yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
IMAG0335.jpg

Default auto, it looks good.

with the hdr it seems to overexpose them. That means where you click is darker than the midway point. i'm not sure how many exposures are combined but lets say its 3. so it drops exp from the point and boosts it. then combines. so if you choose a brighter point it will set exposure faster then work on that baselevel.

IMAG0336.jpg

so for this kind of image try setting focus on the sky (as its brighter) instead of the structure. its far enough for it to be in focus too.

the trick with hdr is to get exposure on a point that is midway in brightness but that isn't always obvious to see. So easier to go with brighter area. Hopefully this will tame the haze.

Source (tryfound)
[One (M9) General] tryfound:
I think I tapped on the sky in these ones because it looked worse without doing so, but I can't really remember because I had just rolled out of bed at that point.
[One (M9) General] bitwiser:
Thought I was getting a camera upgrade with the M9 from my Moto X 2nd gen...but I am so disappointed. Even video is not any better. :(

Here are untouched photos from both (shot in same light and position...not horrible lighting either). Why HTC...Why!?!

Looks like I'll be returning it as soon as my S6 edge comes in...
[One (M9) General] th3:
Wow... Can't wait to access a laptop

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[One (M9) General] hamdir:
Some testing I've been doing on the borrowed M9 unit I had yesterday

The M9 has a great sensor; able at low light; but you need to bring the processing under control

In this post i will focus on low light, the so called big disadvantage of the M9 camera, conclusions in the bottom. In my next post i will focus on daylight (which will be a granted win with such sensor)

for real world examples check My HTC One M9 Collection on Flickr

HTC One M9 Low Light - Camera Caps: it does great in low light, just bring it under control
[One (M9) General] p50kombi:
Great post with some sound advise...
[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
If you've made your mind up ignore this post. But for others...

looking at both these images, the m9 got the lower ISO (less grain in the background compared to the moto x) but in doing so used a slower shutter meaning there was camera shake, very apparent. Its also underexposed in comparison.

moto x used a higher iso and consequently faster shutter and there is no camera shake hence clear photo.

had there been no shake the m9 with the lower iso would have been the more detailed with zoom.

what to do when this happens ? increase exp comp a little or steady your handhold.

Same thing that i saw with flex's photo of the blower.

making exposure more consistent is what htc has to work on and i expect they will fix it.
[One (M9) General] th3:
I appreciate the resolution and sharpness change tests. Its showing what we suspected...

I can't wait to repeat these breaking results. Or if someone else can repeat them?

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[One (M9) General] vegetaleb:
Great!!

Waiting for daylight photos too.

Isn't the black of the TV slightly purple? I don't think it's HW fault but a color balance stuff

If only you had a N4 or Z3 to do a head to head comparison it would be awesome
[One (M9) General] hamdir:
i don't have your devices but my previous experience with the Z3 in low light was abysmal, very slow shutter and you can not really control what's going on, sames goes for G3, the G3 has IMX208 with a 1.4um pixel and still severely limited in low light most likely the stock app fault

I think we found out why HTC chose this sensor

at least the IMX214 represents the sensors on F7, OnePlus, Mi4 and Nexus6, i have the Nexus 5 but it's pointless as the above destroys the N5 as well (unless you buy a manual camera app with API 2.0) keeping in mind that the Find 7 has a great app and excellent sharpness algorithm

[MENTION=456666]starbase64[/MENTION] i would appreciate it if you can link my post to your OP

I have also added links to the full quality samples to my post for you guys to double check

.
[One (M9) General] Adam182:
Thanks Hamdir, this is an outstanding contribution to us all!

I've matched your settings and can see instant improved results - Adam
[One (M9) General] hamdir:
thanks mate, i have added three more tips at the end of my post
[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
So the first question is how to diable anti-shake, is there an option to toggle ? since its digital its best left off.

Next is a mystery for me.

