[Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G] sanderbos:
Hello,

I have been messing with the configs in more detail, and really felt a need to share what I learned, and I thought I would just do it here in a very very long comment, because I feel at least some readers here might be interested in messing with configurations. Feel free to ignore this message :)

Introduction

This message is about starting a GCam configuration from scratch. As you can read from other comments in this thread by me I have been using A52s + MGC 8.1+luke-A52-BSG-GV1.xml+sessionid fix since October, and was generally happy with it. But I was annoyed some pictures I took of Family failed over Christmas (white faces in dimly lit environment were too red because of over-saturation, easily fixed 'in post' but then I had already send the pictures around....).

So what I wanted to get away from was from this custom configuration whose origin I did not know and changes I did not understand, and I wanted to stay closer to the default Google/ MGC configuration, hoping it would work better in all kinds of scenarios.

Whenever I talk about 'Luke' here I mean luke-A52-BSG-GV1.xml which is the recommended A52 config on celsoazevedo. I do not have a lot of experience with the Morgenman config that is also often recommended here and on Telegram.

On the GCam version I use: Since using GCam (4 years) I have always used MGC from BSG, so for me it is a 'trusted brand' and I don't look at other creators if I don't have to. At the time of writing the MGC 8.4 build does not have many of the features that the 8.1 series has. For a very long time the later 8.1 versions had an annoying toast message which made me stuck on an older version. But thankfully, on May 25 2022 after many months MGC_8.1.101_A9_GV2a was released, which when I write this is the latest and has no downsides it appears.

The basics of getting MGC GCam working on A52s without a configuration file

This is a very long message, but the core of what I wanted to share is that it is actually very easy to start your own configuration from scratch. I thought that you would have to set up hardware modules manually, or that there are extensive color configuration for individual phones, but neither of that is true. With just some small changes you can make it work and get really close to something like the Luke configuration:

To reset the configuration you can reinstall the app, but I found it is better to reset the app by deleting it's local storage from the Android app settings (on reinstall it can sometimes find the last settings, don't know how).

Go to Settings|Modules|module ...|Module hardware level, and set it to 'Level 3', do this for all 4 modules.

For A52s (on A52 it is not necessary), go to Settings|Modules|module ...|Session of photo modes, and set it to '61448', do this for all 4 modules. (For MGC_8.1.101_A9_GV1y and later now you now have to set it three times per module)

There is one less important thing, under Settings|Modules|Back 1.0|Manual focus, you may want to change the manual focus distances (only the Back 1.0 camera module has variable focus). There is a measurement debug tool on that page. based on that I have now set Near=14 (that is one beyond what you can focus up close), Far=1 (that is about one meter), Infinity=0 (by the way Far and Infinity are set very different in Luke and Morgenman).

Added 16-3-2022: Even though using the Google Whitebalance setting is 'dangerous', you can make it a lot better by changing Settings|Modules|Back 1.0 and Back 0.5|AWB Correction|AWB For to 'Sony IMX_682_OFILM'.

Added 22-3-2022: On A52 you can apparently use the Macro camera module, but on my A52s that does not appear to work. So A52 (non 's') users can go to Settings|Modules|WhiteList and set it to 54.

Added 28-5-2022: You may want to enable to Settings|Globa|lHide save message

And with just those changes you are extremely close to the quality of Luke in my opinion. I was actually shocked by this o_O

So then I took literally 400+ comparison photos, comparing both many configurations and many 'scenes'. My goal was achieved because I wanted to run a very basic config, but I wanted to make sure of course that the photos were at least about as good as the Luke config I was using before.

So I did a lot of comparisons with the Luke config (you can install GCam multiple times if you use the different package names, I used the scan3d and ruler packages at the same time). But I also compared different settings within the gcam app.

Noise noise noise

I thought I would be looking a lot at colors, but as it turns out I was looking mostly at noise. From what I found, you have to choose for either:

- more detail with more noise,

- or less noise but then also less detail.

