yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Xperia Z3 General] subhani:
AFAIK, there are no scenes in 20mp manual mode using Sony's own camera app. You must first revert to 8mp in manual mode to access scenes.
[Xperia Z3 General] One Twelve:
The good news is SA picked the right mode which is is landscape so you did not get some beauty face thing that would definitely mess things up.

Did you use the software shutter or the hardware shutter ? Handheld or tripod ?

I've seen handheld shots like this with the hardware button and there is some softness in the scene at further distances. Am at a loss to explain it when shutter speeds are in the mid three digits that too in good light. But the software shutter takes a better shot. My understanding is shake gets magnified at further distances.

Looking at these images and dividing it into 4 horizontal zones, starting from the bottom and going to the top.

At a zoom that would double the size of the image on my screen. First two quarter looks sharp end to end.

When we get to the third quarter the hill on the left looks soft. That hill makes up the top left half of the image.

The bushes at the extreme right in the third & fourth quarters are soft as well. But along the third quarter there are sharp bushes.

When we get to the top quarter the image is soft right across.

Try the same images with software shutter and see if it makes a difference. Best possible is tripod with timer. No shake at all then. Take a few for luck.

Bear in mind that this is a demanding shot to get for such a small sensor. Edge to edge sharpness isn't possible.
[Xperia Z3 General] Silverdace:
Twas indeed software button. I find I move the camera too much with hardware button.

Just handheld so might come out better on tripod. However, I find even the 'sharp' portions to be just plain ugly. This is bright light (possibly too harsh) but I would expect it to take a reasonable photo. I took a lot of photos with my OnePlus and was rarely unhappy with them. I've yet to take a distanced photo with Z3 that I'm happy with, manual mode or otherwise. Macro and portrait with Z3 are fine. It's just landscapes, vegetation or other detailed scenes that come out bad.
[Xperia Z3 General] One Twelve:
Right, so you have to wait for an xposed mod to come out. There was one for the Z2 and it did work in producing scene shots at 20MP.
[Xperia Z3 General] Silverdace:
Just ran around and took some more snaps at various distances. Some came out quite good.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127371734@N05/sets/72157649102328586/

As you can see. Close up stuff is fine, even a tree at 5m is ok.

The Z3 just seems to fail at long distance.???
[Xperia Z3 General] One Twelve:
Take more shots that hill could be sharper.

bright light won't explain the softness, it should if anything increase contrast which should help with sharpness. Should you take shots in bright light to get nice photos ? no but for the purposes of this exercise it doesn't matter.

Only the hill i found to be soft, the sharp areas were fine, nothing ugly to my eyes.

Oh! why don't you upload some OPO shots of vegetation to compare with then.

As a side note, companies like Xiaomi or OPO don't even figure on my radar

a) requires an invite to spend my money to buy what is essentially a commodity ? seriously how far do they expect to get with that.

b) i like to buy when i want to not when i'm told to. Lose the scarcity model.

c) if they can't make enough devices to sell and have to run lotteries what is their servicing record going to be like. I buy phones to hold not to sell off in a few months.
[Xperia Z3 General] Silverdace:
Sold the opo. Wasn't water resistant plus I'm not a phablet fan. I'll try and find some opo pics though.
[Xperia Z3 General] viking2.0:
Some pics taken last weekend. First 2 are with background blur option.
[Xperia Z3 General] Silverdace:
Nz indeed. :)
[Xperia Z3 General] subhani:
Night shot comparison with iP6+

Can you guess which ones which? It's pretty obvious though.

I used tripod for all the shots except for the last shot, auto hdr on iphone, 20mp auto on Z3 using Google Camera. Does anyone know why the Z3 files are huge at 9mb compared to the iDevice's 2-3mb?

Dropbox labels reveal all

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5ef2xuhtxcz80ed/AAD21B1ra-MU-3Z0-xPU7nDVa?dl=0

What are your verdicts guys?
[Xperia Z3 General] Silverdace:
I thought the z3 would have done better in the night shots. The color is worse in the z3 ones isn't it?
[Xperia Z3 General] marc539:
Quick shot while driving on SA mode, going around 60mph so not too bad. ?

