I know, but because we shared a healthy skepticism on it, I thought I'd chime that in for your consideration.
Honestly, I am surprised by the performance of it so far.
What I would love to see, that no review really seems to post either, are pics at night, with adequate to not so adequate lighting. Maybe a city skyline at night, or a lamp post. Something to that nature. Would anyone like to have a go at it?
What I would love to see, that no review really seems to post either, are pics at night, with adequate to not so adequate lighting. Maybe a city skyline at night, or a lamp post. Something to that nature. Would anyone like to have a go at it?
I'd have to drive a piece to get those.
I just took a lackluster picture of the moon over the clouds and a vase outside lit by the porch light.
What I would love to see, that no review really seems to post either, are pics at night, with adequate to not so adequate lighting. Maybe a city skyline at night, or a lamp post. Something to that nature. Would anyone like to have a go at it?
Problem with this is that with this little light, hand-shake will frequently be an issue that cannot be overcome without some kind of tripod or other way of immobilizing the phone for how long the exposure needs to be taken for--something that is the case with cameraphones all the way up to dSLRs.
If I do manage to shoot something like this, I'll post 'er up though.
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Problem with this is that with this little light, hand-shake will frequently be an issue that cannot be overcome without some kind of tripod or other way of immobilizing the phone for how long the exposure needs to be taken for--something that is the case with cameraphones all the way up to dSLRs.
If I do manage to shoot something like this, I'll post 'er up though.
Also, to really get good night time shots, you need to be able to control the shutter speed. Even on good dSLRs, metering is quite bad for nighttime shots.
Laws of physics still apply even with a good camera phone. If it's hard to get a non-grainy photo in low light on a dSLR, the same will apply to the camera on this phone. There's nothing magical about it.
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Problem with this is that with this little light, hand-shake will frequently be an issue that cannot be overcome without some kind of tripod or other way of immobilizing the phone for how long the exposure needs to be taken for--something that is the case with cameraphones all the way up to dSLRs.
If I do manage to shoot something like this, I'll post 'er up though.
Well in general the EVO is suppose to handle low light better, that's why I said those pictures would the best to see. From what I have seen, nothing has struck as amazing, except the panorama of the lake. Maybe it's because I currently have the GS2, which takes great shots as well, so the comparisons for me are pretty close.
Well in general the EVO is suppose to handle low light better, that's why I said those pictures would the best to see. From what I have seen, nothing has struck as amazing, except the panorama of the lake. Maybe it's because I currently have the GS2, which takes great shots as well, so the comparisons for me are pretty close.
The kind of testing scenario you want for this then is not a scene devoid of all light, but something with light but not tremendous amounts -- a challenging scenario would be something like a flashless shot in a restaurant.
In theory, you'd want something on the fringe of where any less with a smaller aperture than f2.0 would struggle and result in some camera shake and increased noise (from the higher ISO).
The kind of testing scenario you want for this then is not a scene devoid of all light, but something with light but not tremendous amounts -- a challenging scenario would be something like a flashless shot in a restaurant.
In theory, you'd want something on the fringe of where any less with a smaller aperture than f2.0 would struggle and result in some camera shake and increased noise (from the higher ISO).
That's what I said,"Maybe a city skyline at night, or a lamp post." A restaurant would probably be good. or a club maybe. I'm thinking of over places...a neon sign, and street sign. A sidewalk with lamp posts, a candle-lit vigil. hahaha
Ah, figured it out while shooting with the camera.
The half shutter press, while having been confirmed to not do focus lock, actually still has a function: exposure lock.
Exposure lock is locking in the exposure metering (shutter speed, ISO, and aperture) for a particular scene.
To best see this, go to a window with sunlight coming in and half shutter press and hold the shot of outside. Then bring the camera back indoors with it held -- you should see the exposure not change (the screen will not get brighter or darker). Then if you let go, the exposure will quickly adjust to the indoor light again.
Edit: Wait I'm wrong... a half shutter press locks in focus in addition to exposure.... what were the reviews complaining about then?
Last edited by NeoteriX; June 8th, 2012 at 04:55 PM.
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The only complaint I heard about was that reviews stated/showed that pressing the camera button would open up the camera, but it isn't doing that.
It won't wake the phone from standby, but if the screen is on and unlocked, you can press and hold the shutter button to enter the camera app directly.
As for night shots, every night shot i've seen posted so far is underexposed. While they still look better than the earlier Evo cameras, I'll say it again: to get eye-popping night shots, you must be able to manually control shutter speed.
