Tag: camera

DXOMark evaluates new Nexus cameras

The numeric score is high.
But I guess you already know my opinion on averages of averages of numerical scores to evaluate image quality 😉

– it's always the same thing: each score is valid only if considered alone, and all that only in case the evaluation metric is indeed perceptual and not just arbitrary.

Pro / Cons comments are interesting tho.

#supercurioBlog #camera #Nexus



Google Nexus 6P review: Serious contender for mobile photography | DxOMark
Today Google unveiled the Nexus 6P. Having partnered with manufacturer Huawei to build this latest device, the Nexus 6P is the first to run Google’s most up-to-date version of its Android operating system — Android OS 6.0 Marshmallow (or “Android M”).Tech specs for the Nexus 6P include a large 5.7-inch (1440 x 2560-pixel) AMOLED screen with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 and 16 million colors. The rear camera offers a 13Mp resolution on a 1/2.3”-type se…

Source post on Google+

Cool photography product for raw shooters especially (iPhone accessory)

It seems compact enough to be in your pocket when you'll get out: more than Sony QX smart lenses although at the expense of a zoom lens.

+DxO is being dishonest by using the DSLR comparison we read too often: "The power of a DSLR"
They argue that the DXOMark sensor score is "Up to 85" which is slightly higher than as a last-gen Sony 1.5x crop APS-C sensor, despite the DxO One use a Sony 1" sensor.

Actually this is is a theoretical score calculated by using computational photography blending multiple exposures, comparing apple and oranges.
So.. yeah, there's that.

It's good to see new cameras implementing computational photography methods however, including for RAW!

The website announce 650€ to pre-order it, then tell me it will be available only in the US for now (I'm in France)

#supercurioBlog #camera #DNG #critic



DSLR Quality Camera in Your Pocket | DxO ONE |
Get the world’s smallest 1-inch sensor camera and capture beautiful, high-resolution photos anywhere.

Source post on Google+

Some facts after a quick analysis of both +HTC #ONEm9 and +LG Mobile Global #LGG4 produced DNG

– Both lack flat-field correction
– Both provide incomplete matrix-only color profiling: no DCP
– Neither use compression
– HTC One M9 DNG is 10 bit stored in 16bit uncompressed data: 39MB per 20 Mpixel image.
– LG G4 DNG is 10 bit stored uncompressed, 20MB per 16 Mpixel image
– Both have non-optimal noise profiling settings: HTC One M9 set noise reduction too high and LG G4 lacks noise profiling entierly.

Notes on flat-field correction:
Mobile camera modules require such correction to correct both vignetting and color cast (like pink spot / greenish or blueish corners).
HTC One M9 requires less correction than the LG G4.
It is only possible to compensate for light fall-off, in RAW image editors, not color cast.
As a result, the color cast in corners is essentially non-fixable.

Attached: the #LGG4 DNG sample provided by +Colby Brown rendered in Lightroom with only modification an increased contrast and exposure slightly, to make both vignetting and color cast more obvious.

The least I can say is that there's room for improvement, both DNG implementation being non-optimized and incomplete.

#supercurioBlog #LG #DNG #color #camera #calibration

 

Source post on Google+

First article written for http://SpectraStudy.com is live!

Android Camera2 API promises to revolution digital imaging on smartphones or altogether with advanced capture and processing capabilities that have never been accessible to third party applications before.

Some of what becomes possible is manual controls, computational photography, RAW #DNG capture, full control over video recording, custom image processing. Limits are few.

Here's an analysis on how much of this new API is supported by the #Lollipop devices released during #MWC15 , including the highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9 flagships.

#supercurioBlog #camera #article #API #spectrastudy



Camera2 API on MWC 2015 devices: Galaxy S6, HTC One M9 and more Lollipop devices
Since Google announced Android 5 Lollipop at Google I/O 2014, mobile photography and video enthusiasts are hoping for a sizable upgrade of their smartphone’s camera capabilities. History The histor…

Source post on Google+

Something strange happened: I wrote an article in French!

This starts a collaboration with the good people at +FrAndroid.

It's about Lollipop, Camera2 API and its 3 main levels of hardware support.
The new Android OS came with a lot of promises in photo and video capabilities, but we don't know yet if they'll be fulfilled.

#supercurioBlog #camera #article #API



API Camera2 et Lollipop : votre terminal est-il compatible avec les nouvelles fonctionnalités ? – FrAndroid
Depuis l’annonce par Google d’Android Lollipop, les photographes se sont réjouis au vu des nouvelles fonctionnalités listées durant les Google I/O. En effe

Source post on Google+

I've been looking forward to see reviews since I finished implementing the RAW DNG profiling and calibration for +Cyanogen on the OnePlus One a couple months ago

+Tek Syndicate just published one in video and they're pretty enthusiasts about the results 🙂

A tip about converter software: +Albert Manduca, who shows his experience with RAW editing uses +Adobe Lightroom which is great as it's one of the software that implement all the DNG capabilities I used during profiling.
Mainly:
* Color calibration
* Noise profiling
* Lens vignetting correction and sensor color uniformity

DNG files are the RAW sensor data plus metadata that describe shooting conditions and how to transform what the sensor sees into a corrected image representing colors as they are.
Compared to proprietary RAW formats, DNG is self-describing.

