8 ms·

Experimental Nighttime Photography with Nexus and Pixel

380 points by monort 10y ago

polyvisual 10y ago
"The camera cannot handle exposure times longer than two seconds." What's the reason for this? Is it a hardware restriction? I suppose an artificial software restriction could be removed by using root / other camera software.
- Ajedi32 10y ago
  The article states that the author wrote his own camera app for the experiment, so it's almost certainly not a restriction that can be worked around by using different camera software.
  - leoedin 10y ago
    It's almost certainly not something you can work around with a user space Android app, but "software" covers far more than just that. By the time you're triggering the Android camera APIs you're already very far removed from the software actually talking to the hardware, which is probably where this restriction lies.
- quantumet 10y ago
  Mostly hardware. Shortest explanation: The sensor exposure time register has a maximum value. Next shortest: But it's actually in units of row readout time, on many sensors, which is also configurable, so the exposure time can be made longer at the cost of slower image readout. In normal operation, readout has to happen at 30fps at least, so extra code is needed to switch to slower readout for extended exposure values. This code then needs validation, the image processing tuning tables need to be updated and verified for the new long exposure durations, and any preview glitches, etc, from resetting base sensor configurations need to be addressed. So a lot of extra work, for a relatively niche feature on a smartphone. Even longer: Many sensors also have an external shutter trigger signal pin, for unlimited exposure duration. But that needs to be wired to the CPU, and all the SW considerations above also apply.
  - ahakki 10y ago
    Couldn't it just be a heat dissipation issue? These sensors pack a lot of photo sites into a tiny package.
    - quantumet 10y ago
      To first order, long exposures are probably less power-hungry - much of the sensor power is burned in the image readout, and longer exposures mean you're reading images less often. When collecting light, an image sensor pixel isn't really using up any active power (each pixel is basically a capacitor collecting electrons generated by light hitting the silicon).
      - jfindley 10y ago
        I don't believe this is entirely correct. DSLR sensors get very hot during long exposures - to the point where excessively long exposures can introduce noise into the output from this heat. I don't see why this wouldn't apply even more so to phone sensors, with their incredibly high photosite density. However really long exposures are going to suffer from star trail effects - the earth is rotating relative to the stars, so a long exposure changes stars from a point to a short line, which _usually_ isn't what you want. On a 35mm camera with a fairly wide lens you can get away with ~ 30s of exposure time. On a pixel phone I think you'd be able to get away with ~ 3s exposure time, but as it's going to get pretty hot over this time I'm not sure how much extra image quality you'd actually end up with.
- ipsum2 10y ago
  It's interesting to note that the Nexus 5, released in 2013, could take exposures up to 30 seconds, iirc. Different sensor hardware.
LoSboccacc 10y ago
if this could become an app it'd be great
- veli_joza 10y ago
  I'm even more interested in mentioned SeeInTheDark app (that's unfortunately not available yet as it's part of Google research). The video demo is so impressive. I don't really care so much about photography, but decent sensors and optics combined with innovative processing in real-time is really starting to pick up. I've already started using phone camera app to enhance my vision for text that's too far to read. Advances in post-processing will increase our vision even more, as well as allow for night vision and understanding text in other languages. We are transitioning into cyborgs by means of android platform...
  - Synaesthesia 10y ago
    Seems like quite a cool app and simple to implement as well. Aligning the images if the phone is not held still could be a problem.
zokier 10y ago
The photos are impressive. But considering the introduction, it would have been nice to have some actual side-by-side comparisons with dslr. And then just for fun, the same exposure stacking applied to dslr at max iso.
- twiss 10y ago
  Here's the first and second-to-last image in the article: DSLR: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JJORxMmYFuw/WPkESrozTuI/AAAAAAAAByU/pkjoul07knIfKWyvM-xmlaCzvODG28FJQCLcB/s1600/image5.jpg https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JJORxMmYFuw/WPkESrozTuI/AAAAAAAAB... Pixel: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yo9hRd3xLLg/WPkERdbOs7I/AAAAAAAAByk/UDE_MAh3bXszzir_Grxs672mpiKY82DlACEw/s1600/image11.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yo9hRd3xLLg/WPkERdbOs7I/AAAAAAAAB...
  - fudged71 10y ago
    The author really should have cut down on the blue saturation for the phone examples, they're pretty ridiculous IMO. But regardless, it's an incredible result considering the sensor capabilities.
th0ma5 10y ago
I know on the XDA forums, at least for the 5x, there is an app someone threw together to do long exposure times. I played with it some and got a pixelated mess, but I didn't try a tripod. Some people on the thread produced some pretty good pictures.
pdelbarba 10y ago
reminds me of the low light video camera that was on here ealier. http://kottke.org/17/04/incredible-low-light-camera-turns-night-into-day http://kottke.org/17/04/incredible-low-light-camera-turns-ni... Not as fast, but the results look fairly similar.
rb808 10y ago
