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I think we're dealing with the classic "Professional vs. Regular/Consumer opinion" here. The person you responded to seems to work with media or at least knows

by 4ggr0 4y ago

I think we're dealing with the classic "Professional vs. Regular/Consumer opinion" here. The person you responded to seems to work with media or at least knows some things about video formats and editing. To them, true, raw colors and representations are what they want. You on the other hand may like the slightly unrealistic, but appealing look of the Pixel phones, which tend to look oversaturated to professionals, but better to consumers. Similar to how audiophiles like headphones which sound flat and boring to regular people, yet audiophiles think regular peoples headphones have way too much bass and treble. Different products and needs for different use-cases, I guess.

jiggawatts 4y ago
You're guessing at my point of view... correctly. I'm not exactly a professional, but I've done enough photography that I twitch slightly whenever I see color balance that hasn't been set correctly to neutral grey. It's like a typesetter that can't handle bad kerning: https://xkcd.com/1015/ https://xkcd.com/1015/
- 4ggr0 4y ago
  I'm glad that I was able to guess correctly! :D You're maybe not a professional per se, but if I read "color balance that hasn't been set correctly to neutral grey", I have no clue what that's supposed to mean. (I know a bit more now because I fell into a color balance rabbit-hole after reading your comment).
solardev 4y ago
These things aren't mutually exclusive, FWIW. I'm not a professional, but I was a passionate amateur back when SLRs were still a thing. I hate the gimmicky Instagram-style photos myself and overwhelmingly prefer "neutral" pictures -- it's one of the reasons I chose the Pixel. IMO the Pixel phones aren't more saturated than the iPhones (and certainly less than default Samsungs), they just have better dynamic range and color balance. Here's a sample gallery from a sibling post (not my gallery): https://imgur.io/a/vG6Yskx https://imgur.io/a/vG6Yskx The pool picture with the red roof and teal/blue water, for example... the Pixel has a less saturated roof but better color correction for the pool. It's way sharper in the tree photo. In the last two photos with the yellow car by the fence, the iPhone completely blew out the sky but the Pixel captured it fine. That's just one gallery, but that's been my experience the overwhelming amount of time. The Pixels are unique among Android cameras in their ability to process natural-looking photos at very high quality, very quickly, at a very reasonable price point. Other manufacturers ramp up hardware specs or added thirty lenses, but Google's approach is to tackle it all computationally, stacking and analyzing multiple exposures and using algorithms to produce a single output (all automatically). The results are really quite amazing -- to my eyes. At the end of the day digital photography is always a series of judgment calls -- by the sensors, by the firmware, by the software, by the format, by the compressor, by the photographer, doing signals processing on detected light in various ways. Apple optimized the beginning and end stages of that, whereas Google focused on the middle. It might be possible to get better output out of the iPhones if you run it through special software and workflows, but out of the box the Pixels generate better outputs, and I think that's the way most users (on either side) are going to use them...

by 4ggr0 4y ago

jiggawatts 4y ago

You're guessing at my point of view... correctly. I'm not exactly a professional, but I've done enough photography that I twitch slightly whenever I see color balance that hasn't been set correctly to neutral grey. It's like a typesetter that can't handle bad kerning: https://xkcd.com/1015/ https://xkcd.com/1015/

4ggr0 4y ago
I'm glad that I was able to guess correctly! :D You're maybe not a professional per se, but if I read "color balance that hasn't been set correctly to neutral grey", I have no clue what that's supposed to mean. (I know a bit more now because I fell into a color balance rabbit-hole after reading your comment).

solardev 4y ago

These things aren't mutually exclusive, FWIW. I'm not a professional, but I was a passionate amateur back when SLRs were still a thing. I hate the gimmicky Instagram-style photos myself and overwhelmingly prefer "neutral" pictures -- it's one of the reasons I chose the Pixel. IMO the Pixel phones aren't more saturated than the iPhones (and certainly less than default Samsungs), they just have better dynamic range and color balance. Here's a sample gallery from a sibling post (not my gallery): https://imgur.io/a/vG6Yskx https://imgur.io/a/vG6Yskx The pool picture with the red roof and teal/blue water, for example... the Pixel has a less saturated roof but better color correction for the pool. It's way sharper in the tree photo. In the last two photos with the yellow car by the fence, the iPhone completely blew out the sky but the Pixel captured it fine. That's just one gallery, but that's been my experience the overwhelming amount of time. The Pixels are unique among Android cameras in their ability to process natural-looking photos at very high quality, very quickly, at a very reasonable price point. Other manufacturers ramp up hardware specs or added thirty lenses, but Google's approach is to tackle it all computationally, stacking and analyzing multiple exposures and using algorithms to produce a single output (all automatically). The results are really quite amazing -- to my eyes. At the end of the day digital photography is always a series of judgment calls -- by the sensors, by the firmware, by the software, by the format, by the compressor, by the photographer, doing signals processing on detected light in various ways. Apple optimized the beginning and end stages of that, whereas Google focused on the middle. It might be possible to get better output out of the iPhones if you run it through special software and workflows, but out of the box the Pixels generate better outputs, and I think that's the way most users (on either side) are going to use them...