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So I finally decided to do some extreme low-light testing. And since the camera has no option to manually set the shutter speed, I decided to see how it could do mounted on a tripod and set to the HDR mode, where at least the shutter speed will be much slower for one of the frames.
This first shot is of a neighbor's house, camera on full auto and flash turned off (flash is useless here because the subject is way too far away). Clearly underexposed, as you cannot see anything:
Next shot is of the exact same scene (phone is on tripod, so it's not moving), except this time, I set the camera to HDR mode. Came out better, but still way underexposed:
As is typical with nighttime photography, the on-screen display is useless because it's just showing black, but from the previous picture, I could see that I was pointing the camera way too low. Most of the pic is of the lawn. So I angled the view up until the sodium lamp came into view. Somehow with this information, the HDR software did a much better job with the exposures, but the result was super grainy:
Finally, I decided to do some motion blur and waited for a car to drive by. Same settings as before: no flash, HDR, everything else default. The car's headlights provided decent light to surrounding objects, so this photo came out better than the rest:
If I had manual control of the shutter speed, I could have dragged the car lights out for a longer distance. Note that all of the above photos are also very desaturated.
Tripods are a must for low-light shooting, and even then, image quality is not good. But I never had expectation that this camera would be able to handle such extreme conditions. It's still a great camera for more common use cases.
BTW, here's a picture of the setup. I have a binocular mount connected to a quick-release plate that's loaded onto the head of my tripod. The phone is wedged in place with a folded up napkin. Ghetto, yes, but it did the job holding the camera still.
Maybe I should have forced a lower ISO. That may improve the grainyness and desaturation problem. I suspect though that the shutter speed would not get correspondingly slower though, which means even darker images.
Perhaps my standards are too high. I dunno. Here's a shot of Vegas I took back in 2003 with an entry-level dSLR. 30-second exposure and small aperture to get everything in focus:
Novox -- very excellent work testing out the camera.
My comments:
1) It will be interesting to see what impact manually selecting a lower ISO will yield. But yes I agree with your suspicion that the result will be darker images -- non manual Point and Shoots that I've used usually have some shutter speed cap and will just refuse to take any shot longer than the limit, even if the exposure/ISO dictate otherwise. It's probably the same here.
2) There's actually a low-light option in the settings (all the way at the bottom of the A button). You might try giving that a shot. In some point and shoots I've used, even though there's no manual function, the low light setting can increase the ceiling for the shutter speed, opening up a few more seconds of exposure over the normal shooting modes. See if that helps.
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1) It will be interesting to see what impact manually selecting a lower ISO will yield. But yes I agree with your suspicion that the result will be darker images -- non manual Point and Shoots that I've used usually have some shutter speed cap and will just refuse to take any shot longer than the limit, even if the exposure/ISO dictate otherwise. It's probably the same here.
2) There's actually a low-light option in the settings (all the way at the bottom of the A button). You might try giving that a shot. In some point and shoots I've used, even though there's no manual function, the low light setting can increase the ceiling for the shutter speed, opening up a few more seconds of exposure over the normal shooting modes. See if that helps.
Thanks for the tips. I'll try to get some shots tonight if I remember. ISO 100 + low light + HDR + tripod stability might provide something halfway decent I'll try higher ISOs too if the low ones screw things up.
Thanks for the tips. I'll try to get some shots tonight if I remember. ISO 100 + low light + HDR + tripod stability might provide something halfway decent I'll try higher ISOs too if the low ones screw things up.
Just for clarification -- Low light is an alternative shooting mode to HDR, you won't be able to enable both.
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At the risk of sounding stupid, I'm just going to ask.... what's HDR?
It stands for High Dynamic Range, and that refers to the amount of contrast captured in the final image. With a regular photo, the dynamic range captured is much less than what our eyes can perceive. Therefore, shadows look darker, and bright areas get washed out much more easily on paper than it does with our eyes.
HDR requires that you take several photos in quick succession at different exposure levels, taking care to capture the details of the shadows, the midtones, and the bright areas. No one photo can capture it all, but through a post-processing technique called tone mapping, you can merge the best contrast ranges from each photo into one. The resulting image is what people refer to as the HDR shot. It allows us to capture light that more closely matches what we can see with our eyes. Extreme tone mapping can also capture more of a dynamic range of contrast than what we perceive, and when this happens, the HDR image has a surreal feeling, like things are glowing.
When we take an HDR shot with our phone, the phone is taking three shots in rapid succession, one underexposed to capture bright contrast; one normally exposed to capture midtones, and one overexposed to capture shadow details. Then the images are tonemapped and saved as one image.