The relevant settings are under Settings|Modules|Your favorite module|Image Processing|Noise Settings

(You have to enable the RAM patcher to use this. This is the mechanism in MGC GCam with which you can apply extra 'live' processing on the images beyond what stock Google Camera does)

There are different settings related to noise. The most relevant option appears to be "Noise Model Blocker", if you change that option to Unblock you get:

a) More detail in the images, images becomes sharper (less soft) and small details become visible.

b) More noise (grain) in the images, generally speaking especially in shadows.

I attached two sample comparisons related to noise.

In the night shot comparison (shot with night sight mode) you can see that there are more details visible when "Noise Model Blocker" is set to Unblock, more waves in the water, some structure of the bricks in brick walls, and correct branches in the tree on the right. I would say turning noise settings on in that scenario really helps.

In the 500% crop of a picture of a plant in the other comparison, you can see that the shadow cast on furthest leaf contains a ton of grain, except in the fourth picture there the shadow is way more smooth. That smoothness is in part caused by an overall softness in the image, but I much prefer it.

Both the Luke as well as the Morgenman configuration set Noise Model Blocker to Unblock, turn on Activating Noise Models. So they go for more detail and more noise. They also set a modified noise model which is meant to reduce noise, see 2 paragraphs below.

But I am choosing to keep those noise parameters off, leading to less noise in the images but also less detail and more softness. It means that I do not use the RAM patcher at all, which means I stay closer to GCam defaults, which was my original goal.

Since the ultrawide camera on the A52s is technically quite bad, I would always keep those noise options off for the ultrawide cam, so you get less noise. There it is not a matter of taste in my opinion (but Morgenman and Luke have the noise parameters turned on in the RAM patcher section).

Update 2022-5-25: Today I learned a bit about noise modellers. You can too, by reading here. But the gist is that different camera sensors hardware that have different kinds of noise, and what you can do then is go through a complex process to determine how noise behaves in your sensor, and derive a model with 4x4=16 config values which can be presented in a .c file. There is a google drive folder where such files have been collected for different sensors. In both the Morgenman and Luke config the noise model values for the IMX682 sensor taken from the file 'A52_imx682_0_noise_model - AbOuLfOoOoOuF.c' from that Google drive folder have been entered manually under Settings|Modules|Back 1.0|Image processing|Noise Settings|Modified Noise Model.

I found this out three months after I creating the config described here, and at the moment I have absolutely zero intention of applying this learned knowledge to my config(s), for the simple reason is that noise is not really an issue for me. Hilariously, not every A52s phone has the same camera sensor for the main camera, so entering the Sony IMX682 values may not even be right for you, because you may have a Samsung S5KGW1 sensor instead. You can find out about finding out your sensors here.

Other findings

Here some other things I learned (these are of course personal subjective observations, but I was very surprised by many things):

I thought that in the end I would turn on more saturation again, to make pictures more colorful, but I did not feel the need (I am talking about Settings|Modules|e.g. back 1.0|Image Processing|Main settings|e.g. Saturation These are probably the RAM Patcher settings you would be most likely to customize for personal taste but I did not feel the need to touch them.

I always used HDR+ Enhanced, but now that I did an extensive comparison, I could not see any difference in any picture where there was at least somewhat decent light with regular HDR+. And in very low light all it really did was make some dark parts of the photo more bright (but not more detailed). I intentionally went with many samples with a darkened subject and bright sky, so lots of dynamic range, but never saw any benefit to HDR+ Enhanced. So I am not using HDR+ Enhanced anymore, I am going to switch to (the faster regular) HDR+.

Edit 2022/3/6: I have now found that in some scenarios, specifically a dark room with a large window with sunlight on the outdoors HDR+ Enhanced can make a difference. But I still never encountered such a situation outside.