My Nexus 6p takes amazingly good photos - I rarely use an SLR now. The main problem I have is that it shuts down after 10-30 minutes of use - no help from google. https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=227849 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=227849 Makes me want an iPhone. (see below Huawei might be fixing)
- thatcherc 10y ago
  There's actually a class action lawsuit related to this issue [1]. I first read about it here [2]. I've got a Nexus 6P too and it's great except for the battery and shutdown issues. Mine will shut down at like 20% or so so it's very usable, but it's often at night when I most need to use my phone (calls, rides, etc). [1] - https://chimicles.com/google-nexus-6p-battery-early-shutoff-bootlooping-class-action-investigation/ https://chimicles.com/google-nexus-6p-battery-early-shutoff-... [2] - https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/21/lawsuit-takes-aim-at-google-huawei-over-nexus-6p-battery-issues/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/21/lawsuit-takes-aim-at-goo...
  - emmelaich 10y ago
    The 5x too. It may well be the same design flaw as the 6p. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37117345 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37117345 Despite the comments there about software it is most likely about heat and a component which is affected over time. I've had a 5x just go dead. Bought a Pixel, it died after a week (probably unrelated to this fault). The replacement is fine though and the phone is great overall and the camera is fantastic.
  - nradov 10y ago
    I really cannot understand why consumers persist in buying smartphones with non-removable batteries. All of these battery degradation problems are reduced to minor annoyances if you can buy a replacement battery for ~$35.
- mmanfrin 10y ago
  Contact the google store about this -- this is something they should replace.
soylentcola 10y ago
I've been pretty happy with my Pixel XL's camera (easily keeps up with the incremental improvements in cell phone cameras over the years) but I also appreciate how they didn't make this into too much of a puff piece where they "hand wave" away the amount of work still needed in Photoshop or similar. The takeaway is that with some effort and intelligent use of other software tools, you can put together a nice image with all sorts of lower-end cameras. The bit at the end about hopefully adding some of this functionality to software available on the phone was a nice touch, as I imagine all of the big players are always working on that sort of thing.
BeetleB 10y ago
Amateur photographer here. This should be the future of DSLRs. Provide some sort of API so that I can create recipes for my photography project. Bonus if the hardware is powerful enough for me to process the way I want to on it (as opposed to the builtin, mostly useless, features). As a silly example, say I want to take 10 photos. I want the first photo to be 1/30s. The next 1/15s, and so on - doubling the interval each time. I just want to be able to program this, and assign it to a button/menu item, so it will do it automatically. Or I want to do custom focus stacking. It should automatically take N shots of predefined focal distances, and if powerful enough, stack them. I've never coded Android apps, so I don't know how much control over the camera is exposed to you, but why can't camera companies provide the same level of control?
- mortenjorck 10y ago
  I love this idea. I'm imagining a user interface something like Apple Automator, where the user selects from a library of inputs (bracketing, long/short exposures, delays), then stacks some operators (HDR merge, noise-cancelling algorithms), and then outputs (tone mapping, other post-processing). It could be a whole new sandbox to play in before an image even touches Lightroom.
- ipsum2 10y ago
  I've never tried it before, but Sony allows you to purchase third party camera apps to do such a thing. Example: https://www.playmemoriescameraapps.com/portal/usbdetail.php?eid=IS9104-NPIA09014_00-000012 https://www.playmemoriescameraapps.com/portal/usbdetail.php?...
  - BeetleB 10y ago
    That's cool. I never considered Sony. Too limited in terms of lens choices. But if this capability is flexible/powerful enough, then it does kind of compensate.
    - fudged71 10y ago
      Sony has gotten a lot better in the last 5 years. Their OLED viewfinders are an incredible improvement in photography.
Gravityloss 10y ago
Cameras, like so many things, have been increasingly software limited during recent years.
Theodores 10y ago
I think the timelapse style stars is a feature and not a defect, although it goes against the original challenge. Although this article is about the challenge - decent photography with a mobile phone - it does outline how easy it is to layer up lots of images in Photoshop, median everything out and get a long exposure image. Taking out the sensor 'median' was clever too. So you could use this with DSLR images too, to take better long exposure images whatever the sensor, so long as everything is fully HDR and manual. I think that I might just give it a go. With PHP Imagemagick so that I can automate the Photoshop part and tweak settings easily.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  By "taking out the median" you're talking about what's known as dark frame subtraction. I believe most DSLRs already do this internally for long exposures - try setting your camera for 10s exposure and time how long it takes before it's ready again; I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's about 20s. Smartphones can't do this because they lack an internal shutter. On advanced models (and hacked cameras like MagicLantern/CHDK), you can turn this off and do it manually, e.g. shoot a dark frame for only the first image in a series so you can get ~95% duty cycle rather than ~45%. Especially useful if you're trying to capture a rare event, e.g. lightening. What's weird about the technique in TFA is he takes N bright frames and then N dark frames, computes both medians and then subtracts. By interleaving bright and dark frames, and doing the subtraction before stacking, I'm pretty sure they'd get better results. As for image stacking, there's tons of ways to do it, and quite a few turnkey apps for image stacking for astrophotography as well, e.g. here's a review from last year of a Mac app doing just this: https://petapixel.com/2016/02/20/stack-photos-epic-milky-way-landscapes/ https://petapixel.com/2016/02/20/stack-photos-epic-milky-way...
