Modern smartphone HDR is so insane. I tried replicating it with a tripod and HDR software but I had to apply so much compensation and the smartphones are just point and click. Great stuff.
I am very impressed with the photo AI work people have been doing. Very concrete feature for people to use.
"HDR images can be challenging to edit, because some decisions are effectively baked into the final JPG. To maximize latitude for editing, it’s possible to save RAW images for each shot (an option in the app). However, this process takes the photographer out of the moment and requires expertise with RAW editing tools as well as additional storage."
I wish at least 12bit (ideally 14 or 16bit) compressed image formats (like HEIF) took over jpeg on cameras. It's great to have raw as an option, but can we please just get rid of 8bit jpg as the default
Newer Canon mirrorless cameras now support HEIF (R5 and R6), and I think newer Sony ones will as well, so the groundswell might be starting in the higher-end.
But iPhones have defaulted to using HEIF for years now I think, and no browser (even Safari) supports the format yet, so...
The iPhone defaults to HEIF, and all Android devices running at least Android 9 have the option to save images in HEIF. That being said, I have no idea if you get any of the benefits of a higher bit-depth.
Part of the underlying challenge is that displays are, at best, 10-bit. Our imaging systems easily handle 14-bit depth, but the display systems cannot.
Yeah I agree. Nearly all HDR photography is uninteresting to me because I’m attracted to contrasting light in the frame. Having everything in focus looks bland to me.
There is a hacked Camera APK that restores features and backports new features to old phones. It's not perfectly stable on my Pixel 2 but its close. Restored Burst shots as a feature (my main goal), brought focus tracking and astrophotography improvements. And it can be installed along side the stock camera.
And to generic android as well. I get that they want differentiation, but there's serious lack of other implementation in play store. For actually good hdr it looks like there's pixel or nothing. I'd be happy to pay quite a bit to get their new HDR+ on a OnePlus for example.
Real cameras have been doing "HDR" for ages, since their sensors have 12-14 stops of dynamic range, but JPEG only has 8. And it works incredibly well, just like the color science Nikon and Canon have figured out, a thing smartphones are lacking as well. With a lot of light smartphones can take very good pictures as far as resolution is concerned, but color and dynamic range rendering are consistently poor. For me it's rare that I need to change the colors my Nikon camera produces, and if I do, it's usually just a slight tweak (a few hundred Kelvin of red-blue shift or maybe a tiny magenta-green adjustment), while the colors in practically every iPhone shot are lacking and require effort to get to a satisfactory level.
That doesn't sound right at all. DSLRs like my Canon do indeed have a larger dynamic range but they are still nowhere near being close to the dynamic range the human eye can capture. Moreover, the native image rendered by DSLRs still has a linear transfer function that still suffers all the issues that HDR tries to solve. This is why auto-bracket exposure is a thing on all DSLRs so you can try to capture high dynamic range scenes in multiple photographs that you then need to combine offline in separate software.
And the sad fact of the matter is that computational photography on phones, especially when it comes to HDR, makes it absolutely no hassle to obtain exceptionally good HDR captures 80+% of the time. I've literally taken back to back comparison shots of my son on a bright sunny day on a boat when on the ocean and my smartphone picture (S9+) was far superior to my DSLR image, even after trying to capture details from highlights/shadows in postprocessing.
Phones these days can perform a lot of neat tricks to reduce noise, capture large dynamic ranges and compress it all into a pleasing HDR image in fractions of seconds that lets you achieve great HDR images even with moving subjects (something notoriously hard with a DSLR).
Not that DSLRs don't have a whole host of other advantages when it comes to image quality and depth-of-focus, etc, but HDR is not one of them. It is almost the sole reason why I've been reaching for my DSLR less and less when on vacation.
That isn't the same type of HDR that these HDR modes on cell phones are. You seem to be confusing bit's with stops of dynamic range.
To simplify I'll pick a grayscale image so with 8bits you would only have 0-255 as pixel values for the intensity.
With 12 bits you'll have 4096, and so forth.
What cellphone HDR usually does is take the image at a high exposure and a low exposure and combine the result. (Also the sensors inside the cellphone are also more than 8bit)
Even if you take a 12 bit photo if it's overexposed you can't do much. All you get is more play but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem of too much light hitting the sensor, or vice versa if the image is underexposed.
Now there are more advanced camera sensors that let you set the exposure time (or usually the ISO (which just translates to gain) at specific horizontal points of the sensor so that you can get even better images in one frame.
This is really cool. Nit: I find it really unintuitive that 100% is on the left of the slider. "Volume" knobs and sliders are almost always the other way around in my experience.
[+] [-] renewiltord|5 years ago|reply
I am very impressed with the photo AI work people have been doing. Very concrete feature for people to use.
[+] [-] dharma1|5 years ago|reply
I wish at least 12bit (ideally 14 or 16bit) compressed image formats (like HEIF) took over jpeg on cameras. It's great to have raw as an option, but can we please just get rid of 8bit jpg as the default
[+] [-] berkut|5 years ago|reply
But iPhones have defaulted to using HEIF for years now I think, and no browser (even Safari) supports the format yet, so...
[+] [-] dstaley|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ISL|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] auxym|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wiremaus|5 years ago|reply
Interestingly, the final rendering in the Pixel 3 looks better to my eyes.
[+] [-] mnholt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1024core|5 years ago|reply
Same here.
[+] [-] metalliqaz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seized|5 years ago|reply
https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/google-camera-mods/gca...
[+] [-] viraptor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pwarner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] formerly_proven|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _coveredInBees|5 years ago|reply
And the sad fact of the matter is that computational photography on phones, especially when it comes to HDR, makes it absolutely no hassle to obtain exceptionally good HDR captures 80+% of the time. I've literally taken back to back comparison shots of my son on a bright sunny day on a boat when on the ocean and my smartphone picture (S9+) was far superior to my DSLR image, even after trying to capture details from highlights/shadows in postprocessing.
Phones these days can perform a lot of neat tricks to reduce noise, capture large dynamic ranges and compress it all into a pleasing HDR image in fractions of seconds that lets you achieve great HDR images even with moving subjects (something notoriously hard with a DSLR).
Not that DSLRs don't have a whole host of other advantages when it comes to image quality and depth-of-focus, etc, but HDR is not one of them. It is almost the sole reason why I've been reaching for my DSLR less and less when on vacation.
[+] [-] prakhunov|5 years ago|reply
To simplify I'll pick a grayscale image so with 8bits you would only have 0-255 as pixel values for the intensity.
With 12 bits you'll have 4096, and so forth.
What cellphone HDR usually does is take the image at a high exposure and a low exposure and combine the result. (Also the sensors inside the cellphone are also more than 8bit)
Even if you take a 12 bit photo if it's overexposed you can't do much. All you get is more play but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem of too much light hitting the sensor, or vice versa if the image is underexposed.
Now there are more advanced camera sensors that let you set the exposure time (or usually the ISO (which just translates to gain) at specific horizontal points of the sensor so that you can get even better images in one frame.
[+] [-] damnyou|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randyrand|5 years ago|reply