M9-1-SharpnessDefault-ISOauto400-Large.jpg - ISO 400 - 1/14 - 16MP

M9-2-SharpnessDefault-ISO200-Medium.jpg - ISO 200 (manual) - 1/14 12MP

histograms are almost identical. even to the eye there isn't all that much difference yet there is a f-stop difference in ISO between the two.

How did just reducing to 12MP achieve this ?

i was expecting to see an exposure slower than 1/14 @ ISO 200 to match the brightness and exposure of the ISO 400 image.
[One (M9) General] hamdir:
ok first question, so far the answer is NO it's seems anti shake is now sadly coupled to the entire camera, previously on the M8 it was a separate mode, the 20MP room-ahead can help us bypass this (a little) if we cap the resolution

regarding the second question, there are few bugs that i have noticed, there was one instance where capping the ISO didn't work at all and it kept taking photos on auto ISO

but i disagree the two images shows evident ISO reduction

judging from my results here, i would add +0.5 contrast and +0.5 saturation in my next session, as the photos are slightly under exposed and muted
[One (M9) General] racingmatt1:
Can someone give me a good setup for the m7 and/or for outdoor sunny pictures
[One (M9) General] hamdir:
same rules apply in general :)

cap the ISO for low light, but mainly rely on Auto Focus especially in daylight and reduce sharpness a little (the M7/M8 sharpness algorithm is mature, so it only needs a very slight reduction)
[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
ok, so 12mp and its equivalent in 4:3 can help.

Exifs of full samples show its ISO 200. So it recorded it as ISO 200 whether it actually performed it i can't tell.

exifs of zoomed images on your flickr page show iso as 400 for images you marked as iso 200. That threw me a bit until i pulled your originals. Could you upload the original ISO 400 to flickr too, it would make it easier to link here.

Its smaller than i would expect for an f-stop. See the histograms. Something is happening but i doubt its a full stop.

i want to know more about gain control as this is something i see in the ones exifs which is absent on other phones. what does it do and how to play with it ?

From what i've seen the ones are doing well in controlling ISO indoors. Nothing wrong with 200- 400.

However the exposure tends to be here and there at times. It can slow down some times and its too slow for the person taking the shot resulting in a soft or out of focus image. But focus is fine its just camera shake. This means people have to practice hand holds and gradually slowing shutter.
[One (M9) General] hamdir:
yes the shutter slows at such ISO, but it surprised the hell out of me that it went for ISO400 in such light compared to the M8 Eye ISO1000, keep in mind that ISO400 is fine and that the device viewfinder and shutter speed are better if you are not using powersaver, i agree about exposure in low light, it seems to be under exposed, a simple auto contrast in Photoshop on the ISO 200 images reveal great gains
[One (M9) General] racingmatt1:
What about exposure and using hdr mode instead of auto? My current settings are

Iso: 200 cap

Ev: 0.5

White balance: sunny

Scene: auto

Image adjustments

Contrast : +1

Saturation: 0

Sharpness: -0.5
[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
Had the thought. what does ISO 200 even mean. Whatever the vendor deems it to be. So ISO 200 on a sony sensor isn't the same for others. Not standardised.

If ISO 200 on a tosh sensor works out to be more than ISO 200 on a sony sensor in terms of general image quality, then to improve on image quality further you have to get m9 lower than ISO 200. maybe 160, possibly lower. This means slower shutter. This might be why people are saying image quality isn't quite as good. Maybe, with auto but not in manual.

Capping at ISO 200 indoors will beat auto. Will take practice.

How did you pull off the 0.5s ? was it tripod or just resting on the table.
[One (M9) General] dondavis007:
Ahh. That's why the blogs mentioned to use lower resulotion to get better and more clear pics.

Sent from a mobile gadget...
[One (M9) General] Super-Veloce:
What if you use a camera app like Camera FV-5?
[One (M9) General] dondavis007:
Normally I don't think 3part do any good. Before oem could use way more control than 3rd part because of older camera api. What about the new camera api, can you use it with the great app in playstore?

