Fantastic - thanks @plamen thats great to know and makes more sense now!
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Yeah, well I was hoping/assuming it was just a typo (as plamen has confirmed); as it didn’t make sense otherwise - as the up sampling concept would be a bit extreme.
Yeah don’t get me wrong - I think on the whole the phone is great and other than the microphone/speaker quality and what we are talking about here (which I think should be ultimately resolvable) its amazing value for money.
I have got some pretty good images at 50MP too, but that’s not all the time unfortunately. I’m fairly convinced its the image capture process, in combination with level of lighting (thats discussed in other threads).
The former is slow and laggy for me no matter what I try (and potentially contributes to issues with image quality) unless I drop the image resolution significantly as mentioned; and the camera sensor in general doesn’t seem overly capable with average to low light…
I plan to go back to trying the default app, and maybe try another app as well (not OC); just to verify image capture behaviour is the same and its definitely camera hardware/firmware and/or OS related - and nothing to do with specific camera app used…
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Lighting definitely does make a difference in the “granular” look of the pictures. I have noticed that, but I really don’t have enough knowledge to understand why it happens like that, but I do definitely notice this.
That will be interesting to figure out if it is the hardware/firmware for the camera or the OS. Somehow I suspect the OS because with Pinephone the OS was what allowed the camera’s firmware to work or not (often not!). That sensor that Plamen mentioned (ov50k40) is used in the Xiaomi 15 Pro - so should work well. That’s a higher end phone and definitely priced that way! Would be interesting to know, if anyone has one, what their experience on the Xiaomi 15 Pro is like with pictures?
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In simplistic terms, all camera sensors over about 8MP resolution create ‘noise’ - this is caused by how small and/or how closely packed together the individual ‘pixel’ cells/sensors are on the main sensor array/chip. In crude terms its a type of electrical interference caused by their proximity to each other. Its also why some people traditionally felt 7MP was the sweet spot for digital photography back ~20 years ago.
In the old film days you had something called film grain, which looks similar to what you see when your digital images are grainy. Basically a fast film, to let you catch fast action (like sports games or Formula 1 races), would be very grainy because to be sensitive enough that it only needed a very infintisimally short exposure time (which you needed to avoid blur for moving subjects), meant it also created coarser images - and slower film had no grain (or very little) because it could take longer to photograph (expose) a (stationary) subject.
With digital cameras that is basically flipped on its head - because of the ‘sensor noise’ inherent in all higher MP count sensors the longer the exposure the greater the image is exposed to noise during capture so the greater the ‘graininess’ of the image. So the opposite of how film worked.
Most digital cameras and manufacturers get around this in two ways, (a) they have extra processing (or sometimes filters) on or in the sensor itself, and (b) they do additional post capture processing on the device before you see the image output (this is what your iPhone or high end Samsung or Google Pixel does).
Back in the mid-2010’s Fujifim mirrorless X series cameras were extremely good at eliminating noise (although some people accused Fuji of cheating, by understating their specs and similar so they looked better than they really were).
Anyway technology has likely moved on a bit in the last 5–8 years since I last did any semiserious photography; but essentially that’s why slower exposure images, especially in poor light which lengthens exposure time, will always look a bit worse than ordinary images taken in good light. And why people raved about the iphone low light/night image quality a few years ago when they significantly improved that (which is likely all from post capture processing algorithms and is now presumably AI powered).
I didnt know that as hadn’t reasearched that far yet… And definitely would be interesting to compare.
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So just a further update - I have installed the following on my B3 to test side by side and see if the app makes any difference to the image quality and capture speed, etc. As now we know the spec of the sensor it seems, I’m musing, more likely any lag or image issues are app, settings or OS related - and the right combination of the first two will be the solution:
- Open Camera (my default currently)
- Camera (iodé default - AOSP app?)
- Libre Camera
- Fossify Camera
Other apps I’ve identified but not looked into in detail yet, or downloaded, are:
- Aperture
- ZeroCam
- GCam (Google Camera)
Anyone with experience with any of the latter?
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Another thing to try, which might help determine what quality issues are due to software vs. hardware, is using OpenCamera to get the “raw” (DNG format) images from the sensor (presumably other camera apps can do this too, that’s just the one I’ve personally tried), and then postprocess them using software like Darktable to make “real” image files. Obviously not an ideal workflow for taking a quick picture to post on social media or whatever, but might help for more-serious photography needs, and might help one understand what the limitations of the hardware are.
