I have noticed an issue with the stock camera app in auto mode for low light situations.
My understanding is that the camera has a couple of auto detect features for low light situations.
-The generic "low light" / night scene indicator
-The tripod mode, where a small tripod icon appears when you put the camera on a surface to keep it still.
As far as I am aware, the two modes should work as follows:
- When low light is detected, and the camera is being held in hand, ISO should be prioritised and shutter speeds kept sensible to avoid motion induced blur. For example, 1/8 second, 12,800 ISO.
- When both low light and a tripod/still phone is detected, Shutter Speed should be prioritised. For example, 1 second exposure at 1600 ISO.
This is not happening for me. Tripod mode behaves exactly the same as low light mode, so even if you have the little tripod icon showing, and it's low light, shutter speed remains high and ISO at max.
I did a test scene, and, in auto mode it chose 12,800 ISO at 1/8s. In tripod and low light mode it was exactly the same. When I went into manual mode, I set the speed to 1s and 3600 ISO and got a great, sharp, and bright picture. What's going on?
Thanks.
Related
Anyone else having issues with the camera not taking crisp photos?
I came from a S3 and once you touched the screen to focus and then hit the photo button it would take sharp pictures all the time, on the S5 I have went thru every setting possible trying to see of one will help it take a clear picture and as of yet have failed every time.
Sitting in the living room lit with sunlight I tried to take a pic of the living room, came out blurry (yes the plastic film is off of the camera). out of 5 photos maybe 2 come out clear. Last night at the basketball game I had the same issues, pictures of us taken by other people required multiple shots to get one that came out clear, shots we took in the arena when it was lit up well were hard to get to come out in focus.
Anyone else seeing these issues on the S5?
Turn off picture stabilization future in your camera.
Swiping from dark side of Galaxy S5.
norbarb said:
Turn off picture stabilization future in your camera.
Swiping from dark side of Galaxy S5.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This. I'll explain. the higher the ISO the faster the shutter speed at the expense of photo quality. in traditional film cameras higher speed films (ISO) came out very grainy and loss of detail. It's used a lot in dark, low light situations because as you know the slower the shutter speed, the more chance of blur.
image stabilization in smartphones has at least some to do with shortening that shutter speed by ramping up the ISO, leading to loss of detail. aperture / shutter speed / iso are the three things that are correlated, our cameras have a set aperture. when you take pics outdoors on a bright day, the shutter doesn't have to be open long, and the ISO is taken down to 100, so that is why you have amazing crisp clear pictures.
at night, take of image stabilization, set the ISO to 100-200-400, and have a VERY steady hand. when you try all 3 ISO levels, you'll notice it will take longer for the shutter to close, however if you have a tripod or set it on a table, your picture will look very clear. clearer than iso 400, 800, etc.
the benefit is at higher ISO, in low light settings the shutter will be faster so less chance of blur
I don't have the image stabilization turned on, it takes to long to use it and even when I did try it out the photos it produced were blurry as well.
I am pretty camera savvy as I have a nice DSLR, I have tried different metering options and messed with the ISO. No change in settings produces a clear picture, beginning to wonder if I have a defective camera system in the phone. I noticed this morning that the camera module is set in the phone crooked as well.
sneakyws6 said:
Anyone else having issues with the camera not taking crisp photos?
I came from a S3 and once you touched the screen to focus and then hit the photo button it would take sharp pictures all the time, on the S5 I have went thru every setting possible trying to see of one will help it take a clear picture and as of yet have failed every time.
Sitting in the living room lit with sunlight I tried to take a pic of the living room, came out blurry (yes the plastic film is off of the camera). out of 5 photos maybe 2 come out clear. Last night at the basketball game I had the same issues, pictures of us taken by other people required multiple shots to get one that came out clear, shots we took in the arena when it was lit up well were hard to get to come out in focus.
Anyone else seeing these issues on the S5?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get very sharp shots in good light. I'd say it is hard to get one out of focus in good light. I'm seeing pretty decent performance in low light (for a camera phone). If you are getting poor focus in good light, you may have a defecting camera.
What shutter speeds are you getting for the ones that are out of focus? Because of the camera's limitations in aperture and ISO, it is easy to get shutter speeds in the 1/15 second range. Obviously anything moving in the picture is going to have motion blur, on any camera. Only way to get around that is to increase light (e.g., use flash).
Here are a couple things to try (if it is not motion blur of subjects):
- Turn on tap to take picture, and keep the phone as still as possible. I find that with this set, I have to do less handling of the phone and can keep it more stable
- Picture stabilization helps a bit. It increases the ISO a bit, and does some image processing. It appears to be doing some sort multi-frame processing (comparing/combining multiple frames to yield a better shot). Seems to help more with camera shake blur than it does with subject motion blur.
As we all know by now, all camera reviews say our S5 has sub par night shooting. The thing is if we have our default settings on, this is absolutely true. I believe default has ISO on Auto and image stabilization ON. If you notice night shots are blurry as hell and we lose lots of detail even if we hold the phone absolutely still. This is because Auto ISO, I believe, is digitally ramped super high past ISO 800 in order to have a quick shutter speed. This causes less details to be taken in, in trade for brighter night shots.
This is the easiest way to get much better night shots and I wish reviewers tried this in their camera reviews for smartphones. See examples below of:
1. auto image stabilization with auto ISO
2. ISO 800
MUCH BETTER. notice that with auto settings on, it artificially brightens the entire shot, the night sky is forced to be brighter and you notice lots of noise near the horizon. the carnival lights are over exposed and details are not present.
notice the manual ISO shot, the night sky is correctly a pure black, and the lights are not over exposed so it leaves a crisp detail.