Sent from a mobile gadget...
[One (M9) General] defcomg:
DNG

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3r1xyfnx1xjr6xz/AABFo2FB9HbJJJWqJBRTbFopa?dl=0
[One (M9) General] vegetaleb:
Is that an outdoor photo taken with M9?
[One (M9) General] defcomg:
Nope its an indoor photo i got from an m9 user when we were fixing dng capture
[One (M9) General] hamdir:
which blogs?

---------- Post added at 09:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:09 PM ----------

I think i held it on surface, still usually i press the shutter few times to grab a few in manual mode
[One (M9) General] Moomoomania:
I feel like a lot of people are bashing on the phone's camera... and you should if you don't like it. I certainlly won't be bashing on it. Why? Because I will only be taking pictures for Instagram and alike where post processing will inevitably happen so it's sucky-ass camera will produce "better" photo results. I do post processing for every photo I upload.

And of course if you compare the iPhone 6 and S6 and others side by side, you're going to see the difference. But you're not going to see a HUGE difference and you definitely won't see the difference if you never owned phones with better camera optics
[One (M9) General] th3:
Quick question; why is your M9SharpnessMinusOne-ISO200-Large (a) far better in IQ than M9SharpnessMinusTwo-ISO200-Small (b)?

I thought you're suggesting the opposite?

I'm looking at the original files here.
[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
How do you know there is anti-shake present ?

M9-1-SharpnessDefault-ISOauto400-Large.jpg

M9-1-SharpnessDefault-ISOauto400-Large-AntiMotionBlur.jpg

same exposure and iso.

Why isn't it just a bit of camera shake ?

---------- Post added at 06:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:10 AM ----------

sharpness at -2 disables sharpness completely, at -1 it adds a little whereas at -2 more sharpening leads to artificats like halos around edges. the sweet spot seems to be -1 and a little over or less.

Bear in mind though when shutter slows the camera has to be steady. typically anything below 1/20.

---------- Post added at 06:37 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:12 AM ----------

Take this one without the sun in the shot as its blowing out the sensor. Ideally , sun should be behind you and low in the sky.You could try golden hour which were you are is between 7:30-8:15pm or 7-8am.

Because you focussed on the dog the background loses focus. If you want everything in focus then you have to be at about 2m away from the dog.

Try setting sharpness to -1 and exp comp of -1. Try with metering to average and compare with centre weighted. Even at 6:30pm your shots are overexposed. That is why the shots look flat with little contrast.

Also try landscape mode
[One (M9) General] PlatinumNick:
oh wow that was a nice detailed review. If only somebody can do that type of review on getting better battery life on this phone lol
[One (M9) General] th3:
Precisely.

I know that, but playing with M9 right now and seeing -1 sharpness as the better hence seeing what hamdir has to say.

It has to be kept in mind that these results, with slight differences, can very easily be user error in dim or low light.

We need people to replicate.

ISO 200 vs 400 with same everything

Sharp +1 vs 0 vs -1

Large vs Medium vs Small

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[One (M9) General] hamdir:
i think it's a cheap downscale filter and so it gets too blurry with small, i noticed it in few of the samples that or it motion blurred

we should also keep in mind that if you use 10:7 ration you get the full 20MP and so using medium will downscale it to 16MP (which i didn't mention in my post)

but to answer your question it's obvious, you are comparing a sharpened image to a soft image, i never said -2 is best, i said a reduction is required up to your taste, i think it's ideal to go for -1 or -1.5 + downcale

to explain it better:

look the resolution cap is only for people who are bothered by the tiny pixel 1:1 quality or want to save storage, for me even in Large mode with sharpness is disabled is fine, it will get downscaled nicely in the gallery app or flickr uploads anyway but if you want to zoom to 1:1 and shout "WHOA" then stick to medium

---------- Post added at 10:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:02 AM ----------

it's camera shake but the way the pixels get smeared and corrected is clearly anti shake code for me, the way you can tell is that the anti shake algorithm tries to erase motionblur ghosting

---------- Post added at 10:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:05 AM ----------

your photos are exactly what i keep warning about! use auto focus in order to rely on HTC's exposure metering, otherwise with manual targetting it's really hard to nail it!

i dont have to the time to do the same image for the M9 but I tried it in sunlight and confirm it works for the M9

if you don't believe me check this review from someone who knows how to test a camera, non of his samples are over exposed in the sun like yours

http://www.techspot.com/review/980-htc-one-m9/page7.html
[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
http://www.techspot.com/review/980-htc-one-m9/page7.html

2:15pm

inspite of being in the shade the greens are little washed out..