  - gjm11 10y ago
    Doing all the bright frames together and all the dark frames together is surely suboptimal, but it's hardly weird: there's an obvious reason for it. (Namely, that the transition between bright and dark requires covering the camera lens with black tape and it's easier to do and undo that once than 64 times.)
tambourine_man 10y ago
>Still, this may be the lowest-light cellphone photo ever taken. Not so fast buddy. Some of us have been playing with this stuff for a really long time :)
- justinfaulkner 10y ago
  Any links?
locust101 10y ago
This is great that they are investing so much in camera. In modern smartphone, I do not feel any difference in performance between my moto play and s7 edge. It is just the camera that makes me keep coming back to s7 edge, despite the $300 price tag difference. It is just much more convenient and I have stopped bringing my dslr on trips now since the phone camera works really good.
Jack000 10y ago
for the stars shot the next obvious step would be to automatically segment the image with optical flow. Could also try solving the hand-held problem with ORB feature matching. given the previous posts from the googleblog I kind of expected a bit more algorithmic involvement beyond image stacking.
dboreham 10y ago
Interesting work. However, in order to reproduce the marin headlands DSLR image the smartphone would have needed to also stitch a panorama from multiple frames (because the lens used in the DSLR shot has roughly 2x the FOV angle).
fudged71 10y ago
Incredible results!! I would really love to be able to do this on a phone. I've tried with iPhone to take long exposures and crank up the brightness/HDR to bring out as much signal as possible. This is the best that I could do on a fully moonlit night: http://imgur.com/a/km1D9 http://imgur.com/a/km1D9
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Here's an example of what you can get on an iPhone with a 15 second exposure I just shot out my window: http://imgur.com/a/r2YKX http://imgur.com/a/r2YKX Look at the detail added to the mountains in the background I used Camera+ which stitches together images similarly to the article
- anc84 10y ago
  You could probably get better results by taking multiple independent shots and merging them later.
  - fudged71 10y ago
    The app Hydra does this. It's not specifically meant for super dark photos so I don't think they extend exposures to the max.
- oarfish 10y ago
  400 bad request
jbarham 10y ago
FWIW Olympus already provides in-camera shot stacking for night shots in its Micro Four Thirds cameras via their "live composite" mode. See http://www.duford.com/2016/08/explaining-olympus-live-composite-mode/ http://www.duford.com/2016/08/explaining-olympus-live-compos... for example shots.
ivanech 10y ago
Once you know some basic principles of photography, this actually shouldn't be all that surprising. The Google Nexus 6P uses a 1/2.3 inch type sensor that measures 6.17 x 4.55 mm. That gives us ~28 square mm of sensor area. The initial example image was taken with a full-frame camera with a sensor that measures 24 x 36 mm, yielding 864 square mm. That gives the DSLR ~30x the sensor area of the Nexus. Then with the same amount of light per square mm per second (measured by the f-stop of the lens) the Nexus needs to expose the image for 30x longer than the full-frame camera to gather the equivalent amount of light. It just so happens that this approach used 32 exposures - it makes sense that the results look comparable to a full-frame camera because the phone gathered just as much light.
shaklee3 10y ago
Fascinating article. Thanks for all the work.
pareshverma91 10y ago
I think it would be interesting to compare an image shot in the daylight with the one created with this processing scheme in the same daylight. I expect the normal exposure shot to be better than the processed one, but it would be interesting to observe the difference in quality.
HappyTypist 10y ago
What I don't get is why JPEG is still so commonly used when it introduces significant artifacting (even at high qualities). When a more advanced format like WebP can deliver higher quality images for the same file size.
- feelix 10y ago
  From the article: "The app saves the raw frames captured from the sensor as DNG files, which can later be downloaded onto a PC for processing."
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  What does this have to do with the article?
  - spyder 10y ago
    The images in the article are JPEGs with visible compression artifacts which isn't good if they want to demonstrate the quality of the photos that they can make with the phone.
pcriver 10y ago
https://pcriver.com/operating-systems/windows-7-all-in-one-iso-download.html https://pcriver.com/operating-systems/windows-7-all-in-one-i...
carlob 10y ago
Why take the mean instead of the median of the images? Wouldn't the median be less sensitive to outliers?

