yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Xperia Z5 General] frankm87:
I think you should seriously calm down.
[MENTION=7146050]N0whereMan[/MENTION] said multiple times the picture quality is great on the Z5. He cited the dpreview.com article, which is a very good link.

It's a really good link as the dpreview article finally, FINALLY gives an explanation for the 'blur' problem : the Autofocus functionality is not 100% reliable. (not talking about the blur on picture's sides, this is a different matter).

The camera SOFTWARE feels useless to him, as he is (it seems) a photographer.

This is very clear.

Sorry here and I don't mean to be rude, but I think you should be a little bit more polite.
[Xperia Z5 General] N0whereMan:
Thanks for sticking up for me frank.

I'm not sure what to think about this 'blur problem'. I agree that it exist, i'm just not sure what is causing it. Many pictures taken by inexperienced users are blurry. I used to think the main reason for these blurry pictures was the long shutter lag Z5 has. Because the autofocus speed is very fast, it can give an illusion of very fast overall performance. Therefore users can stop holding the phone steadily a tad too early, which would cause blurriness in a form of camera shake.

I am inclined to believe DxOMark would have spotted autofocus inconsistencies during their testing. Dpreview's findings directly contadict DxOMark's findings. DxOMark declared Z5's autofocus performance (speed and reliability) the best they have ever tested. It's possible that dpreview had a slightly malfunctioning unit. Of course it's also possible that DxOMark made a mistake. We are all human after all.

I live in Finland and it's mid winter. Even at noon, the light levels are quite low outside. Shutter speed is practically always longer than 1/100s. At these shutter speeds occasional camera shake is unavoidable. I do get blurry images myself occasionally, but i have thus far blamed camera shake for them. It's possible that at least some of the blurry images are because of autofocus errors. I just don't know. It's possible that Sony has sacrificed some AF reliability for speed.
[Xperia Z5 General] millicent:
I am happy overall with the camera results. The lowlight autofocus with moving subjects is a hit or miss, however, as long as your hands don't shake too much, not (so) moving targets are alright. I think auto iso is going too far on the higher end regardless of the amount of light, so I'd limit that to say 400, in manual mode.

I still think the postprocessing of lowlight is better in the nexus 6p, where the normal mode pics are more balanced right away, ie with respect to noise/detail/sharp ratio but not by far, I dunno about other devices out there. The video quality is the best though on z5 impressed by image stability, autofocus is so spot on even in low light.

If Sony would only bring total manual controls in next update, also faster hdr and better control the highlights and shadows in all modes really.
[Xperia Z5 General] Timaustin2000:
I bored some poor O2 chap RIGID by comparing the S6 and the Z5 before making a decision, 2 days back. Here are a few thoughts (and why I chose the Z5).

First: as a long-time Sony phone owner, I know one thing as a dead set certainty: NEVER use Superior Auto in low light situations! Indeed, leave it off completely, if you can avoid it. With that in mind, I switched it off, headed into manual, set the resolution to 20mp 16:9 and started snapping.

The first thing to note is that the S6 brightens scenes far, far more than the Sony by default (I have since noted that you can get the same effect with comparable results by adjusting the exposure on the Z5). To the naked eye, this immediately makes the photo's look nicer. But that's not the whole story: Pixel peeping shows that, despite some basic critical reviews which use SA, the Sony DOES capture more detail, if set to Manual. Noticeably so. Also, the brightened scenes are not realistic, I found. When I put phones side by side and looked over the top of them at the scene that I shot, the S6 image was far brighter than reality. the Sony actually captured the scene as it was: the lighting was identical to reality. I guess that whether you prefer that depends on your own aesthetic sense.

Heading outside, things were pretty much neck-and-neck. The S6 was a tad cleaner (read: had better sharpening algorithms) and edge-to-edge sharpness was a tiny bit better (but no where near as big a difference as some would have you believe) but the Sony, again, picked up more detail and exposed the scene correctly, with superior white balance.

What became clear to me was that the two are far more evenly matched, if you know how to use the Sony, than I was expecting. There is no doubt that the Z5 has a very good camera. If you're coming from a Z1, as I am, the difference is night and day: the Z5 wipes the floor with the Z1 to 3+ series. BUT I would NOT say that the Sony has a superior camera to the S6. Inferior? No (and on the points where it is, it's not by much). But, until November when the true camera firmware is released, they're pretty equal, I found.