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…and I forgot:
- GOS Camera (GrapheneOS’s “Secure Camera” app)
Sorry I started another thread on camera issues, I thought I searched but somehow missed this thread. Lots of reading for me to do on other camera apps, thanks
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Which app(s) did you find work best with the Brax3 camera?
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Hi - Happy New Year. Sorry for slow response, been on 4 week’s holiday so was keeping off web & YT, etc as well - to maximise the break and relaxation!
To answer your question I am still trialing them - I haven’t had a chance to spend some time to do focussed side by side tests. Currently I’m using Open Camera for day to day ad hoc stuff. I will retest the default camera app (Arpeture?) but originally found it lacked functionality if used with the physical BraX3 camera. I have only briefly tried Fossify Camera and Libre Camera so still need to more meaningfully test them.
I have Pixel Camera on my P8P also running iodéOS so once I find the best one of the above 4 on BraX3 I will then test that app also on my Pixel phone against the Pixel Camera App to compare results to get a better gauge of how good the best of that group is…
But may be a few weeks before I do all this…
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How is the testing going? I find OpenCamera to be complicated to use. And the audio on Brax3 cannot be fixed no matter which app is used. Compared to my old Moto G7 play, it sounds terrible. The video is not great either. I think the Brax3 camera is my #1 complaint. Other than that, I think it’s a pretty great phone, esp. for the price.
Nothing has changed but I still consider the cameras and the audio very good and perfect for my requirements.
I wonder if the problems are limited to my phone or whether others are experiencing it as well? It sounds weird when I try to talk to people on the phone, and for filming bands (or anything loud) it is truly terrible. I even tried attaching an external lavalier mic to see if that would help, but it didn’t.
Some phones are defective. The video is mostly a software image optimization problem that is very advanced on stock phones, the audio is mostly a problem of not using noise cancelation though there are 2 microphones on the phone as I remember.
If you have any suggestions to improve either the video or audio, I would love to hear them! At this point it’s too late to return the phone and would be a big hassle even if I did.
It’s hard to play with this, maybe video can be processed later but audio noise cancelation should be done live or record both microphones and do it later, this in turn depends on whether Android let’s you use both microphones. For example I tried to make a dual camera app but Mediatek hasn’t activated the feature and I abandoned it.
I’m not a techie so I’m not sure how to activate noise cancellation on any internal BraX3 microphone.
I mean programming an app or adding code to the camera app in order to activate both microphones and try to post process and remove the noise, again the result may be disappointing.
I sort of stopped using my Brax 3 camera. I still use it for everyday things, like pics for buy and sell, stuff like that. But any time I want good stable video or high res photos (like on vacation etc) I have been taking my S22 with me.
I do enjoy my Brax 3 but hoping the next iteration could have an improved camera system. There’s more to it that just the camera itself I am sure. I don’t believe any camera app can make up for any overall issues
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Agreed, the camera is below average, although not outright poor. I have tried numerous apps (still testing) and cannot eliminate the excessive delay to the shutter speed… so am starting to assume its a hardware / OS issue. I still need to compare with Pixel running iodéOS and using same camera apps…
The ‘macro’ camera is basically just a space filler for the second camera lens slot in the chassis so largely irrelevant and only usuable for an extremely bespoke scenario…
The main camera is usable but not suitable for high quality photos. Personally I think the 50MP average sensor spec chosen was a mistake and a 20MP higher quality sensor (& lens) would have been far better value.
The camera is not the main reason for the phone so I don’t expect it to compare to iPhone, Galaxy, Pixel optics & apps and that was the design philosophy I believe. But I do think an older “high spec lower MP” sensor & lens config would have been much better for both performance and $ value, than just going for the maximum MP at a given price point and getting a very average sensor & lens combination.
Agreed. The camera is the weakest feature of the BraX3 but that was fairly apparent early on (although early marketing touted the 50MP spec), and no one should have bought it expecting a high spec camera (I didn’t).
But anyone who knows anything about digital cameras will know MP is only about 3rd most important (maybe 4th on phones) - lens and sensor quality (incl. any sensor software) are the most critical always, then for phones maybe app quality is also more important than the MP count…
I’m happy with the camera EXCEPT I can’t remove the annoying lag… Which currently makes its usability substandard and well below average (e.g. impossible to photograph moving subjects)…
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