HDR worked better for me at night because one of the shots was an overexposure, and I'd imagine most of the data from the final shot came from that one. The other two would be near solid black.
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Do we know that HDR on the phone is a real HDR process (combining multiple exposures) or is it just a post-processing effect? I thought it was just the latter? (I only hear one "snap" although it's just the speaker and not actual shutter).
In other news, I was playing around with the options and saw that the "low-light" mode on the Evo actually locks out the ISO, so instead of extending the exposure, it might just be locking in the higher ISO, I'm not quite sure (are we able to see the exposure data -- shutter and aperture -- in the EXIF? So far I've only seen focal length and ISO). It also seems to be doing something weird with the white balance in the limited time I've messed around with it last night.
Do we know that HDR on the phone is a real HDR process (combining multiple exposures) or is it just a post-processing effect? I thought it was just the latter? (I only hear one "snap" although it's just the speaker and not actual shutter).
In other news, I was playing around with the options and saw that the "low-light" mode on the Evo actually locks out the ISO, so instead of extending the exposure, it might just be locking in the higher ISO, I'm not quite sure (are we able to see the exposure data -- shutter and aperture -- in the EXIF? So far I've only seen focal length and ISO). It also seems to be doing something weird with the white balance in the limited time I've messed around with it last night.
I'm no professional, but I'm going to say the former. It seems that I need a much steadier hand when I take HDR shots as I almost always blur the image as the camera takes longer exposure shots.
I'm no professional, but I'm going to say the former. It seems that I need a much steadier hand when I take HDR shots as I almost always blur the image as the camera takes longer exposure shots.
I believe there is a pretty straightforward way of testing this -- go somewhere that is very bright (outdoors on a sunny day) where the shutter speed will be very fast and so motion blur will not be an issue, and then shoot with HDR while moving the phone extremely fast (whip your arm around or something).
In theory, this will eliminate motion blur as a confounding issue, but you should still see "ghosting" or the presence of 2 or 3 other shots overlaid on each other.
In my informal testing (without the benefit of full brightness), I'm seeing only motion blur and not the ghosting I've seen in HDR shots on my digital camera, so I'm inclined to believe it's not true HDR, but admittedly at the moment, the motion blur may be confounding things more than I can see.
Last edited by NeoteriX; June 12th, 2012 at 02:33 PM.
Reason: edit: I was wrong about HDR being a postprocess
How many times have you taken a once-in-a-lifetime shot - like when you come upon a unique sight while traveling - only to discover that the foreground is dark and the background is washed out. Deal with backlight. Select HDR from the camera scenes menu and your camera will take three quick shots of different exposures every time you press the shutter. It creates a picture you'll love by marrying the best parts of each shot into one, showing more detail in both the foreground and the background.
If true, then three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three.
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i inadvertently proved it was multiple shots when i tried a handheld HDR shots in low lighting (restaurant). My subject (son) was moving quite a bit too, and the end result was very strange... floating limbs and such.
You can do tonemapping from a single image, but the end result can easily be replicated with some levels and contrast adjustment in photoshop.
I think it was already proven somewhere else that the sound effect of the shutter has no correlation to the actual shutter, which IMO is very unfortunate.
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Device(s): HTC EVO 4G,HTC EVO 3D,HTC EVO 4G LTE,Cowon D3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by novox77
I think it was already proven somewhere else that the sound effect of the shutter has no correlation to the actual shutter, which IMO is very unfortunate.
Yeah. I hold the shutter down for consecutive shots, hear 5 shutter sounds and stop to review only 2 photos that have been taken.
I think HDR definitely takes longer exposures for one of the three shots taken. I slowly moved the camera laterally and noticed streaks in the final image.
I was wondering if any one could give me some advise on the camera? I am having trouble with the focus on it. When I go into the camera app its fine but as the camera is refocusing on things it will eventually totally un-focus it's self and will not refocus until I navigate out of the app. While this is inconsistent eventually it always seems to happen (usually within 10 seconds). I have tried the Camera Pudding app as well to see if a different app would do any better but no luck, any suggestions?
I was wondering if any one could give me some advise on the camera? I am having trouble with the focus on it. When I go into the camera app its fine but as the camera is refocusing on things it will eventually totally un-focus it's self and will not refocus until I navigate out of the app. While this is inconsistent eventually it always seems to happen (usually within 10 seconds). I have tried the Camera Pudding app as well to see if a different app would do any better but no luck, any suggestions?
Thanks Chris.
Bump
does anyone have some advise for me or is having the same issue?
