about the gear insofar as it enables you - and nearly all cameras (including cell phone cameras) are well past the point of enabling.

And this is the problem with the "argues about gear on the internet" demographic - they don't produce. They spend a lot of money and time acquiring, testing, and verifying the technical perfection of their gear, and too little time actually photographing. The best you get out of this group are is technically-perfect banality.

[1] http://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/030.jpg

[2] http://www.dienes-and-dienes.com/Assets/CBManLeaping.jpg

[3] http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--vyBAjPjz6U/TkgF6Qla38I/AAAAAAAAJA...

Re: Low Light and High Dynamic Range photography in the Google Camera App

#63

Post by ghaff »

potatolicious wrote: post #45
ChuckMcM wrote: post #33

Seems like two people come into this experience and walk away with completely different expectations. One group are people, for whom camera phones have been their only "camera" and they are amazed at how great the pictures are now. The other group are people who argue the details of a phase detection autofocus in the Canon DSLR and the 51 point field autofocus of the Nikon DSLR and can't believe that the handset make…

> "The other group are people who argue the details of a phase detection autofocus in the Canon DSLR and the 51 point field autofocus of the Nikon DSLR and can't believe that the handset makers are allowed to actually call these things 'cameras' in their advertisements." This demographic can be safely ignored. The people who get the most up in arms about the "purity" of photographic tools are also the ones producing…

Mostly agree. Under the right conditions/use cases (and in the right hands of course) phones can take pretty nice photos--though I can't say most of those in the link you provided do a whole lot for me. For the majority of users, today's cameraphones are better than whatever mass market point and shoot they were using going back to the Instamatic days. With the exception of a few niches, there's little reason to buy a dedicated camera these days unless you're going interchangeable lens and learn how to use it--and make the effort to bring it with you.

And there is a generally annoying group of online gearheads who spend a lot more time obsessing about camera specs than they do going out and taking photos.

Re: Low Light and High Dynamic Range photography in the Google Camera App

#64

Post by chillingeffect »

piyush_soni wrote: post #50
potatolicious wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The other group are people who argue the details of a phase detection autofocus in the Canon DSLR and the 51 point field autofocus of the Nikon DSLR and can't believe that the handset makers are allowed to actually call these things 'cameras' in their advertisements." This demographic can be safely ignored. The people who get the most up in arms about the "purity" of photographic tools are also the ones producing…

Really, I don't see anything good in his photos. All these post-processed photos lack a lot of detail, even from a smartphone standards.

yeah I mean really: http://www.boingboing.net/filesroot/alleyway.jpg

It's not what I would call pro by almost any definition. There is the 3x3 grid alignment, but dat fuzzy focus, those colors and the overblown lantern...

It's a fine personal snapshot, but to call it "pro" is weak.

Re: Low Light and High Dynamic Range photography in the Google Camera App

#65

Post by tracker1 »

magicalist wrote: post #21
piyush_soni wrote: post #14

The blogspot fails to discuss why Samsung Galaxy S4/S5 HDR results are much better than my Nexus 5's. Also, there are limitations in leaving it on. Besides it being slow, it also has other restrictions like the inability to use Flash while in HDR+ mode. Howsoever good it may be by default, flash is sometimes important not only in dark, but also when facing sunlight while taking the shot.

> The blogspot fails to discuss why Samsung Galaxy S4/S5 HDR results are much better than my Nexus 5's Well, $300 price difference can buy you a lot. Now I get it. Comments like this one must be why Google felt pressured into making the next Nexus phone so much more expensive :P

Probably has a bit to do with it... I, for one was really happy with a great mid-range option that was by far the best value in each release... still on my N4, and not sure what I'm going to get as an upgrade.

Re: Low Light and High Dynamic Range photography in the Google Camera App

#66

Post by nzealand »

potatolicious wrote: post #45
ChuckMcM wrote: post #33

Seems like two people come into this experience and walk away with completely different expectations. One group are people, for whom camera phones have been their only "camera" and they are amazed at how great the pictures are now. The other group are people who argue the details of a phase detection autofocus in the Canon DSLR and the 51 point field autofocus of the Nikon DSLR and can't believe that the handset make…

> "The other group are people who argue the details of a phase detection autofocus in the Canon DSLR and the 51 point field autofocus of the Nikon DSLR and can't believe that the handset makers are allowed to actually call these things 'cameras' in their advertisements." This demographic can be safely ignored. The people who get the most up in arms about the "purity" of photographic tools are also the ones producing…

Looks like he has upgraded to a 5s...

http://sasurau.squarespace.com/about/

It is a pity, there is something magical about the lomography look of a beat up 3Gs.

Re: Low Light and High Dynamic Range photography in the Google Camera App

#67

Post by footpath »

piyush_soni wrote: post #56
cema wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Detail is not necessarily what one should be looking for in a photo.

Sure, that was just one of the things it lacked as compared to the DSLRs. I'm not sure what's so amazing in these photographs (as compared to DSLRs) - to my untrained eyes they don't look great.

You are still looking at it from a purely technical perspective. In the article, the photographer already mentioned that he's only using the iPhone for the "composition and the perfect photo opp".

The point of the parent, I think, is that in the hands of a competent photographer, any adequate camera can produce works of certain artistic merit. Those who are most up in arms about the technical aspects of a camera often ignore the artistic aspects of a photograph.

Here is a video of how an awarding-winning cinematographer (Phillip Bloom) films a short video using a low-resolution Barbie Doll camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VS3C183G8g

All technical aspects of the Barbie Doll camera are dismal, but the end product, when viewed as a whole, is not something that an Average Joe can produce, even if equipped with a RED ONE camera.

Re: Low Light and High Dynamic Range photography in the Google Camera App

#68

Post by georgemcbay »

gchokov wrote: post #53
acomjean wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has both a DSLR and a smartphone. The smartphones are pretty good and "the camera you have with you" is always better than the camera at your home. Plus the wifi connectivity and abitliy to push photos real time is really nice. The DSLR pictures when I do get around to loading and editing are better. It just takes more time. As for focus points, I have this wierd camera the canon 70d. Every "pixel" on…

Use some Magic Lantern build of the firmware in this case.

There's no Magic Lantern port for the 70D currently.

There has supposedly been work on a port for it over the past year, but there haven't been any releases of it.

Re: Low Light and High Dynamic Range photography in the Google Camera App

#69

Post by xexers »

boxcardavin wrote: post #59

One should remember that writing camera software that is agnostic to the hardware is technically hard, and nearly impossible if you want gorgeous photos (a la iPhone). When taking astronomy images we would characterize the CCD (mostly for noise) each night, and you need that kind of approach to tune your software to your hardware.

> One should remember that writing camera software that is agnostic to the hardware is technically hard

In this case, is it?

Their solution involves using burst mode, then taking those many pictures and turning them into 1 high quality image. Burst mode would simply output a bunch of .jpg images... couldn't you run the algorithm on those standardized images?

Re: Low Light and High Dynamic Range photography in the Google Camera App

#70

Post by micampe »

piyush_soni wrote: post #50
potatolicious wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The other group are people who argue the details of a phase detection autofocus in the Canon DSLR and the 51 point field autofocus of the Nikon DSLR and can't believe that the handset makers are allowed to actually call these things 'cameras' in their advertisements." This demographic can be safely ignored. The people who get the most up in arms about the "purity" of photographic tools are also the ones producing…

Really, I don't see anything good in his photos. All these post-processed photos lack a lot of detail, even from a smartphone standards.

Check any photo from any of the great 35mm photographers of the past century and let me know how much detail you see and how much that detracts from the photo's value (not talking about monetary value of course).
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