I also played with setting Settings|Module|Back 1.0|Frames HDR+ enhanced to much higher values. And again no difference seen, apart from taking longer to take a picture, and some dark objects being slightly lighter but not more detailed.

Even when pixel peeping at individual pixels, so zoomed all the way in, I could not see a difference between JPEG 95% and JPEG 100% compression. The extra storage (those 5% extra mean more than double the file size) is no problem for me, but I just cannot see a difference so I am going to stick to the default 95%.

I also took this opportunity to play more with RAW files. Those extra DNG files you can get look so different from the JPEG files with so much more detail in them. And they are 'free' extras apart from storage. But the problem is that they do not have all the color corrections that GCam applies to the JPEGs. So in practice they will never be as good as the JPEGs, only if photos are way too dark or overexposed (because with RAWs you can then still 'recover' shadows/ highlights by just changing exposure, that part also really works as with RAWs on real cameras). But GCam never really messes up the exposure. Only if I take a lot of photos at night (so really dark) or if you take pictures on a very bright day (so with chance of blowing out the sky) might it be useful to turn on RAW (DNG) storage just in case, but I doubt I will ever use those files in real life.

Config files with the configurations discussed in this message

Since the whole point of this long comment is to encourage you to try create your own configuration, I should not share mine. But for completeness and self containedness I will share my new config (so I am switching to my own config now).

I am on Samsung Galaxy A52s with Android 12, using this MGC Gcam MGC_8.1.101_A9_GV2a version:

BSG: MGC_8.1.101_A9_GV2a

Download MGC_8.1.101_A9_GV2a by BSG.

www.celsoazevedo.com

(I use the ruler version but probably they all work)

You can load one of the attached xml configs by double tapping next to the shutter button, or using the drop down menu at the top, then Settings|Configs|Load.

I added two configs to this message:

mgc8.1-A52s-barebones.xml - A configuration with the absolute minimum changes to get MGC Gcam working on A52s, but for the rest all defaults from GCam and MGC, so no personal preferences of some random person just what is needed to get it working on A52s.

sander-mgc8.1-20220528.xml - My actual current configuration, which has the mostly the same image quality settings as the barebones version above, but with many changes in other mostly user interface preferences, and with the changes described below.

Addendum 2022/3/6: One month later:

I updated my attached config, still mostly as it was when I wrote this in February except for the changes described below (exposure compensation +2 and "Frames HDR+" set to 14 instead of default).

The 'Google Auto Whitebalance' feature is somewhat problematic. But I describe above setting it to IMX682 and then it appears to be a lot better. Apparently the A52s comes with different camera modules, so it's best to try it out by making a photo a day with a blue sky, with the Google AWB on and off the sky should be the exact same blue in both cases (for me that is the case though). The safer option is to never turn on Google AWB...

I am still experimenting with the best value for Settings|Modules|Back 1.0 and 0.5|Exposure compensation. For the ultra-wide it appears that +3 (or even higher) is definitely better. For the Main camera I have now set it to +2, but for certain situations +3 is better. Esepcially in sunny situations the Samsung stock app will go for an exposure like '+3', and brighter looks usually nicer then. Use +3 if you want to mimic the Samsung app exposure wise, use +2 (or less) if you want to be more accurate.

In very specific situations, being my living room when my window is in the shot and it is Sunny outside, I can actually see a very noticable difference with the HDR+ Enhanced mode, that the outside world in the window in pictures is not overexposed. So in darker indoors situations with a Window to the outside world, it can be useful to turn HDR+ Enhanced on, and I changed Settings|Modules|Back 1.0||Frames HDR+ Enhanced to 14 because I will turn it on only in exceptional situations and then I can see the difference between 7 and 14 frames (but not really between 14 and 28 frames).

With later MGC 8.1 revision, when using 16:9 aspect ratio which I guess only I do, it appears that it is necessary to set Settings|Advanced|Photo resolution camera to 'Identical RAW' to get a 12MP 16:9 resolution.