I was wondering if any one could give me some advise on the camera? I am having trouble with the focus on it. When I go into the camera app its fine but as the camera is refocusing on things it will eventually totally un-focus it's self and will not refocus until I navigate out of the app. While this is inconsistent eventually it always seems to happen (usually within 10 seconds). I have tried the Camera Pudding app as well to see if a different app would do any better but no luck, any suggestions?
Thanks Chris.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Broderick
Bump
does anyone have some advise for me or is having the same issue?
Thanks
Hello Chris, I made an account just to give you a reply.
I had the exact same problem with my first LTEvo. My camera would sometimes focus and not refocus when trying to take pictures. And as you said, it would eventually unfocus itself and not refocus until I closed the app and restarted it. I force closed the camera app and cleared the data, but that didn't solve the problem, I also tried using a third party camera app and still didn't fix it. I couldn't figure it out, so I made a thread over at XDA and turns out we are not alone in this problem. A few others had the same problem and ended up just exchanging their phones. Thankfully I was still under my 30day guarantee so I just went and exchanged it for a new phone and the new one I picked up worked flawlessly.
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Hello Chris, I made an account just to give you a reply.
I had the exact same problem with my first LTEvo. My camera would sometimes focus and not refocus when trying to take pictures. And as you said, it would eventually unfocus itself and not refocus until I closed the app and restarted it. I force closed the camera app and cleared the data, but that didn't solve the problem, I also tried using a third party camera app and still didn't fix it. I couldn't figure it out, so I made a thread over at XDA and turns out we are not alone in this problem. A few others had the same problem and ended up just exchanging their phones. Thankfully I was still under my 30day guarantee so I just went and exchanged it for a new phone and the new one I picked up worked flawlessly.
Thanks Kinny89,
not exactly what I want to hear but at least it tells me the course of action. The only problem is I got this phone July 1st and will not be in the country until August 8th, but I will contact sprint to see if they will help.
not exactly what I want to hear but at least it tells me the course of action. The only problem is I got this phone July 1st and will not be in the country until August 8th, but I will contact sprint to see if they will help.
Ok,
so I got the bright idea that the camera focus was probably due to a dirty lens so I took off the semi transperent plastic cover that housed the lens and cleaned it well, hoping that dirt was the issue, with no luck. I hope I can still return this phone Ahhhhahahah.
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I had to swap out my phone last week due to the error code 97 - the camera on the new phone seems significantly worse than the camera on the old phone.
Here's a picture of a painting I had taken on the old phone that I just took on the new one. They were taken in different locations but you can see the image on the new one is much less clear & sharp. The only camera setting I ever changed on my old phone was to reduce the redness by -1 (I know that's not an official setting, lol - but I can't remember which setting it was and I need to go to work now) and I haven't done anything to the camera settings on the new one. I'll have to do some other testing & experimenting but if I can't figure out how to improve it I'll be going back to the Sprint store.
P.S. looks like my image links aren't quite right, first time I tried linking from photobucket & no time to figure them out right now but hopefully you can still see from the thumbnails.
Edit: Big fat oops on my part.... OPERATOR ERROR!! I was driving to work and suddenly I thought to look at the lens on the back of the camera.... it had some schmutz on it (I'm not Jewish, I just think "schmutz" is a funny word). No idea how I managed to get some goop on just the lens since I'm generally pretty careful where I set my phone down and I don't handle it with grimy fingers... but ummm.... ignore the above issue. When the lens is actually clean it takes wonderful pictures just like my "old" phone... imagine that...
PPS. I'm not a blonde or a senior (no offense to anyone who's either!) but I do have some Polish in me... maybe that's my problem... LOL
Last edited by PattiCakeUS; August 1st, 2012 at 05:24 PM.
I am having the same focus issue. Every few seconds it re focuses. Really notice it when taking video
That sucks,
did you try the front facing camera? Mine seems to work fine with that camera but the main one,..... ya never know when it will loose focus and stay unfocused. The one thing I did notice is that when it looses focus on what you are trying to take a pic of it sets it's self to focus on things very near.
I had to swap out my phone last week due to the error code 97 - the camera on the new phone seems significantly worse than the camera on the old phone.
Here's a picture of a painting I had taken on the old phone that I just took on the new one. They were taken in different locations but you can see the image on the new one is much less clear & sharp. The only camera setting I ever changed on my old phone was to reduce the redness by -1 (I know that's not an official setting, lol - but I can't remember which setting it was and I need to go to work now) and I haven't done anything to the camera settings on the new one. I'll have to do some other testing & experimenting but if I can't figure out how to improve it I'll be going back to the Sprint store.