**Disregard, can't post links yet **
[Xperia Z3 General] radicans:
Choice! Used to live in NZ (Wellington) for a couple of years, really miss the place! (don't miss the wind..) Still remember those awesome native bush hikes, and every now and then you hear a Tui singing his heart out and it's just unbeatable! :D
[Xperia Z3 General] One Twelve:
IP6+ gets a 1/4s exposure due to OIS with lower ISO. With 3rd party software and on ios8 the same if not better is possible with skill on the iP5 or 6 which have no OIS.

Can the Z3 keep up ? yes

Can it exceed the ip6+ ? if you got skill

What is the slowest shutter the ip6+ can manage in stock ? 1/4

What is the slowest shutter the Z3 can manage in stock ? 0.8s

1/4 ->1/2 ->0.8 or 1.5 f-stops better. So you get lower light with better iso on the z3 compared to stock ip6+ IF you got skill.

use 3rd party soft on the ip6+ and you got the same too.

Which is better ? depends WHO took the shot :)

You need to get to know the Z3 better. Auto won't do it because the slowest shutter is 1/8, which despite you mentioning you used a tripod resulted in camera shake in your 5th shot. How did that happen ?

Check out what Juan

says

Scene mode : night portrait will get you 1/4s shutter with lower ISO, night scene will go slower still but its not needed with these shots.

To get a 1/4s steady shot handheld requires a different handhold. You need to want to be able to do that.

Another way is to go to manual, and try with different ISO's. Start with 800, 400, 200. Problem here you don't know what shutter will be used. if the light is too low it might be underexposed beause it stuck to 1/8 and did not go slower. In which case the scene modes will help. The scene modes are little more consistent in parameters they use. Practice. if Juan could pull off these shots with a device from 3 generations ago i see no reason not to do the same with the Z3.

Am not so sure as to the utility of HDR on the ip6+ for these kinds of night scenes. HDR works better during the day when there is a designated bright area say a sky vs lots of lights scattered over a scene. YMMV. Another point is try out 3:2 on the Iphones its a much better aspect than 4:3 for landscape. You lose about 10% of the native but framing is more pleasing and works well in portrait too. Why we don't see 3:2 being offered on more phones i don't know but its a std on dslrs and available on all compacts.
[Xperia Z3 General] subhani:
Z3 really takes advantage of the high ISO with some spectacular results ONLY in extreme low light. The images come out blurry but better exposed than on the iP6+. Unfortunately, nobody really takes pictures in those unrealistic conditions and probably just fires the built in flash.

The ones I attached above are still in mostly street lit conditions so I'm guessing only 'night mode' is getting activated and high iso doesn't benefit this kind of semi lit conditions. I'm gonna add the shots from the DSLR to show how it compares with the Z3 in terms of color only. You'll find the colours are actually closer to the z3 than the iPhone. But the iPhone trounces the Z3 for detail and clarity. Something just stands out.

Anyways, here are the uploaded DSLR shots with the two phones in one folder.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5ef2xuhtxcz80ed/AAD21B1ra-MU-3Z0-xPU7nDVa?dl=0

You'll also notice i seriously have no clue on how to operate the DSLR as i'm overwhelmed by all the settings. I just used whatever was set by my friend and he just set it to auto. The DSLR appears to favour subjects closer to the lens, deliberately blurring/bokehing the background. That's obviously my fault. Plus, I managed to ruin the last DSLR shot by hand shake.

Sent from Z3 using Tapatalk.
[Xperia Z3 General] Chefproll:
I did NOT look at the file names or labels, I did not examine the picture dimensions, so this is a real "blind test" for me.

I liked each second photo better. First photos are brighter, but noisy, blurred and far less details.

Now I'm curious about the "solution". :)

---

Edit: Results are as expected. Z3 lost again. :/

---------- Post added at 01:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:55 PM ----------

You can add some brightness to the IP6 pix later and keep the details. But the details are lost with the Z3.

Which would make no difference with the Z3 because it's "flash" is like a tiny candle in the wind. :/

Thank you very much for this blind test, subhani ! ;)
[Xperia Z3 General] subhani:
LOL. Indeed. But take a look at the link i inserted in the above post of the DSLR. The iPhone appears to have better colours than the DSLR, which is closer to the Z3 in similarity on colours only. Perhaps this is because the DSLR is not high end? Or I is a royal noob and obviously fudged up the DSLR shots by not manually adjusting to its strengths. The latter is more likely LOL or both.