So why did I plump for the Z5? a) The hardware is superior, all it needs is better processing and we all know they're working on that. In 2 months time, the Z5 could be much better than the Sammy. b) there were lots of other things that I preferred about the Z5 - the Audio is SPECTACULAR through headphones. Seriously. Having the fingerprint scanner (flawless) on the side with the power button is so much more intuitive. And, here's an odd one: there's a bezel at the bottom on the Z5. It gives me somewhere to put my thumb to steady the phone as I take a shot or watch a video. I kept on hitting the damn capacitive touch buttons and backing out of the camera on the S6 - it got on my wick!!

As a user experience, I simply preferred the Sony. I'll answer any questions you have. (And no, I didn't copy any side by side shots: you're just going to have to trust me. I have an honest face.)
[Xperia Z5 General] jetbruceli:
Well i cant say for certain but after installing everything and letting cool down for an hour, I unplugged it and the battery drained as normal as the s6 in terms of percentage. I mailed it back before I went a full day on it. I just wanted it gone before I broke it or something. Like I said before. maybe this is a good phone for some but for me, I cant justify that cost compared to other phones which offer better options. As in screen and size.

---------- Post added at 01:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:03 PM ----------

I am sure there are some who prefer the sony style over sammy style. I wanted a change but this z5 is not superior except water resistant and expandable memory. The snapdragon is back with its issues as laid out by most reports and its not faster than the Exonys 7420 processor. I really wanted this device to blow me away like most of my previous purchases but the screen is junk next to a SMOLED and the size for its screen is too big. I did however, like the speakers! They were the best part. I might give it another shot but only with a compact or premium version.
[Xperia Z5 General] dehnhaide:
Dude,

There'r no vitriol but please try to refrain from patronizing and going "academic" with things like "reviewers don't know basic photography". You've put yourself to the place where others will not tolerate this kind of approach.

Getting back to what it matters...

[IMG="Z5 vs S6"]http://www.victorciurus.ro/z5/Z5_vs_S6.jpg[/IMG]

This comparison basically tells you to forget this poem you keep repeating about how "Z5 has a much wider FOV". Yes it's wider but only by 16%. The only part where indeed Z5 is disadvantaged and it clearly shows in all pictures is the picture quality at the borders! Given the "too wide to correct 24mm" for Sony it happens basically what it has previously happened to Lumia 1020. But all the "wide lovers" fail to see this given the marketing catchphrase is more valuable to some than the actual result! ;)

What I found funny you've fail to see is that Z5 sensor has 2 strong points on its behalf that it fails to use appropriately:

- 46% more pixels to shove in every damn shot to resolve a lot more details than the 16 mpixels of S6. Basically at the same focal length Z5 still can use more pixels to resolve the same details. Too bad it doesn't!

- A higher (about 40-45% in real life centimeters / meters), read deeper, DoF when compared to S6. Basically for any given subject a deeper DoF allows more details to be captured more easily before the "out of focus" kicks in.

So? What else prevents Z5 from delivering some decent results? :cool:
[Xperia Z5 General] Timaustin2000:
I think "Junk" is a touch hyperbole. No, it's not as good as Samsung's AMOLED screen,.... but nothing is. Nothing beats that screen this year: it doesn't make the Z5 screen junk. It's a good panel - it's just not as good as the Samsung one.

I would point out that the Exonys processor isn't actually better than the Snapdragon when it comes to games: indeed, there are plenty of video examples that show it's not actually particularly good at running games. That's probably a compatibility thing, as most developers are used to Snapdragon processors. But I don't find the S10 chip slow in any way. Technically, it's not as fast as the Samsung but you'd be pushed to notice it, from my (admittedly limited) experience.

Is the Z5 a significantly better phone than the S6? Probably not. Let's be honest: it just ain't The Best Phone Of The Year. But it has advantages: front firing speakers, waterproof, camera key and the camera itself is extremely good and due to get better when the final firmware is released for it in a month's time, potentially taking it ahead of the Samsung.