TL;DR: deactivate image stabilization so you can manually adjust ISO. Instead of Auto ISO, choose 800 for crisper, more detailed night shots.
next tip in the near future: shooting people in dark lighting
chillsen said:
As we all know by now, all camera reviews say our S5 has sub par night shooting. The thing is if we have our default settings on, this is absolutely true. I believe default has ISO on Auto and image stabilization ON. If you notice night shots are blurry as hell and we lose lots of detail even if we hold the phone absolutely still. This is because Auto ISO, I believe, is digitally ramped super high past ISO 800 in order to have a quick shutter speed. This causes less details to be taken in, in trade for brighter night shots.
This is the easiest way to get much better night shots and I wish reviewers tried this in their camera reviews for smartphones. See examples below of:
1. auto image stabilization with auto ISO
2. ISO 800
MUCH BETTER. notice that with auto settings on, it artificially brightens the entire shot, the night sky is forced to be brighter and you notice lots of noise near the horizon. the carnival lights are over exposed and details are not present.
notice the manual ISO shot, the night sky is correctly a pure black, and the lights are not over exposed so it leaves a crisp detail.
TL;DR: deactivate image stabilization so you can manually adjust ISO. Instead of Auto ISO, choose 800 for crisper, more detailed night shots.
next tip in the near future: shooting people in dark lighting
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What park is that? Looks like the one near me, is that roller coaster the crazy mouse? Lmao.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Impressive, that's a nice shot.
not bad
thanks for the tip the delay sucks anyway to get rid of that?
What about during the day, I have it on auto but imagine stabilization off. would 800 iso be fine for the day? Or is there a better setting for the day, I just leave it on auto b/c I don't want deal with remembering to change it back and forth lol.
surf1 said:
What about during the day, I have it on auto but imagine stabilization off. would 800 iso be fine for the day? Or is there a better setting for the day, I just leave it on auto b/c I don't want deal with remembering to change it back and forth lol.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for the day, auto is fine because there is so much bright light it will automatically be able to keep the iso low like 100-400 and still have a quick shutter. if you want super clear crisp pictures, try ISO 100 but depending on how bright it is, you might get blurry photos because the shutter will have to compensate by being open longer.
if you know the basic relationships between shutter speed and aperture, you'll know that our aperture is only 1 setting. so the only thing we can do to brighten pictures is to have a long shutter time (which is bad bc if you move it will get blurry) or change the ISO speed (higher iso, enables quicker shutter speed but sacrifice details).
galaxy s4 nutjob said:
thanks for the tip the delay sucks anyway to get rid of that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the delay isn't actually a delay but its how long the shutter of the camera is open for (taking in enough light to form the picture). Since it's dark and the ISO is at 800 there will be a longer shutter speed. if you listen carefully you will hear 2 noises, one at the beginning, then the delay, then another sound. those two sounds are when the shutter is opening and when it closes back after it has enough light to create a picture.
another way for you to understand this is try iso 100, it will be a longer delay and the picture will come out way too underexposed (darker) because it can't capture enough light while the shutter is open.
however if you have a nice digital camera you can take great night shots with a tripod at low ISO speeds, since you can manually set how long you want the shutter to be open for.
Br4nd3n said:
What park is that? Looks like the one near me, is that roller coaster the crazy mouse? Lmao.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this was at the annual fair in virginia
My camera is extremely sensitive with illuminated objects.
If something is under sunlight, no matter what time of the day it gets always completely whited out and this when the sun or source of light is behind me.
Often the sky, if it's simply a sunny day becomes monocromatic etc.
This problem happens with either superior auto as well as manual setting 50 iso and lowering the exposure to the minimum.
it seems to me that the sensor is too sensitive or has a very narrow dynamic range.
Is it possible to re-calibrate it?
Often I also do not see any difference by changing the iso (the onscreen preview does not change on the fly).
Either in low or high light conditions.
Any suggested diagnostic and fix?
Thanks a lot
I need some insight into the P10 camera. In auto, the rear camera seems to incorrectly read exposure so I find it overexposures the screen in bright sunlight or situations of high contrast. It's very hard taking a picture when a slight tilt of the phone makes it switch from dark to light in an instant. Just as bad in selfie mode.
Is this normal? Is there anyway to adjust it?
I find it mystifying as it's incapable of taking a simple pic in an ordinary scenario which most other good phones on the market are capable of doing by default.
Of course there is manual mode where you can adjust the EV but it should be able to do this automatically.
When you hold you finger on screen you can change exposure I think (a circled sun icon appears) ? You move it with finger still on screen to see differences.
Recently, I've noticed the Note 8 camera tends to overexpose the background light in photos by default (that is when you tap on the screen to focus on a location and it adjusts light automatically). The pictures are amazingly sharp and high quality, but they seem a bit fake due to this light overexposure. On the other hand, when I manually adjust the light, the pictures tend to look more realistic of the natural situation.
So does the camera just overexpose by default? Or is this normal for all cameras? I'm using all default settings and auto mode.
For comparison, and better understanding of my question, see the two photos.
Touch to focus work similar in every other phone. Get focus and light settings only on touched object. Background always become over or under exposed in depending the darkness of the focused object.
For solve that use camera soft button. In this case focus and light will be average for whole pic.