Smartphones' captures require more correction than other cameras due to their physical constrains.
Some converters support DNG but not all its features.
Typically, noise, vignette or color uniformity won't be corrected as expected, color conversion incomplete, exposure compensation not applied so be sure to use a fully fledged RAW editor!

By the way, did anyone made a comparison with a Lumia DNG?

#supercurioBlog #camera #DNG #cyanogen #oneplus

Source post on Google+

Capture photo's spectrum instead of only 3 channels somewhat matching an inconsistent RGB color model?

ohh YES THAT!

Scientific term for that is: multispecrral imaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multispectral_image

#supercurioBlog #camera

Originally shared by +PetaPixel

New Imaging System Promises 12-Times More Color Sensitivity than a Traditional Sensor

Most traditional image sensors work their magic by picking up Red, Green and Blue, but a new system promises to use Foveon-like technology to detect a whopping 36 color channels.

That's 12 times the color sensitivity!



New Imaging System Promises 12-Times More Color Sensitivity than a Traditional Sensor
What’s the use of an image sensor that’s 12 times more color sensitive than the human eye? We’re not entirely sure, but thanks to a team of researchers at

Source post on Google+

Nice job from +PhoneArena on this large camera comparison

That's a lot of work!

Note: I only look at the pics and skip all the text as I'm experienced enough to analyze on my own. I don't know if I agree with their writing or ratings.

I find interesting to see that color rendering deviates a lot less from one smartphone camera to another than displays colors do.

If today's mobile display color accuracy is in pretty bad shape, and not making any progress, at least the cameras are pretty consistent and perform impressively in average all things considered!

Thanks +PhoneArena for all this useful data 🙂

#supercurioBlog #camera #comparison



Camera comparison: iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus vs iPhone 5s, Galaxy S5, LG G3, Lumia 1520, Xperia Z2, HTC One (M8)
Apple has been treating its iPhone to camera upgrades with each consecutive generation. However, the company has never been into the megapixel race – as the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5 before them, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus sport 8-megapixel main cameras. Will this be enough for the new iPhones to beat or match the performance of other flagship phones? Well, we’re about to answer this question in our latest camera comparison…

Source post on Google+

Every white balance algorithm has its strengths and weaknesses

No automatic metering nor white balance is gonna provide perfect result in every situation.

I don't think +Tom's Guide calling this "a big problem" is particularly fair in this article.

Their video demonstration of white balance shifting when the scene changes (hand introduced and removed from the scene) is at best inconclusive, that's pretty much the expected behavior.
If you want to know the reason why fixed or manual white balance is sometimes required, well that's it 🙂
Maybe the white balance adjustment could be slower, which would make it less apparent, but that would reduce its efficiency in other scenes with mixed lighting conditions.

Also, this sentence shows the author doesn't get how automatic white balance works, by stating the exact opposite of the reality:
In reviewing some of our test photos, Apple representatives said that the colors may have shifted as the result of changing content in different photos. But that's not how white balance works. It takes account of the color of light falling on the subjects, not on the assortment of subjects in a photo

Everything an AWB algorithm has to work with is the raw pixels values from the sensor, and some knowledge of what was going on before.
It doesn't know anything about light sources, weather conditions, light reflections.

Lastly, I don't understand why they qualify this other example as a problem while the iPhone 6 has onece again the expected behavior: exposing for the faces first when there's people, and preserving highlight to avoid blowing out the scene otherwise:
http://media.bestofmicro.com/H/S/455536/gallery/sean-mike_ip6Plus_w_600.png
which brings much better results than their reference on metering, a Galaxy S5: http://media.bestofmicro.com/H/R/455535/original/sean-mike_gs5.png
However I agree that the S5 auto white balance gets better results but keeping in mind both get a result that's far too blue overall when exposing for the faces.

I'm all for reporting image quality issues, but it works better with reasonable expectations and proper understanding on how things work, especially when trying to explain that to readers.

Via +Amon RA

#supercurioBlog #color #camera



The iPhone 6 Camera Has a Big Problem: iOS 8

Source post on Google+

Re-sharing here because happy with the results :)

#supercurioBlog #camera #calibration #cyanogen #oneplus

Originally shared by +Francois@Cyanogen Inc.

In my last post, I was talking about flat field correction, a technique that allows to fix lens vignetting and associated lens+sensor color cast.

Here's a first result 🙂

This is the same picture of an uniform white reference, with contrast +100 in Lighroom to emphasis the difference:

– Without DNG correction
– Without DNG correction but with Lighroom built-in Lens Vignetting tool adjusted to best settings possible
– With DNG flat-field correction defined in the DNG file itself: to the user, it's like vignetting or color cast were never here!

And.. back to code 😉

  

In Album First DNG FlatField correction results

Source post on Google+