I just got the LG V30...why is the camera so bad?

Mudig · Oct 13, 2017

Look at this comparison I took vs my old HTC 10 phone and tell me which one looks better

Click to zoom in on each pic. The front facing camera is even worse. It's so much more blurry again compared to my old HTC 10.

Hadron · Oct 14, 2017

Neither has done brilliantly in low light (but then these are only phones). The biggest difference is in noise reduction: the first image has reduced the noise a lot, but in doing so has blurred out all of the detail; the second has taken a much lighter touch, retaining more detail but with visible noise. I prefer the second approach because it's less destructive (if you need to tidy it up you can use a computer and tweak it to your tastes, whereas you can't get back detail that's been smeared out).

With 1 micron pixels the V30 is unlikely to be a brilliant low-light camera - f1.6 does not let in enough extra light relative to f1.7 or f1.8 to make up for that. I expect it will do better in daylight.

Lateck · Oct 15, 2017

I have only tested mine in the brite light. I personally feel it is very good.
I have read a wide range of comments on the camera(s).
Mostly good but a few folks have said the V30 is a little poor in low light.
I personally cannot confirm.

Lateck,

septembersrain · Oct 16, 2017

It's not the best camera but it's still good. If the camera is your primary concern, this device may not be for you. I got it because it was very light. My iPhone 7 Plus was painfully heavy and the Note 8 was no better. This device just feels so natural in hand to me. I have a case coming but I'm not sure I'll even use it. This phone just feels so good to hold size and weight wise.

rcwing12 · Oct 18, 2017

I'm impressed with the camera. It's a phone camera and a very good one at that. Go to manual mode and you have many options.

alpenaman40 · Oct 23, 2017

Mudig said:
Look at this comparison I took vs my old HTC 10 phone and tell me which one looks better

Click to zoom in on each pic. The front facing camera is even worse. It's so much more blurry again compared to my old HTC 10.

alpenaman40 · Oct 23, 2017

I just bought the V30 also and after trying out the zoom inside in bright light and low light, too much noise in the pictures. Took the same pics with Note 8 and much better detail. I liked everything else about the phone though.

Blueprintsrecords · Nov 3, 2017

I would stick with the note 8 then.

Blueprintsrecords · Nov 3, 2017

I don't see any difference. You're just tripping. Who are you, Diane Arbus? Geez the V30 is kick-ass stop being so fussy.

Brian Moore · Nov 12, 2017

My wife and I both have V30's and we are not impressed with the cameras. Point and shoot photos are constantly blurry. I just took a photo of her and my dog and I was getting an image stutter for a few seconds before I could take a photo. We had V20's before these and did not have issues with blurry images. I also don't think this camera is any better in low light compared to the V20. If I would have known the camera was like this we would not have bought them. I think something is wrong with the software or something.

Also, I get the feeling that the LED light is too small or something....the light just does not project as far as I am used to with other phone cameras.

droid416 · Nov 17, 2017

I took some pics in a bar last night, I was super disappointed. They turned out dark and grainy.

kmpz · Nov 20, 2017

droid416 said:
I took some pics in a bar last night, I was super disappointed. They turned out dark and grainy.

View attachment 125839

View attachment 125840

No you just suck at taking photos and the camera's automatic mode is terrible. For that photo you should have opend manual mode, crank down the ISO to say 200 and open the aperture some more and hold the phone very still when taking the photo would have taken less than 20 seconds. Its great in low light if you know what you are doing. Automatic pictures are NEVER going to be good.

Phalon4 · Nov 20, 2017

Mudig said:
Look at this comparison I took vs my old HTC 10 phone and tell me which one looks better

Click to zoom in on each pic. The front facing camera is even worse. It's so much more blurry again compared to my old HTC 10.

From my observation those two pictures were taken at different distances, but to an un- trained eye one looks a bit blurred just because of those distances differentials.

Hadron · Nov 20, 2017

kmpz said:
No you just suck at taking photos and the camera's automatic mode is terrible. For that photo you should have opend manual mode, crank down the ISO to say 200 and open the aperture some more and hold the phone very still when taking the photo would have taken less than 20 seconds. Its great in low light if you know what you are doing. Automatic pictures are NEVER going to be good.

The phone has a fixed aperture, like all phone cameras. There is no way of opening it, manual mode or not.

kmpz · Nov 20, 2017

Hadron said:
The phone has a fixed aperture, like all phone cameras. There is no way of opening it, manual mode or not.

F-stop*

mikedt · Nov 20, 2017

kmpz said:
F-stop*

So how would you adjust it, when it's fixed at f/1.9 on a V30. This smart-phone does NOT have a variable F-stop or aperture setting, same with just about all phone cameras.

droid416 · Nov 20, 2017

kmpz said:
No you just suck at taking photos and the camera's automatic mode is terrible. For that photo you should have opend manual mode, crank down the ISO to say 200 and open the aperture some more and hold the phone very still when taking the photo would have taken less than 20 seconds. Its great in low light if you know what you are doing. Automatic pictures are NEVER going to be good.

Thank you for your assessment of my photography skills. You're the first person to tell me that I suck, which is great considering I studied photography on a film SLR in college and I do shoot manual on DSLR. I am very well acquainted with how to achieve a correct exposure.
I've had an Asus Zenfone and a Samsung Note 5 both of which I used in automatic mode inside bars and nightclubs and put my friends' iPhones to shame. So when I say I'm disappointed with the camera, I am comparing auto mode to auto mode against my previous phone's cameras and V30's camera doesn't stack up in this regard.

kmpz · Nov 21, 2017

mikedt said:
So how would you adjust it, when it's fixed at f/1.9 on a V30. This smart-phone does NOT have a variable F-stop or aperture setting, same with just about all phone cameras.