380 points by monort 10y ago

"The camera cannot handle exposure times longer than two seconds." What's the reason for this? Is it a hardware restriction? I suppose an artificial software restriction could be removed by using root / other camera software.

Ajedi32 10y ago
The article states that the author wrote his own camera app for the experiment, so it's almost certainly not a restriction that can be worked around by using different camera software.
- leoedin 10y ago
  It's almost certainly not something you can work around with a user space Android app, but "software" covers far more than just that. By the time you're triggering the Android camera APIs you're already very far removed from the software actually talking to the hardware, which is probably where this restriction lies.
quantumet 10y ago
Mostly hardware. Shortest explanation: The sensor exposure time register has a maximum value. Next shortest: But it's actually in units of row readout time, on many sensors, which is also configurable, so the exposure time can be made longer at the cost of slower image readout. In normal operation, readout has to happen at 30fps at least, so extra code is needed to switch to slower readout for extended exposure values. This code then needs validation, the image processing tuning tables need to be updated and verified for the new long exposure durations, and any preview glitches, etc, from resetting base sensor configurations need to be addressed. So a lot of extra work, for a relatively niche feature on a smartphone. Even longer: Many sensors also have an external shutter trigger signal pin, for unlimited exposure duration. But that needs to be wired to the CPU, and all the SW considerations above also apply.
- ahakki 10y ago
  Couldn't it just be a heat dissipation issue? These sensors pack a lot of photo sites into a tiny package.
  - quantumet 10y ago
    To first order, long exposures are probably less power-hungry - much of the sensor power is burned in the image readout, and longer exposures mean you're reading images less often. When collecting light, an image sensor pixel isn't really using up any active power (each pixel is basically a capacitor collecting electrons generated by light hitting the silicon).
    - jfindley 10y ago
      I don't believe this is entirely correct. DSLR sensors get very hot during long exposures - to the point where excessively long exposures can introduce noise into the output from this heat. I don't see why this wouldn't apply even more so to phone sensors, with their incredibly high photosite density. However really long exposures are going to suffer from star trail effects - the earth is rotating relative to the stars, so a long exposure changes stars from a point to a short line, which _usually_ isn't what you want. On a 35mm camera with a fairly wide lens you can get away with ~ 30s of exposure time. On a pixel phone I think you'd be able to get away with ~ 3s exposure time, but as it's going to get pretty hot over this time I'm not sure how much extra image quality you'd actually end up with.
ipsum2 10y ago
It's interesting to note that the Nexus 5, released in 2013, could take exposures up to 30 seconds, iirc. Different sensor hardware.