2:26pm, still washed out

I won't blame the sensor here, better colours are possible especially greens when the light is softer. If the others look better it means they are adding saturation in processing. That means the htc is doing less processing but to get better results you have to get the light right. This is generally good advice regardless of the camera.

To shoot at the times these were taken would require an nd filter or a grad. Can't reliably do that with phones yet so have to be picky with when you take the photo.

ISO 640, 1/13, looks decent

ISO 1000 (!), 1/10

OIS helps below 1/16 and down to 1/4. Faster than that its not used at all because it isn't necessary unless you take photos from a vibrating platform.

ISO 1600 (!), 1/5 this is where reducing image size helps to reduce noise. All these images btw are 2.6MP or good enough for full HD.

ISO 1250, 1/10 : looks decent for the ISO and for a 1/10
[One (M9) General] vegetaleb:
Do you have a link for the 2 1st photos (daylight) in full resolution?

Btw any new OTA these 2 days?

Let's hope HTC will continue in working in optimizing the camera with software
[One (M9) General] hamdir:
you will see when i post my daylights (in regards to metering)

[MENTION=5512893]One Twelve[/MENTION] sure they are pushing saturation this is what OEMs should do to quickly impress the masses but HTC didn't ;)

i do feel it's a little under saturated so i have settled with the following

contrast +0.5

saturation +0.5

sharpness -1.5

just these minimal tweaks are enough to please my eyes., naturally it blows the UP camera out of the water, ofcourse my ISO is always capped at 200 (i know the speed cost but i can deal with it)

but the last few indoor and low lights photos from techspot are exactly why you should cap the ISO, auto max is out of control

the funny part is that was the exact same case on the M8 and Sense 6 M7, the UP sensor is able to do greatness in low light and very low ISO, yet HTC came up with this Auto Max thing since the Sense camera 6 app which is simply crazy especially for UP, on the M8 it can go all the way to 3200 despite zero need for that on the M8 sensor, i guess they want to keep the camera shutter instant but the price is too heavy and that's whats getting them all the bad review, the ISO issue is more severe than the default sharpness issue, thankfully it's right there on the viewfinder for you your instant control

the UP front camera on the M9 suffers from the same problem in low light, too high ISO and you can not cap it

.
[One (M9) General] Adam182:
Heres a pic i snapped on my M9 this morning - Adam
[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
Site only has them in 2.6MP. So long as exifs are intact that is good enough.

I think i realise what could be done to improve these two.

Notice that second looks a little more blue. That's because light in the shade is blue. See the wb settings for m9

whitebalance-values=auto,incandescent,fluorescent,warm-fluorescent,daylight,

cloudy-daylight

,

twilight

,

shade

More choices than with others :)

Experiment with the underlined will add more yellow and warm up those pictures.
[One (M9) General] th3:
Majority will just go for IQ, zoom or no zoom doesn't matter - we'll see if that's medium or large soon.

Yup it looks like it'll be -2 only for those with too much spare time and days sitting at CS6. -1 for the rest or the world.

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[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
Was looking for some night time shots and found a couple of nice ones here.

ISO 400 and 1/7 with EV+2, looks good, start with a low ISO and try to push exp comp. Could possible improve on this with a still lower ISO and longer shutter but to get it at ISO 400 is good.

ISO 1600 and 1/9 with EV 2+, over exposed will be more grainy. The previous is how to do it, auto won't get this one right i suspect.