Old phone:
New phone:
P.S. looks like my image links aren't quite right, first time I tried linking from photobucket & no time to figure them out right now but hopefully you can still see from the thumbnails.
I will have to replace this phone if I want a camera that forcuses correctly.
I really like my phone and have it customized the way I like it and it was because of that, I decided to try to replace the camera sensor. I went to ETrade supply and bought one for $16 and they shipped it very fast, and they have videos on Youtube taking phones apart, so the process was fast and easy. The problem: it still didn't fix my focus issues, so any one else having the same problems, it's not the sensor.
I download a new jelly bean camera app for my phone. It improve the quailty of the pictures and double the average size of the picture file. Have anybody try this app. The only down sized from the stock app is that it is missing the burst mode.
I tried using this on my camera, but after it was done and said "stitching together pictures," there was only one picture in my gallery, and it was only of the initial position of the camera when I first pressed the capture button. It was not of the whole scene that I scanned. Am I missing something?
Note: Zoom and flash are disabled when you’re in this mode.
3. When you’re ready to take the first shot, touch [there is an icon that is on screen, looks like a doughnut] . Directional arrows appear, prompting you to pan left or right in landscape view (or pan up or down in portrait view).
4. As you pan, a guide appears onscreen. Use this to frame the first portion of the scene
you want to capture.
5. Continue moving your phone as smoothly as you can. The camera automatically
captures five consecutive frames.
6. Touch [an icon with an 'X' in it] to stop capturing anytime.
The camera stitches the shots into a single photo.
you may also try resetting the handset and either looking for the photo again or retaking another one.
you have to also make sure you are moving slowly and steadily in the same plane as the image you want to take. if you are really shaky or jerky, the shot will not come out stitched properly.
Last edited by marctronixx; September 15th, 2012 at 03:53 PM.
Ok, I figured it out. I wasn't using the onscreen rectangles to frame my pictures, I was just moving the camera sideways. I didn't know you had to line up the scene in all five rectangles. Thanks.
Ok, I figured it out. I wasn't using the onscreen rectangles to frame my pictures, I was just moving the camera sideways. I didn't know you had to line up the scene in all five rectangles. Thanks.
#4 and #5 in the quote above Glad all is worked out!
Quote:
4. As you pan, a guide appears onscreen. Use this to frame the first portion of the scene
you want to capture.
5. Continue moving your phone as smoothly as you can. The camera automatically
captures five consecutive frames.
Camera settings - adjust quality/JPEG compression?
Hi all,
Is anyone interested in a camera setting to adjust quality, i.e., the JPEG compression? If so, I'd like to encourage everyone to contact HTC and let them know it is a desired feature to implement on the HTC EVO 4G LTE. I assume this feature is currently not implemented (at least I couldn't find it in the camera settings).
I'd guess that the camera is currently defaulting to a "superfine" setting which results in fairly sizable JPGs, but that setting is not accessible to see or change. Superfine is great for outdoor or other well-lit photographs, but for darker indoor/motion pictures, the "fine" or "normal" setting would be more appropriate to match the photo type as it's usually blurry or fuzzy anyway, so any "superfine" details are only capturing the details of the artifacts/blur so it's a waste to create large file sizes without good lighting.
Last I read on this subject, HTC was interested in feedback on what to modify on the camera interface, among other things. I think I read that somewhere, perhaps on this forum on an old discussion thread regarding issues with the camera focus.
I liked the ability to set compression/quality as seen on the original EVO, where you could set the compression/quality to normal, fine, or superfine. I actually prefer normal because that results in much smaller file sizes (e.g., 1/3 of the size) to save space etc. when you are doing indoor/crappy photos without great lighting.
Apologies if already covered, but I didn't encounter much detail on this subject when searching the forum.
Is anyone else interested in this, or am I a lone voice lost in a crowd here? I think it's great to add features like this, and HTC previously had the feature in earlier phones like the OG EVO. I think they would add it in if we get a good sized group of people providing feedback? Anyone know a specific way of contacting HTC to provide this feedback, besides their general contact info?
I'm not rooted and have no plans to do so. I've turned down all the volumes and it still makes the noises. Really annoying when I hear my 6 year old singing and try to catch him on video, then he stops as soon as he hears the sound.
The HTC EVO 4G LTE is Sprint's version of the HTC One X. It comes with all the same specs, except for the processor, internal storage and radios (includes LTE). And aesthetics are also significantly different.
While many users have complaine... Read More
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Sprint LTEVO running STOCK