LoSboccacc 10y ago

if this could become an app it'd be great

veli_joza 10y ago
I'm even more interested in mentioned SeeInTheDark app (that's unfortunately not available yet as it's part of Google research). The video demo is so impressive. I don't really care so much about photography, but decent sensors and optics combined with innovative processing in real-time is really starting to pick up. I've already started using phone camera app to enhance my vision for text that's too far to read. Advances in post-processing will increase our vision even more, as well as allow for night vision and understanding text in other languages. We are transitioning into cyborgs by means of android platform...
- Synaesthesia 10y ago
  Seems like quite a cool app and simple to implement as well. Aligning the images if the phone is not held still could be a problem.

zokier 10y ago

The photos are impressive. But considering the introduction, it would have been nice to have some actual side-by-side comparisons with dslr. And then just for fun, the same exposure stacking applied to dslr at max iso.

twiss 10y ago
Here's the first and second-to-last image in the article: DSLR: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JJORxMmYFuw/WPkESrozTuI/AAAAAAAAByU/pkjoul07knIfKWyvM-xmlaCzvODG28FJQCLcB/s1600/image5.jpg https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JJORxMmYFuw/WPkESrozTuI/AAAAAAAAB... Pixel: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yo9hRd3xLLg/WPkERdbOs7I/AAAAAAAAByk/UDE_MAh3bXszzir_Grxs672mpiKY82DlACEw/s1600/image11.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yo9hRd3xLLg/WPkERdbOs7I/AAAAAAAAB...
- fudged71 10y ago
  The author really should have cut down on the blue saturation for the phone examples, they're pretty ridiculous IMO. But regardless, it's an incredible result considering the sensor capabilities.

th0ma5 10y ago

I know on the XDA forums, at least for the 5x, there is an app someone threw together to do long exposure times. I played with it some and got a pixelated mess, but I didn't try a tripod. Some people on the thread produced some pretty good pictures.

pdelbarba 10y ago

reminds me of the low light video camera that was on here ealier. http://kottke.org/17/04/incredible-low-light-camera-turns-night-into-day http://kottke.org/17/04/incredible-low-light-camera-turns-ni... Not as fast, but the results look fairly similar.

rb808 10y ago

My Nexus 6p takes amazingly good photos - I rarely use an SLR now. The main problem I have is that it shuts down after 10-30 minutes of use - no help from google. https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=227849 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=227849 Makes me want an iPhone. (see below Huawei might be fixing)

thatcherc 10y ago
There's actually a class action lawsuit related to this issue [1]. I first read about it here [2]. I've got a Nexus 6P too and it's great except for the battery and shutdown issues. Mine will shut down at like 20% or so so it's very usable, but it's often at night when I most need to use my phone (calls, rides, etc). [1] - https://chimicles.com/google-nexus-6p-battery-early-shutoff-bootlooping-class-action-investigation/ https://chimicles.com/google-nexus-6p-battery-early-shutoff-... [2] - https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/21/lawsuit-takes-aim-at-google-huawei-over-nexus-6p-battery-issues/ https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/21/lawsuit-takes-aim-at-goo...
- emmelaich 10y ago
  The 5x too. It may well be the same design flaw as the 6p. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37117345 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37117345 Despite the comments there about software it is most likely about heat and a component which is affected over time. I've had a 5x just go dead. Bought a Pixel, it died after a week (probably unrelated to this fault). The replacement is fine though and the phone is great overall and the camera is fantastic.
- nradov 10y ago
  I really cannot understand why consumers persist in buying smartphones with non-removable batteries. All of these battery degradation problems are reduced to minor annoyances if you can buy a replacement battery for ~$35.
mmanfrin 10y ago
Contact the google store about this -- this is something they should replace.