ISO 800 and 1/7 with EV 2+

Light is very low in these images but the balance of light in the first & third is pleasing.

If for any reason the links expire, i'm referring to the 3 pagoda shots at night time. see the source link which links to the full resolution.
[One (M9) General] th3:
Been using it 2 days now...

View attachment 3241855

Camera photo impressions... Not good at all folks.

I'll play with it in manual more, but suffice to say, if you have an M8 and you switch to camera on both, side by side, you'll be majorly disappointed.

All those reviews with big reputations, they certainly didn't lie one bit.

I'll post more details after working with it a few days. See if I can make it look any better.

On auto, it's not just bad - in great indoor lighting - distant and macro, it's abysmal. And things get worse as it gets dimmer. I'm seeing it right next to the M8.

I've tried ISO 200 + sharpness -1 + changing focus + changing exposure + changing contrast and saturation... It still doesn't match the all auto M8.

Outdoor, strong light, I suspect it'll do OK as the reviews suggest but I'll test it soon.

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[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
Are we going to see some of your attempts on google drive some where ?

in any case you've already got quite a few more other devices to play with so you're not really going to try very hard anyway.

so yeah :)
[One (M9) General] th3:
Yea (so mobile hence delays)

I've just noticed something very positive... Playing in manual.

Manual M8 vs Manual M9

Low spread indoor LED lighting

WB set to 4520k

Sharpness -1

Shooting a subject 2ft away, M9 is able to shoot ISO 100 at 1/5 without blur, and much faster than M8. M8, you can't shoot it at even 1/10, and the exposure takes quite long after the click.

The resulting picture is way better on the M9 as a result of the blur.

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[One (M9) General] vegetaleb:
Try to do some manual tricks with daylight too
[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
pics or it didn't happen :p

1/5 btw
[One (M9) General] jkcarp94:
I'm having good luck with the camera using manual settings as has been suggested in numerous threads. It seems the most effective solution is to limit ISO to 200.

Here is fully automatic.

In the bottom left is my foot which you can tell is completely blown out as is the television.

Here is the scene on manual settings:
[One (M9) General] dondavis007:
So. In general you have to limit the iso, lower the sharpness and fiddle a little with contrast and saturation to create a new much better profile? Can you set this a default?

Sent from a mobile gadget...
[One (M9) General] Albert Poon:
Yes.
[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
Indoors.

And to get metering and exposure right use the auto focus to capture not touch (manual expsosure) to capture.
[One (M9) General] th3:
All Auto (Large, ISO 400, 1/33, sharpness -1)

View attachment 3242624

All Manual (Medium, ISO 200, 1/7, sharpness -1, contrast +0.5 saturation +0.5, EV +1, manual WB)

View attachment 3242622

The phone has a focusing problem HTC need to rectify - carries on refocusing too much and too fast, and that's causing a lot of the bad pics.

M8 needs different settings for a similar picture...

All Auto (ISO 200, 1/17, sharpness -1)

All Manual (ISO 200, 1/11, sharpness -1, +1 EV, rest didn't need adjusting)

Now IQ is a different story altogether... And that'll need full size pics
[One (M9) General] Jonathan-H:
I haven't seen a decent picture from the M9 in this thread yet which is a real shame. I want to love the M9 but this camera is a real sore point.
[One (M9) General] vegetaleb:
I had the same focus problem on M7 with low light, on M8 it was fixed
[One (M9) General] th3:
This is not always applicable (mostly in good lighting, outdoors).

---------- Post added at 10:49 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:41 AM ----------

I'm only showing test cases, its common use, for critical analysis, but I can also show you some very good outdoor pics [emoji14]
[One (M9) General] One Twelve:
Can you mention ISO & Shutter values for both ?
[One (M9) General] jkcarp94:
Yes, you can save camera profiles and click between them.
[One (M9) General] th3:
The problem we have is; only our eyes can judge the reality of that area we took the picture of.

You can over/under expose and change colours but only our eyes can judge what the REAL scenery looked like and how accurate a reflection the camera picture produced.

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