This year has been the only year ever where I've been tempted by a Sammy. When it came to actually using them side by side, I simply preferred the experience I knew and trusted that the camera would improve. Based on my experience with the Z1, with a camera that improved leaps and bounds in the months after release, I am confident that it'll happen. And, as the hardware is better, I trust that the results will eventually be much better too.
[Xperia Z5 General] jetbruceli:
Sammy has the better chip cuz it dont throttle no where near as fast as the 810 and thus is the reason they skipped and LG only uses the 808 on their devices since the mishap with the flex 2. I think sony should have made their own SOC or used Sammy's. Plus it would have helped if the edges were not so sharp.
[Xperia Z5 General] CandyAndy:
So what is the best phone of the year?

And how can you know the z5 camera will improve? I used Z3 for almost a year and waited Sony to fix the camera but they never did anything. It was always those artificial looking sharpenings and dull colours. I am really doubtful that Sony would fix anything with this one also.

And I really really wanted to like Z5 but the current results just aren't that good. And also the battery life doesn't seem to be that great as it used to be.
[Xperia Z5 General] Timaustin2000:
Well it has been widely reported that Sony is still developing the final firmware on this new camera and are due to release the final build in November. That is not at all far fetched because they did the same thing with the Z1 on release, as they did with the Z before it. I know: I was there.

The Z3 had an already-established camera unit, don't forget. They had done all the work that they considered necessary on it. Simple fact was that, after 2 years, the camera was superseded by others. The Z5 has a ground-up re-build of the camera: there is a tonne of potential for software upgrading.

Actually owning and using one, I would disagree very strongly that the current camera is "Not that good". The camera IS good - it's just not noticeably better than the competition (though I would argue that it's already better than the G4) and it needs tweeking. Put it next to your Z3 and you'd see a very, very clear difference in quality.

"So what is the best phone of the year?" - depends on what you want from your phone. As an all-rounder, and taking my fan-boy hat off, it's the Galaxy S6. I simply cant see any phone that is better than it this year. Despite the fact that I own and am happy with the Z5, I am comfortable in saying that. It's just not right for me.
[Xperia Z5 General] CandyAndy:
I am pretty happy for my s6 edge and I think that this is the most gorgeous phone ever made. However the battery life is a big disappointment.

How is z5? I do miss my z3 battery life when I never had to be worried of running out of juice
[Xperia Z5 General] Timaustin2000:
It needs a few cycles to settle but I took it off charge at 07.00 this morning, it is now 13.50 and I am on 61% after heavy use for 2.5 -3 hours of that (web surfing, listening to music and streaming youtube). So: nearly 7 hours of medium to heavy use and it's still got nearly 2/3rds in the tank. A few cycles in and it'll be better and this has been a heavy day.

It's not all I'd hoped, if I'm honest, but I have no concerns about getting through a full day with battery to spare.
[Xperia Z5 General] doministry:
I own Z2 and it's camera was MASSIVELY improved over this 1,5 years.

MASSIVELY.

As for colours, I LOVE the real colours of the Z series.

It's actually much better than artificial tweaked Sammy ones.

Especially on the latest Galaxies, photos look like after Photoshop.
[Xperia Z5 General] TheEndHK:
I've got Z1c and S6. Z1/Z2(IMX200) is doing good color but Z3/Z3c/Z3+(IMX220) color reproduction is known to be weird, worse than Z1/Z2.

I think my Z1c color is superior. S6 focus and OIS is impressive though. The OIS real made a huge different during at low light, S6 always trying to shoot as low ISO as possible but Xperia has to push up ISO to reduce handshake, this will greatly reduce the quality. Most guys just want a point and shoot mobile easy to use much like an Iphone, S6 is doing good job now and the OIS helps out a lot. I would like to add that S6 jpeg algorithm and HDR is very good too.

Most of them are just casual user so you can't blame them. I more prefer neutral color(S6 color is too saturated in my eyes) and the all scene mode on my Z1c(S6 comes with almost no scene), so I'm thinking to swap to Z5c but most guys they don't care about color and want Auto not Manual. I'll say S6 Auto seems doing better, combined with the OIS, it is a beast for normal user. Not to mention Exynos 7420 is fast and no heat issue, which is also important.
[Xperia Z5 General] doministry:
I really don't care "what most guys want".