soylentcola 10y ago

I've been pretty happy with my Pixel XL's camera (easily keeps up with the incremental improvements in cell phone cameras over the years) but I also appreciate how they didn't make this into too much of a puff piece where they "hand wave" away the amount of work still needed in Photoshop or similar. The takeaway is that with some effort and intelligent use of other software tools, you can put together a nice image with all sorts of lower-end cameras. The bit at the end about hopefully adding some of this functionality to software available on the phone was a nice touch, as I imagine all of the big players are always working on that sort of thing.

BeetleB 10y ago

Amateur photographer here. This should be the future of DSLRs. Provide some sort of API so that I can create recipes for my photography project. Bonus if the hardware is powerful enough for me to process the way I want to on it (as opposed to the builtin, mostly useless, features). As a silly example, say I want to take 10 photos. I want the first photo to be 1/30s. The next 1/15s, and so on - doubling the interval each time. I just want to be able to program this, and assign it to a button/menu item, so it will do it automatically. Or I want to do custom focus stacking. It should automatically take N shots of predefined focal distances, and if powerful enough, stack them. I've never coded Android apps, so I don't know how much control over the camera is exposed to you, but why can't camera companies provide the same level of control?

mortenjorck 10y ago
I love this idea. I'm imagining a user interface something like Apple Automator, where the user selects from a library of inputs (bracketing, long/short exposures, delays), then stacks some operators (HDR merge, noise-cancelling algorithms), and then outputs (tone mapping, other post-processing). It could be a whole new sandbox to play in before an image even touches Lightroom.
ipsum2 10y ago
I've never tried it before, but Sony allows you to purchase third party camera apps to do such a thing. Example: https://www.playmemoriescameraapps.com/portal/usbdetail.php?eid=IS9104-NPIA09014_00-000012 https://www.playmemoriescameraapps.com/portal/usbdetail.php?...
- BeetleB 10y ago
  That's cool. I never considered Sony. Too limited in terms of lens choices. But if this capability is flexible/powerful enough, then it does kind of compensate.
  - fudged71 10y ago
    Sony has gotten a lot better in the last 5 years. Their OLED viewfinders are an incredible improvement in photography.

Gravityloss 10y ago

Cameras, like so many things, have been increasingly software limited during recent years.

Theodores 10y ago

I think the timelapse style stars is a feature and not a defect, although it goes against the original challenge. Although this article is about the challenge - decent photography with a mobile phone - it does outline how easy it is to layer up lots of images in Photoshop, median everything out and get a long exposure image. Taking out the sensor 'median' was clever too. So you could use this with DSLR images too, to take better long exposure images whatever the sensor, so long as everything is fully HDR and manual. I think that I might just give it a go. With PHP Imagemagick so that I can automate the Photoshop part and tweak settings easily.

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
By "taking out the median" you're talking about what's known as dark frame subtraction. I believe most DSLRs already do this internally for long exposures - try setting your camera for 10s exposure and time how long it takes before it's ready again; I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's about 20s. Smartphones can't do this because they lack an internal shutter. On advanced models (and hacked cameras like MagicLantern/CHDK), you can turn this off and do it manually, e.g. shoot a dark frame for only the first image in a series so you can get ~95% duty cycle rather than ~45%. Especially useful if you're trying to capture a rare event, e.g. lightening. What's weird about the technique in TFA is he takes N bright frames and then N dark frames, computes both medians and then subtracts. By interleaving bright and dark frames, and doing the subtraction before stacking, I'm pretty sure they'd get better results. As for image stacking, there's tons of ways to do it, and quite a few turnkey apps for image stacking for astrophotography as well, e.g. here's a review from last year of a Mac app doing just this: https://petapixel.com/2016/02/20/stack-photos-epic-milky-way-landscapes/ https://petapixel.com/2016/02/20/stack-photos-epic-milky-way...
- gjm11 10y ago
  Doing all the bright frames together and all the dark frames together is surely suboptimal, but it's hardly weird: there's an obvious reason for it. (Namely, that the transition between bright and dark requires covering the camera lens with black tape and it's easier to do and undo that once than 64 times.)