---------- Post added at 01:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:02 PM ----------

Totally agree. A skilled photog would easily be able to produce better results, with all three devices really. Regarding the shake? Are you referring to the shot of the red tunnel with a bike? All the shots were done using a tripod AND wait for it... Self timer (except iphone)! The last shot of the wall of graffiti is done free hand using all three devices. That's why the DSLR comes out worse as my hand shook most with it by sheer random.
[Xperia Z3 General] hieuhd93:
http://xdaforums.com/z3/help/z3-camera-problem-hardware-software-t2931787/post56566056#post56566056

Can everyone help me this camera problem :(?
[Xperia Z3 General] subhani:
I will try and upload some shots of EXTREME low light environments maybe tomorrow? V busy today.
[Xperia Z3 General] radicans:
As you say it's quite easy to say which one is which, when you know the intricacies of the Z3. The first thing I notice is the color balance, which is either too orange or magenta, on the Z3. Sometimes it's a matter of getting the right color temperature, which you can't really set manually in a good way on any android device, so you have to hope for auto to do a good job. Here it doesn't, apart from the shot in the alley. To be fair, street lighting at night contains very little color information and is difficult to get to look good, but I think the iP6+ does a good job of it, if perhaps somewhat greenish.

As for detail, they are comparable, but the iP6+ comes out on top IMO. The Z3 also has this fuzzy noise when looking up close. I have this in all my 20MP night time photos as well. The good news is that this mostly disappears when using the SA mode! Anyhow, I personally think the iP6+ has a much nicer photographic quality to it. Here is a detail comparison of the lamp post:

This shows, unless other settings will improve the shot, that the 20MP mode is a waste of space for night time shots.

The image below show how the fuzzy noise has pretty much vanished when switching from 20MP manual to 8MP SA:

Question is, are there any camera settings that will make subhanis 20MP Z3 photos come out noticeably better, in this case? From my experience with this camera, I doubt it. But if you have the time, do try the alley (is this in the jack the ripper area btw? I stayed with a friend once who lived nearby, and it looks very familiar!) again with SA mode, as I think this will improve the photo a whole lot and possibly even outperform the iP6+!
[Xperia Z3 General] georgebest:
I had the opo and I was unhappy with the camera. When I used the flash, it burned my photos when the image was near and it didn't take good photos. And it lacked clarity. Z3 is better but I think Galxy note 3 is the best of the 3 in daylight. I had made a comparison so I know.
[Xperia Z3 General] One Twelve:
They are not blurry but noisy due to high ISO. If you shake the camera you will get blur so practice holding it close to yourself. Back of your thumbs rubbing against your chest for stability. Not outsretched. This way you use your body as a tripod. I've seen handheld shots like that with 1/4s and even slower up to 1/2. If that doesn't work lean against a wall or signpost.

Flash isn't recommended for the scenes you've chosen.

The recommendation is to use night 'portrait' scene mode for just those kinds of conditions. Not night scene.

i don't see any indication in the exifs that SA chose night mode. usually auto tries to avoid anything slower than 1/8. This is the case with samsung, lg & apple as late as ip6. With OIS they moved to 1/4 for the 6+.

Of course the ip6+ shots are better they are all lower ISO by two stops in some cases compared to auto by Z3. My point is the Z3 can match those shots if not do better using night 'portrait'.

Try this, go to one of those scenes, and click using different night modes, along with manual iso and finally SA. Then compare them and examine the exifs, you will see a noticeable difference in the shots with lower ISO. If there is blur it means you weren't holding the camera steady enough. This is assuming your subjects are stationary which is the case in all the shots you took. Those buildings aren't running away or moving when you shot them.

High ISO's affect colour & tonal range. If you can keep your ISO's to a max of 400 you will get good shots, quality starts to degrade at ISO 800 and above, though if you reduce the image size you can remove some of the noise.

Go practice some more and lets see the results. You've not reached the a-ha moment yet.

This is the blurred set of shots

See the first one, look at the walls on the left. That shot has a 1/8s exposure and for a tripod i'm surprised its blurred. You have to get to point where you can get that handheld.

The skill of the protog would be in the composition. They make crap shots in terms of image quality look good and interesting. This is beyond the scope of what we are discussing here which is basics of exposure.

Its all in the grip:laugh:
[Xperia Z3 General] GigaSPX:
Hey guys, I have the Xperia Z3v here, Model D6708. I got some photos to share since the Z3v topic was shutdown since there was already an existing sharing topic that's mainly for the Z3...