It's an irrelevant argument. What I care about is the real camera performance.

Z2 also got some sh..ty reviews and many bad samples over the media.

But I know my thing and learned how to use it and now I can squeeze some great results out of it. With good settings.

Most of the "real" cameras ALSO HAVE full Auto mode. Like RX100 or whatever.

And I bet most of the users will use it on Auto mode because it's not sooo easy to know anything about photography. And producers know this!

But still, Auto mode will be always so much worse than manual mode. Everybody knows that. And it doesn't mean Sony or Canon will stop including all those advanced fetaures for informed users.

I just need manual shutter speed. This I miss. I must try FV5 camera.
[Xperia Z5 General] King p1n:
Widely reported they are developing a new camera app...It does not mean post processing is going to become amazing...

I'll say this if you guys keep banking on the new camera app to do miracles then you're probably setting yourselves up for huge disappointment.

I hope they will though.
[Xperia Z5 General] Timaustin2000:
As I've said already: they have previous on this. The Z1 got new algorithms within 2 months of release. It's pretty clear that this is not the final firmware: there are simply too many schoolboy processing errors on it, currently: ones you don't see on the Z1. The camera is very good: I see no reason at all why it can't be better.
[Xperia Z5 General] WastedJoker:
FYI, I returned my Z5 due to blurring on the left of landscape shots

http://imgur.com/a/v5Ww5

It isn't as noticable on portrait shots due to the bokeh effect but compare the right side and left side of the photos in that album - very noticeable blurring and that isn't an app/processing issue.
[Xperia Z5 General] faizalotai:
More like lenses issue
[Xperia Z5 General] TheEndHK:
Z1/Z2 indeed got a huge improvement by new software but that's not the case in Z3/Z3c/Z3+ so they are true to doubt about it. Personally, I tend to believe for a completely new sensor, they'll need some time to work it out but then I will only buy it until the camera real got juices later.
[Xperia Z5 General] joe_dude:
I do apologize for being rude... guilty as charged. I could blame a lack of sleep, but no excuses.

:silly:

So let's get down to business. I went back to the pics from IFA, and pulled the shutter speed data for the Xperia Z5 and Galaxy S6.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Firs...vs-Z3-vs-G4-camera-samples-comparison_id73408

Z5: 1/125, 1/64, 1/32, 1/64

S6: 1/33, 1/33, 1/33, 1/33

And if you look at pic #3, the Z5 is arguably better than the S6. The car pic, on the hand, lacks fine detail, which makes sense given that it's running a shutter speed over 3x faster than the S6. Pushing that many extra pixels and having more area to cover certainly doesn't help with those insane shutter speeds.

It's a very odd choice. My (current) theory is that the Z5 is supposed to use the 8 MP setting not only as the default, but the preferred setting from Sony. Hear me out. Using 8 MP, theoretically, could be better because the Z5 uses super-sampling to downscale from the 25 MP sensor. By combining more pixels, it could get a cleaner, less noisy image, while maintaining a higher shutter speed. The higher shutter speed would allow for less blurring from in-frame movement.

The 23 MP setting is there, but it's probably really only useful outdoors or under bright lights. The 1/2.3" sensor is still pretty small, and I doubt it can fully utilize 23 MPs. It would explain why DXOMark chose to use the 8 MP setting for their testing.

So can anyone supply some pics using the 23 MP setting vs. 8 MP, particularly indoor/low light? Pretty please? :)

Oh, I also did some analysis of the Z5 review on DXOMark, particularly for low light. They did account for the 24mm lens (moved it closer than the S6). However, the S6 still looked better for the low light section.
[Xperia Z5 General] joe_dude:
Would it be possible to also get some 8 MP pics from the Z5 for comparison? I'm curious to see if the super-sampling makes a difference (for better or worse).
[Xperia Z5 General] jetbruceli:
Sorry dont have the Z5 anymore but, you can now switch to 23mp and keep auto on with it.
[Xperia Z5 General] Timaustin2000:
https://flic.kr/p/D5otwx

Just gonna leave this here.
[Xperia Z5 General] millicent:
Amazing pics. I was always impressed by the amount of low light detail, but yours take it to a higher level.