tambourine_man 10y ago

>Still, this may be the lowest-light cellphone photo ever taken. Not so fast buddy. Some of us have been playing with this stuff for a really long time :)

justinfaulkner 10y ago
Any links?

locust101 10y ago

This is great that they are investing so much in camera. In modern smartphone, I do not feel any difference in performance between my moto play and s7 edge. It is just the camera that makes me keep coming back to s7 edge, despite the $300 price tag difference. It is just much more convenient and I have stopped bringing my dslr on trips now since the phone camera works really good.

Jack000 10y ago

for the stars shot the next obvious step would be to automatically segment the image with optical flow. Could also try solving the hand-held problem with ORB feature matching. given the previous posts from the googleblog I kind of expected a bit more algorithmic involvement beyond image stacking.

dboreham 10y ago

Interesting work. However, in order to reproduce the marin headlands DSLR image the smartphone would have needed to also stitch a panorama from multiple frames (because the lens used in the DSLR shot has roughly 2x the FOV angle).

fudged71 10y ago

Incredible results!! I would really love to be able to do this on a phone. I've tried with iPhone to take long exposures and crank up the brightness/HDR to bring out as much signal as possible. This is the best that I could do on a fully moonlit night: http://imgur.com/a/km1D9 http://imgur.com/a/km1D9

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kalleboo 10y ago
Here's an example of what you can get on an iPhone with a 15 second exposure I just shot out my window: http://imgur.com/a/r2YKX http://imgur.com/a/r2YKX Look at the detail added to the mountains in the background I used Camera+ which stitches together images similarly to the article
anc84 10y ago
You could probably get better results by taking multiple independent shots and merging them later.
- fudged71 10y ago
  The app Hydra does this. It's not specifically meant for super dark photos so I don't think they extend exposures to the max.
oarfish 10y ago
400 bad request

jbarham 10y ago

FWIW Olympus already provides in-camera shot stacking for night shots in its Micro Four Thirds cameras via their "live composite" mode. See http://www.duford.com/2016/08/explaining-olympus-live-composite-mode/ http://www.duford.com/2016/08/explaining-olympus-live-compos... for example shots.

ivanech 10y ago

Once you know some basic principles of photography, this actually shouldn't be all that surprising. The Google Nexus 6P uses a 1/2.3 inch type sensor that measures 6.17 x 4.55 mm. That gives us ~28 square mm of sensor area. The initial example image was taken with a full-frame camera with a sensor that measures 24 x 36 mm, yielding 864 square mm. That gives the DSLR ~30x the sensor area of the Nexus. Then with the same amount of light per square mm per second (measured by the f-stop of the lens) the Nexus needs to expose the image for 30x longer than the full-frame camera to gather the equivalent amount of light. It just so happens that this approach used 32 exposures - it makes sense that the results look comparable to a full-frame camera because the phone gathered just as much light.

shaklee3 10y ago

Fascinating article. Thanks for all the work.

pareshverma91 10y ago

I think it would be interesting to compare an image shot in the daylight with the one created with this processing scheme in the same daylight. I expect the normal exposure shot to be better than the processed one, but it would be interesting to observe the difference in quality.

HappyTypist 10y ago

What I don't get is why JPEG is still so commonly used when it introduces significant artifacting (even at high qualities). When a more advanced format like WebP can deliver higher quality images for the same file size.

feelix 10y ago
From the article: "The app saves the raw frames captured from the sensor as DNG files, which can later be downloaded onto a PC for processing."
TulliusCicero 10y ago
What does this have to do with the article?
- spyder 10y ago
  The images in the article are JPEGs with visible compression artifacts which isn't good if they want to demonstrate the quality of the photos that they can make with the phone.

pcriver 10y ago

https://pcriver.com/operating-systems/windows-7-all-in-one-iso-download.html https://pcriver.com/operating-systems/windows-7-all-in-one-i...

carlob 10y ago

Why take the mean instead of the median of the images? Wouldn't the median be less sensitive to outliers?