Anyhow, here are some pictures I have. The first one with the face shot of a koi fish was me literally dunking my phone into the pond and snap one. Haha
[Xperia Z3 General] sefelizrc:
Rainy day!
[Xperia Z3 General] radicans:
Chroma blur impact

So I have been ranting rather a lot about the blurry chroma channels in the Z3 photos. I would like to demonstrate how this manifests in a photo. As an example I have taken my favorite tree photo (from the Note 4) from my favourite Blind test. :) I chose this photo because it has the sharpest chroma channels of these photos. I have then decomposed the photo to YCbCr, blurred the Cb and Cr channels to roughly match the Z3's chroma channels, then put it back together to an RGB image again. Now we can compare the unblurred vs blurred on exactly the same terms. The effect is subtle but has a big impact at the same time. I'll explain what I mean, but first a few crop-ins, magnified 2x to see the effect more easily (the left is original, the right is with blurred chroma channels):

What is most easily noticed is that they look less saturated, but I have not touched the saturation. What has happened is that the color definition has been smeared out over the surroundings. The photo now looks a lot less vivid, has less "pop". One can not as easily distinguish one colored area from another, it all blends together a little. All in all, the Note 4 photo now has a similar washed out look as the Z3 one.

I'm guessing this is an issue which will bother some people, while others couldn't tell the difference. But now you can all decide for yourselves if this is something you need to think about.

Full photos here:

https://db.tt/Xe4EkU60 (original)

https://db.tt/3AYg1M5j (blurred chroma)
[Xperia Z3 General] sefelizrc:
So you just blurred the Cb and Cr... How you did that? I'll like to try ;)
[Xperia Z3 General] radicans:
Install gimp. In gimp, do the following:

Colors->Components->Decompose->YCbCr

You will get a new image with three layers, Y, Cb and Cr. Do your blurring (I use gaussian blur), then with this image active

Colors->Components->Compose->YCbCr (if you choose recompose, it will overwrite your original image)
[Xperia Z3 General] sefelizrc:
But if you blur too much is just like blurring all the picture isnt it? I mean, whats the difference betwen blurring by channels or blurring just the picture?
[Xperia Z3 General] radicans:
No, all the luminance is stored in the Y channel, which you do not blur at all.

Here is what it looks liked decomposed: http://i.imgur.com/dPkKe93.jpg

So you don't blur the leftmost image/channel.
[Xperia Z3 General] sefelizrc:
Ok, now I understand it better, I'll do some tests. Thanks ;)
[Xperia Z3 General] radicans:
Here's an interesting review where they actually look closer and identify the problems with the Z3.

http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/features/item/20150_Camera_head_to_head_Lumia_9301.php
[Xperia Z3 General] hanime:
Thanks for the link! Very good comparisons.
[Xperia Z3 General] abhinav.tella:
Very nice article, the Lumia 1020 still impresses, thanks to that big sensor, to this day, such clear photos.
[Xperia Z3 General] id3alistic:
I missed it, how do you set your ISo to 12800 again?
[Xperia Z3 General] sefelizrc:
On manual mode > 8mpx

Scenes > High ISO
[Xperia Z3 General] One Twelve:
What ? nobody bothers to do a blow by blow ?

vs the problems of going with WP ? Very few would venture that far.

Now i like steve's reviews and watch his show every week, he gives a good take on devices but the devil as always is in the details.

Looking at the first few tests the differences are minor. No biggie.

digital zoom is an issue here and he's not gone very far 1.87 and still there were artifacts. pureview does better. Bea rin mind i cropped your sample shots to 40% of their original size and did not find too much loss, so that is equivalent to 2x zoom. For portraits it won't be a problem.

the close up of the tree trunk and over sharpening, hmm. Live with it.

But its the low light shots that i take issue with. Now if you use SA as Steve did then these are the kinds of shots you can expect. No question.

The point as far as i'm concerned is can you do better. yes, most certainly.

Start with Test 8 of the cockpit, just look at the exifs

Z3 : ISO 2000 1/16s

1520 : ISO 1250 1/5s

1020 : ISO 1600, 0.3s

the 1020 used a shutter that was 4 times longer than the Z3 because it has OIS. But you could pull that off with scene modes on the Z3 and get a better shot. 1/16 ->1/8 ->1/4 that's two f-stops better. You just need to hold it steady long enough. Can't do that ? then start practicing.