I meant shutter speed. I don't know camera terms but I know what the options do. You open manual settings. And press the box that says 'S' then you adjust it. 1/5 is the brightest without going into long exposure but the blurriest for motion. 1/32000 is the highest which you would need a very bright light for but it will capture crisp motion. And its fixed at 1.6 on the main camera. 1.9 on the wide angle. I apologise for what I said being incorrect, I have never owned a DSLR. But I fail to see how that image on the v30 looked so bad. Its only that noisy because of the ISO being cranked up. A lower shutter speed and lower iso would have made that image so much cleaner. In low light always have the ISO as low as possible which auto mode never does.

mikedt · Nov 21, 2017

kmpz said:
I meant shutter speed. I don't know camera terms but I know what the options do. You open manual settings. And press the box that says 'S' then you adjust it. 1/5 is the brightest without going into long exposure but the blurriest for motion. 1/32000 is the highest which you would need a very bright light for but it will capture crisp motion.

But this photo was in a bar or club or something, and only extra light that might be available is the LED on the back of the phone, which from more than about a metre or so is quite infective.

kmpz said:
And its fixed at 1.6 on the main camera. 1.9 on the wide angle. I apologise for what I said being incorrect, I have never owned a DSLR. But I fail to see how that image on the v30 looked so bad. Its only that noisy because of the ISO being cranked up. A lower shutter speed and lower iso would have made that image so much cleaner.

Depends on how low one can go without getting motion blur of course. The subject here is a live singer with a microphone, and is very probably swaying and moving about.

Hadron · Nov 21, 2017

kmpz said:
I meant shutter speed. I don't know camera terms but I know what the options do.

The trouble is, if you use the wrong terms other people won't know what you mean. And since "f-stop" is a measure of the size of the aperture relative to the focal length of the lens, your clarification actually reinforced the impression that you thought the aperture could be varied.

You are right of course that lower ISO and longer exposure will generally work better for a dim subject, provided you can hold it steady enough (and don't expose for so long that the sensor starts to heat up!). I don't know whether that would have been practical for that shot though.

The thing I usually end up wishing is that the phones would let the user control the noise reduction: that's something that most manufacturers overdo, and while there are better noise reduction apps available on computers there is nothing you can do if the built-in algorithm has already trashed all of the detail. Sure, most people would never bother, but for those of us who care it would be nice.

pcherry1973 · Jan 1, 2018

I've been pretty happy with the camera. Taken some pretty amazing photos with it. https://photos.app.goo.gl/4MZyQXk0orrdd8FI3

kmpz · Jan 1, 2018

What I want is control over the over sharpening. I like much softer images and LG's camera over-sharpens to hell. There is a comparison on Youtube on the $5000 red camera vs the LG V30 and both look brilliant but the only thing bringing the V30 down is that nasty over-sharpening.
I hope when we get Android Oreo it will come with a better camera app. Auto shooting is terrible.

rfan8312 · Jan 20, 2018

There is so much I like about this phone, but yes I agree, the camera is a disappointment, coming from Galaxy S6 Edge and Galaxy S4 before that.

It has some nice toggles and settings and Graphy, very Pro features. But I get 1 great looking photo, for every 10 or 20 that I shoot.

It's possible that I don't know how to use it yet, to keep it steady better, or maybe need to play with more controls.

The camera on Galaxy was so dependable that I looked forward to snapping photos and knew I'd get great ones 90% of the time and felt great to know memories would be saved to see again later.

On the V30+ I don't really even bother anymore. Definitely hoping this will change. Odd because I must have watched 20 reviews on YouTube that gushed about the camera.

I' have taken one or two great crisp wonderful looking photos though, so there must be a way to get that kind of result more often.

kmpz said:
No you just suck at taking photos and the camera's automatic mode is terrible. For that photo you should have opend manual mode, crank down the ISO to say 200 and open the aperture some more and hold the phone very still when taking the photo would have taken less than 20 seconds. Its great in low light if you know what you are doing. Automatic pictures are NEVER going to be good.

Ye but I'm no photographer, I know nothing about aperatures and ISO and manual controls and having been taking wonderful photos for years, with no effort or thought at all, on Samsung devices. I've taken some stellar sunsets beyond blackened trees in manual mode where I made the sky look blue and purple.

But everything else was automatic mode and it looked spectacular.

Shiva666 · Mar 23, 2018

Actually, most of the observation about the quality of the V30 camera is correct. It is quite bad. Unacceptable. The fact that the engineers in LG decided to make it more difficult with DSLR function is foolish. You cannot be looking for settings and adjusting it to catch pictures.. what makes it even worse, under sunlight you cannot see what you are doing. The whole purpose to have a camera phone is it make it easy to capture pictures on the fly. The phone itself should use algorithms tha automatically calculate and produce good pictures.

I didnt have any of that on my Note 5. Infact it is such a trustworthy camera it rarely produced bad or even blurry pics. V30, being a flagship is nothing but crapship. the only good thing abut the V30 is the Quaddac which I immensely enjoy when I am outdoors listening to music.

Other wise, the camera, the picture the software for the camera is stupidly useless.

Shiva666 · Mar 23, 2018

kmpz said:
What I want is control over the over sharpening. I like much softer images and LG's camera over-sharpens to hell. There is a comparison on Youtube on the $5000 red camera vs the LG V30 and both look brilliant but the only thing bringing the V30 down is that nasty over-sharpening.
I hope when we get Android Oreo it will come with a better camera app. Auto shooting is terrible.

Exactly. Just plain ridiculous

I just got the LG V30...why is the camera so bad?

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