PowrDroid

Here are a couple of shots I took today in very low light conditions. The setting: 1 o'clock in the afternoon on a cloudy day. Shades drawn and door closed. Both shots were taken from about 6 feet away from the target (the chair.)

The first shot is with no flash, all settings on automatic. Yes, you can see pixel noise, but I'm certain you would with any mobile phone camera under these conditions. Still, it's not blurry and you can see everything.

The second shot is the exact same shot but with flash on Auto. To me, the quality of this shot was surprising. The flash fired and lit up the scene as if there were lights on in the room. I've mentioned it before--Jelly Bean must have done something to the flash output of the camera's LED because the flash is much stronger than with ICS.

Note: Original photos were compressed using Photoshop Elements to reduce size. Originals do not have as much pixel noise in them, esp. the flash shot.

Attached Images

	Chair_Shade_NoFlash.jpg (121.0 KB, 126 views)
	Chair_Shade_Flash.jpg (99.3 KB, 133 views)

Last edited by PowrDroid; January 19th, 2013 at 03:30 PM.

IHateMyTreo

I think it just takes some patience to learn how to use the camera. At first I was frustrated in low light scenes because I mistook the initial flash for the shutter snap, then moved the camera and got a blurry shot, which I blamed on the camera. Waiting for the second flash AND HOLDING STILL until then was the key.

And this shot in dusky light, no flash, turned out pretty good.



Loving the RMHD.

PowrDroid

That is a beautiful shot! Did the camera prompt you to go to HDR mode?

IHateMyTreo

Thanks.

Boy I don't remember if it prompted me for HDR or not. I think it did. Is there a way to tell from looking at the details? This one is 3264x1836, white balance is auto, shutter speed 1/120. I manually set no flash.

Dan3426

Yes, it is a very nice picture, but...the snow looks a little blue to me.

goldz28

Took these the other day, camera seems to work just fine IMO

Stealthman

These pictures look fine, I don't have this phone..........yet..........but these look ok to me

tmette

These are great! What kind of settings were you using? I assume this was with the stock camera application instead of a different app?

jtc303

Damn dude nice pics

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Ag76

Very nice photos to my untrained eye!

hansangb

And clearly.... an very nice place!

goldz28

I had it on widescreen 6mp and HDR

Here is the place, about 8 miles from my house.

http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_124.php

http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=131

Last edited by goldz28; January 22nd, 2013 at 01:13 AM.

El Presidente

Some great shots here. The dog looks as though he/she has a glow or haze around it, very cool.

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IHateMyTreo

We were in a layer of ground fog, which made for an eerie scene.

But the other shots posted are like postcard quality. This camera can shine when the conditions are right.

tmette

I think I need to mess around with the camera settings a lot more. I don't take many photos and I feel some of them suck whenever I snap a quick photo. I think I just need to tweak my settings a little more. I know HDR isn't turned on because I always get the message to turn it on. My friend has the regular Razr HD and he took some beautiful scenery photos one time when he went on a trip.

PowrDroid

Absolutely. Just play around with it. Set up a variety of lighting conditions and take some shots. You can simply erase them when you are finished.


Always get the message? Or it seems like always? HDR should not be left on all the time. I leave my camera without HDR activated. The camera is pretty good about prompting you when to use HDR.

PowrDroid

Take a look at these shots:

https://forums.motorola.com/posts/fb4cc0abc9

budfox66

These are great but they are stills. If you have kids, taking pics with this camera is pretty tough bcause they dont stay still. Most of my pics that are stills are awesome but most of my action shots (90% of pics I take) are not. After using it since JB came out, this camera is bout as good as any when you take stills in adequate lighting but not very good at actions shots, esp inside lighting.

recDNA

Long distance stills don't impress me. My problem is getting the camera to consistently focus properly between 6 inches and 8 feet.

PowrDroid

Do you tap the screen on the area you want the camera to focus?

Doing that and holding the camera perfectly still has helped my short range pics a lot. I do wish Moto would put an image stabilizer back onto their camera software.

spew101

What is HDR and what does it do? I see the prompt to turn it on all the time, but I wasnt sure what it was for.

PowrDroid

HDR = High Dynamic Range. The practical effect is that in some lighting conditions you will get clearer, sharper photos. If your camera is calling for HDR, I'd turn it on.

Dave73

As above, sort of, HDR basically will give you a more realistic effect, closer to what the human eye can see.

It does not effect sharpness or clarity of the image.

The techique is usually done manually and accomplished by taking a minimum of 3 exposures (shots), one is overexposed, one is exposed correctly and the last one underexposed. You can take more with varying gradients.

The shots are then combined together, to ensure that each element of the photograph is exposed correctly as it should be.

The HDR on phones and point and shoots does this process automatically for you. It basically will provide you with a better exposed shots so you dont have parts of the photo with very dark shadows in one area and/or too much overexposed elements in another.

If you google HDR photos there are some good examples, it can be overdone to make photos look like paintings, its ok sometimes, but this is achieved by tone maping and thats another topic altogether.

This camera is like any other on a phone or basic point and shoot, though limited with a bit of patience and knowing the basics it takes great shots. In any sort of low light unless perfectly still it may cause some blur. Unavoidable with a sensor so small.

Its best used when you have a scene for example where you take a photo of a person standing in a shaded area and behind them its bright and sunny, usually the person looks like a shadow figure with no detail. Rather than use fill flash giving you an unatural look the HDR will fill the dark area of the subject and should balance out the photo.

There is no need to have it on all the time and I would not recommend that unless in these type of situations or for artistic affect when combined with tone mapping.

Play around with the phone thas the best way to get use to it and how it handles different situations, and after a while you will get some great shots.


Cheers

Last edited by Dave73; February 11th, 2013 at 09:09 PM.

Mallissa

I was originally thinking I would hold out and get the BB Z10, and I swear I saw these same photos over in that forum. The one with the dog, someone commented how it looked like the dog was "glowing". Did you post these elsewhere??