Test 9 with the flash and steve's always mentioned the advantages of xenon over led flashes. yes twice as bright, in fact so bright it makes the light on the wall dim down a bit. But can you reduce the blur. Sure.

1020 : ISO 100 1/59s

Z3 : ISO 400 1/32s

1520 : ISO 160 1/12s

key point is the shutter speed. If you can get the shutter closer to 1/60 you will freeze motion. But there is also camera shake which 1020's OIS helps with. In which case you set a focus trap. Don't focus on him but rather next to the book stand. Spot. Then just drop the ISO to 800 and he shutter will speed up. It's not like he doesn't

know

about it. He just did not even bother.

In the end the 1020 wins because it pulls off a steady ISO 100 with xenon & ois but to me this is about getting a steady shot rather than better ISO. Both the 1520 & Z3 could have done better with manual controls. The 1520 would have pulled it off at ISo 640 vs ISo 800 so little better image quality.

Hardest shot to get right is low light with moving subject.

Test 10

1020 : ISO 4000 0.3s

1520 : ISO 3200 0.3s

Z3 : ISO 8000 1/8s

Same thing again that 1/8 could be brought down to 1/4 going slower than that is going to require some stabilisation. This is night scene 0.8s get your tripod out territory.

Reviewers should show where improvements can be made if the camera permits it instead of doing everything in auto.

The final scores as indicated are all auto scores and the differences would be less if better use was made of the features.

There are only two tests where the 1020 stand out the digital zoom & flash shot. But even the flash shot can be mitigated with an optical slave flash.

How far behind is the Z3 here ? not very
[Xperia Z3 General] jonmorris:
I still use my 1020 from time to time, but the obvious 'issue' is that, just like other Nokia phones with good cameras (N8, 808), it's not much good if the phone isn't something you'd actually want.

If you were just buying a phone for the camera and NOTHING else (so the OS didn't matter) then I suppose picking up a 1020 would be a good idea, but very few people are going to do that.

The comparison is good because it shows how well things have advanced (or not) but ultimately it's not that relevant for most people.

Now if Nokia hadn't done a deal with the devil and opted to use Android, we'd have potentially had a range of phones from Nokia with PureView sensors and that would be VERY relevant. Given I don't believe Samsung would have ever got the marketshare it did if Nokia hadn't fallen off a cliff, I do hope that in the next couple of years we might see a return for Nokia (sans Microsoft) and can perhaps get some of this technology used but with Android. That would be a marvellous day, and might just get Sony to up its game.

But, for now, the Z3 suits all my needs. It's a great phone, great display, good audio, excellent battery life and a camera that isn't terrible - just not as good as it should be, and could be.
[Xperia Z3 General] abhinav.tella:
Can't disagree with that. You are definately correct.
[Xperia Z3 General] hanime:
X2. Well said. When I think of the 1020, all I think of is the camera, not the phone and OS.
[Xperia Z3 General] doministry:
Great. Unfortunately in Polish...

Another proof for Xperias great capabilities

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw91D7cHc5I#t=1509
[Xperia Z3 General] TheBeeze:
Shot on a Z3V
[Xperia Z3 General] abhinav.tella:
Is that a V1 rocket? Nice pics.
[Xperia Z3 General] Chefproll:
Haha ! Good one ! Calling a 20.7 MP camera providing the performance of a 6 MP camera "as good as it should be" made my day. :D
[Xperia Z3 General] radicans:
Still no word on the possibility of RAW/DNG with Z3 and AOSP?

I did some googling, but when the search results end up being your own forum posts asking the same question, you know it's time to give up :p
[Xperia Z3 General] One Twelve:
good one! the guy you just replied to owns a Z2 and ugraded to a Z3. :D

What is your contribution in this thread so far ? I've called you out long ago.

why are you even here. Nobody cares what you have to say.
[Xperia Z3 General] TheBeeze:
Here's another on the Z3V from this morning.
[Xperia Z3 General] tsachi:
No question that the details are very different, but as a previous response said, it's partly the iso settings chosen. What I didn't like about the review is that they completely ignored white balance. There are many examples in there where the z3 did a lot better on keeping correct white balance

---------- Post added at 09:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:13 AM ----------

Lumina owners are very protective of their phones and camera. Like the Mac world review comparing z3 and ip6 and coming back with iPhone looks better and you already own all these apps...