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PowrDroid

Well-Known Member
Nov 7, 2012
172
26
Minneapolis, MN
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.
 

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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.

FrozenSunset.jpg


Loving the RMHD.
 
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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.
 
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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.

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.


I know HDR isn't turned on because I always get the message to turn it on.

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

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.
 
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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.

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.
 
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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
 
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