1520 camera too sensitive to light?

[tofurice]

Ok, I like taking photos but I'm probably not very good at explaining this, nevertheless I'll give it a try:

I find that my 1520 handles sunlight quite poorly especially when it comes to balancing shady areas and bright areas in a photo. The photo below is an example. You can see that the sky is just overexposed. Yes I can always choose a focus point but if i focus the camera on the indoor area, the sky will be too bright, while if I focus it on the sky, the indoor area will be totally black. it's like I just can't have BOTH. Even my ipad does a better job as I can at least see some blue skies as well as the table and chairs in the photo I took with it.

Just wondering if you guys have the same issue with 1520? Any suggestions?



Focus on the sky

Focus on the indoors


Some other examples:

 

[akthelonelyman]

Dont know.i find it good for daytime pics. "almost" near 1020.
Its at night the trouble comes coz of f/2.4 aperture. Noise levels are ok but it appears darker than it is at night.
Another problem is it appears a bit darker if u take pics against the sun but I guess that is the case for most

 

[Sam_oslo]

Just wondering if you guys have the same issue with 1520? Any suggestions?

As a general rule, you shoot avoid shooting against a very bright light, specially when you are inside a dark room, unless you have a expensive camera with a huge Dynamic Range or HDR-function, and know what you are doing too. I don't think an Ipad can produce a descent shot in your indoor scene either, unless the App have a HDR function.

Every camera, even expensive dSLRs will have issue with such a huge Dynamic Range, and that's why some of them uses in-camera HDR function.

If you have to shoot that scene, you should find a App or a software with HDR function.

 

[anon(5816156)]

As Sam_oslo suggest, try download an app that allows shooting HDR on your phone (In my case, I download 4Blend HDR and it was awesome). Your pictures seem normal to me. (The last pic is excellent though)

 

[zombie zom]

As Sam_oslo suggest, try download an app that allows shooting HDR on your phone (In my case, I download 4Blend HDR and it was awesome). Your pictures seem normal to me. (The last pic is excellent though)

tofurice go try tis app.. and take with same scene please. im also wanted to see a result.

 

[Citizen X]

1520 camera too sensitive to light?

That wouldn't make economic sense. If anything certain camera manufactures on certain models over rate the ISO (light sensitivity).

You just need to learn to use the camera. When you "focus" on the sky specifically it is not just using the sky as a focus point it is also taking a meter reading from that place and ignoring the rest of the field of view. You may want to google "spot, average and multimetering." There are entire books written on the subject. Ansel Adams' "The Negative" is a great resource if you want to understand metering and fitting in as many light values on the negative. One important caveat is with digital you have to "expose for the highlights" instead of exposing for the shadows with film. With film if you don't get enough light on the negative the negative will be completely blank in the underexposed shadows with no detail. The opposite is true with digital sensors. If you deliver too much light to the highlights they will get "blown." The sensor will register 255, 255, 255 for the red, green and blue values and there will be no detail. If you don't "blow" the highlights as bad maybe only one or two of the channels will "clip" but that results in weird color shifts. None of those situations is recoverable.

As others mentioned the real issue is "dynamic range." The digital sensor can only record a certain width of light intensities. If you exceed that width you get blown highlights or really noisy shadows.

What I do is if the scene has wide dynamic range is I use the Nokia camera utility and manually underexpose to preserve the highlights which makes for a dark picture even on a sunny day. Just reduce the exposure till there is detail in the highlights like clouds or snow. Once I take this dark picture I then go into the Windows Phone editing program and use the magic want to auto correct the picture. It increases the light in the shadows and so you have a normal looking picture with preserved highlights. This doesn't always work because the dynamic range may be just too wide and when you attempt to recover the shadows you get a blocky noisy mess. Experiment and see what results you like. Keep in mind sometimes you have to blow the highlights and just accept it. There are no hard and fast rules. That's why it's art.

Honestly I have seen a lot of bad photography done with the 1520. I guess people don't know how to use it. Early sample pictures were pretty terrible.

 

[tofurice]

Thanks for your explanation and suggestions. Made a lot of sense to me.And I do agree with you, I think there is still so much about this phone for me to explore. I'm usually a point-and-shoot type of person so I'm sure I have not made full use of the functions of my phone camera.

As for HDR, I have tried Camera360 which comes with a HDR filter, it didn't solve the problem. And personally I don't really like to surreal and overly processed look of HDR photos.

That wouldn't make economic sense. If anything certain camera manufactures on certain models over rate the ISO (light sensitivity).

You just need to learn to use the camera. When you "focus" on the sky specifically it is not just using the sky as a focus point it is also taking a meter reading from that place and ignoring the rest of the field of view. You may want to google "spot, average and multimetering." There are entire books written on the subject. Ansel Adams' "The Negative" is a great resource if you want to understand metering and fitting in as many light values on the negative. One important caveat is with digital you have to "expose for the highlights" instead of exposing for the shadows with film. With film if you don't get enough light on the negative the negative will be completely blank in the underexposed shadows with no detail. The opposite is true with digital sensors. If you deliver too much light to the highlights they will get "blown." The sensor will register 255, 255, 255 for the red, green and blue values and there will be no detail. If you don't "blow" the highlights as bad maybe only one or two of the channels will "clip" but that results in weird color shifts. None of those situations is recoverable.

As others mentioned the real issue is "dynamic range." The digital sensor can only record a certain width of light intensities. If you exceed that width you get blown highlights or really noisy shadows.

What I do is if the scene has wide dynamic range is I use the Nokia camera utility and manually underexpose to preserve the highlights which makes for a dark picture even on a sunny day. Just reduce the exposure till there is detail in the highlights like clouds or snow. Once I take this dark picture I then go into the Windows Phone editing program and use the magic want to auto correct the picture. It increases the light in the shadows and so you have a normal looking picture with preserved highlights. This doesn't always work because the dynamic range may be just too wide and when you attempt to recover the shadows you get a blocky noisy mess. Experiment and see what results you like. Keep in mind sometimes you have to blow the highlights and just accept it. There are no hard and fast rules. That's why it's art.

Honestly I have seen a lot of bad photography done with the 1520. I guess people don't know how to use it. Early sample pictures were pretty terrible.

 

[anon(5816156)]

Thanks for your explanation and suggestions. Made a lot of sense to me.And I do agree with you, I think there is still so much about this phone for me to explore. I'm usually a point-and-shoot type of person so I'm sure I have not made full use of the functions of my phone camera.

As for HDR, I have tried Camera360 which comes with a HDR filter, it didn't solve the problem. And personally I don't really like to surreal and overly processed look of HDR photos.

I suggest you to download 4Blend HDR. You can set the exposures (Over exposed, normal, and sub) and try tweak these things that suited you. At least it's free and worth a try.