Cheers
[Xperia Z5 General] N0whereMan:
That shot with the moon has a really nice composition. Nicely done.

Unfortunately the image quality is quite bad on that shot. It emphasizes the weakest aspect of Z5's image quality. For ISO 50, image quality is quite poor. Just like DxOMark says, Z5's biggest image quality weakness is artifacts with blue sky saturation. This is very evident on that picture.

Z5's images have issues with low contrast texture details, but i never have had problems with textures in real-life scenarios. You have to practically pixel peep almost at 100% to spot the low quality textures. With blue sky saturation, ugly artifacts are visible already in smaller sizes.

Artifacts are visible already in bright daylight shots, but its not too distracting. In this case (the shot with moon), sky is dimly exposed (as it should be in this case), and that makes these artifacts more pronounced.

I actually took a similar (dimly lit blue sky) shot (attached) this morning during a small snow storm. Artifacts are clearly visible in it, but they are not that distracting as the image has other stuff "going on".

Full resolution image is available here (last picture):

http://imageevent.com/tuomas_k/xperiaz5premium?n=0

With these types of shots, other manufacturers have a better image quality (with less artifacts). This is a problem with post-processing, and hopefully Sony will address this in the future. With RAW available, we of course wouldn't be having this problem.

And i still want to mention the fact that, at full resolution, both shots (Tim's and mine) would be impossible to take, as we can't control ISO.
[Xperia Z5 General] Timaustin2000:
Thanks for the compliment on composition - I'd like to take all the credit but it was my wife who pointed out the lamp and moon combo.

Chromatic noise is evident, yes, but I disagree that other phone cameras would do better. It's a frequent problem reported in the DxOmark reviews of most smartphone cameras - it's the nature of the beast. The Note 5 review notes the same issue, if you look at the Cons section.

DxOmark also notes that chromatic noise is small and unobtrusive on the Xperia and I'd agree. Considering the level of detail in a handheld, high contrast, low light shot with numerous points of focus, I see a little noise you have to Pixel peep to see as an acceptable trade off.

The chromatic noise from this Lumia 950 shot in remarkably similar circumstances is far more intrusive : https://flic.kr/p/DQGfav.
[Xperia Z5 General] N0whereMan:
Either way, the composition with the moon, lamp and the trees is really nice.

I am talking about ARTIFACTS not NOISE. Please re-read what DxOMark is saying, and look at your image again. Noise is self-evident on that kind of scenes on smartphones, and on Z5 noise quality is pleasing luminance noise, like you said. Z5 has surprisingly little ugly chromatic noise at low ISOs. The artifacts are the problem.

In that "remarkably similar circumstances", Lumia 950 shot has ISO 500. Your shot has ISO 50. Are you kidding me?
[Xperia Z5 General] EQ2000:
Looked at some of those 'Z5 Premium' photos and you sure your phone aint a copy or malfunctioning? Becouse the IQ is bad even at low ISO and high shutter speed. Reminds me of the Xperia Z still photo IQ. Cant replicate with my Z1, massive difference and Z5c neither at such ISO and shutter speeds.
[Xperia Z5 General] N0whereMan:
As i have said, I have edited all those images. Some are more processed than others, so some of them have a lot of noise even at base ISO, for example. With jpegs image quality always suffers in post-processing, so those images can't be viewed as "reference". Although i am overall quite impressed how well Z5's jpegs respond to image editing.
[Xperia Z5 General] pipspeak:
I've given up trying to take photos indoors on auto with the flash because the camera always seems to select a shutter speed too slow and pretty much every picture is blurred. The other complaints I have are pretty well documented in the Z3 forum, including the color shading and over processing. The lag is more of an issue with the Z3 in general -- a weird Sony-style OS lag for everything (and I'm running stock).

Basically the reviews of the Z3 when it first came out made it sound like it had the best camera ever to have existed on a phone. The reality if taking photos in anything but perfect daylight is, sadly, far from good. Not even average in some cases. So I'm wary of rave reviews of a 25MP (25MP on a tiny sensor??!?) phone camera and would love to see side-by-side shots of the same scene taken with the Z3 and Z5 to see if there's an improvement.