Optical image stabilization

[greycounciller]

I got friendly with a guy at a care centre. He said he'd swap out the camera unit for me and see if it improves. I said I'd wait for the update first. We'll see.

 

[cdodgela]

I had to get my perfectly working L920 replaced due to a shattered screen (three foot drop from shirt pocket, first phone shattered ever in 20 years of phones, Gorilla Glass??) I had no less than five refurb replacements before I got one that was good. The different problems were: bad touch screen, light leak on the screen, spontaneous rebooting, wireless charging stopped working, and last but not least, blurry camera pictures! You should be getting clear, amazing pictures.

 

[VisualD]

The cat head is more blurry than the floor suggests a very long shutter speed as the extra blur of the head is the cat moving, not the camera. Though, without EXIF data (shutter speed, aperture etc) it's impossible to say for sure what happened.

Can you upload the image file somewhere so that the EXIF ddata is kept?

 

[realwarder]

Make sure you reset your camera options to default. Proshot is better than default camera app because at least you can see when things are on older settings.

I do find the button messes up shots for me, so I always use the screen - the button requires too much effort to press and causes the camera to move or something.


Focus on that sample does look to be more on the chair than the cat though. You sure it's not in macro mode? As I said, reset the camera app menu options.

 

[pkvillager]

You and/or your subject are moving too much. I will admit the iphone to me is the easiest phone to take good pictures with. However after a couple of tries I can get a better picture than my brother' iphone. if my subject is stationary I rarely need more than one shot though. I use the stock app and all default settings.
On your 5th 920?! I had my original iphone replaced 3 times and thought that was nuts.

 

[greycounciller]

As you can see by the shot, I held the camera pretty still as evidenced by the sofa not being blurred and the floor also.
It just seems that any movement any of the object, no matter how small, gives blurred shots.
I don't know if the EXIF data is uploaded in the shot, but it gives a shutter speed of f1/13 and ISO of 640. No Flash. File size is 1.95mb
I'll try and upload some other examples.

 

[VisualD]

Well, at 1/13 hardly any movement is going to be frozen, great shutter speed for panning though! You need a way lower shutter speed to freeze most movements of the cat, 1/50 is often a minimum even if the cat is pretty still but under 1/100 is preferable. For example when I shoot sports with my DSLR I keep it bellow 1/640 to freeze most movements, 1/1000 and lower is often the aim. No camera is going to go around the shutter speed limit as it's a physical law.

When you make videos the blur actually helps it look natural to our brain and most of us are used to quite slow shutter speeds as they give the "film look" with the extra blur.

Actually having the stationary objects that sharp at 1/13 is quite impressive, that's the OIS.

Understanding the holy trinity of shutter speed, aperture and ISO is a great help for photography: CameraSim simulates a digital SLR camera - SLR Photography Demystified

 

[kwambe5]

I have epilepsy.

I would be offended, but then I thought of me having a fit whilst taking a picture.

At least it wouldn't be blurry.

I am glad you are not offended, because I was not trying to offend anybody. That just happened to be the easiest way to describe what I was saying. Sorry!

 

[WorzelGummage]

It is now well known that the default camera application on the 920 is buggy and has difficulty in focusing. There is a thread all about this on the official Nokia Support forum plus there have been a few discussions about this on this forum too. The GDR2/Amber update is supposed to address this problem by introducing new algorithms for the camera. We can safely say that the problem is software related because if you install Camera360 and take some pictures using the manual focus mode your shots will be spot on.

 

[majortom1981]

Somebody posted on another 920 topic that gdr2 adds some higher iso and shoots better pictures. So you are right about the changed algorithyms

 

[WorzelGummage]

Somebody posted on another 920 topic that gdr2 adds some higher iso and shoots better pictures. So you are right about the changed algorithyms

That's good to hear. I'm quite looking forward to receiving the Nokia Pro-Camera application because of all the customisable settings including manual focus.

 

[greycounciller]

We can safely say that the problem is software related because if you install Camera360 and take some pictures using the manual focus mode your shots will be spot on.

I have Camera360 and it's a bit of a pain having to manually focus if the camera has "auto focus".

 

[realwarder]

I have Camera360 and it's a bit of a pain having to manually focus if the camera has "auto focus".

Manual focus is not "a bit of a pain", it's a neat feature to have available so you can make your photos look like you like. Most people will however use auto focus and that will work for them.

Even autofocus has options though - the camera focuses where you tell it to (e.g. where you press on image on the screen). Good photos always require slightly more effort (a little) than just point in a direction and hope for the best.

 

[Gustavo Sanchez]

As you can see by the shot, I held the camera pretty still as evidenced by the sofa not being blurred and the floor also.
It just seems that any movement any of the object, no matter how small, gives blurred shots.
I don't know if the EXIF data is uploaded in the shot, but it gives a shutter speed of f1/13 and ISO of 640. No Flash. File size is 1.95mb
I'll try and upload some other examples.
View attachment 39458

f1/13 is not the shutter speed, it's the lens focal ratio... The shutter speed is measured in seconds.


Sent from my Nokia Lumia 920

 

[Gustavo Sanchez]

I take my pictures using the hardware button, not the screen. I use it like DSLR, "squeezing" the button instead of hard-pressing it.

It took this picture, hand held, using Proshot: http://www.captandoelcosmos.com/CEC...2013_05_24_22_43_50_ProShot20130524225152.jpg



Sent from my Nokia Lumia 920

 

[greycounciller]

@Gustavo Sanchez, my bad.
It is f/2, Shutter Speed 1/13 & ISO 640

 

[Moiz Mian]

@Gustavo Sanchez, my bad.
It is f/2, Shutter Speed 1/13 & ISO 640

Unfortunately OIS does not handle moving subjects very well. Because it can keep the lens steady, it opens the shutter for a longer period of time. The trade off for letting in more light is that you get blurrier pictures. It happens with my cat as well. Try turning the lights off in your bedroom for example and then take a picture with the iphone and your lumia 920. You'll immediately notice the benefit of the OIS

 

[VisualD]

Unfortunately OIS does not handle moving subjects very well. Because it can keep the lens steady, it opens the shutter for a longer period of time. The trade off for letting in more light is that you get blurrier pictures. It happens with my cat as well. Try turning the lights off in your bedroom for example and then take a picture with the iphone and your lumia 920. You'll immediately notice the benefit of the OIS

Yep, the phone "knows" it got OIS so it keeps the shutter open a bit longer than on non-stabilized units to keep ISO down and image quality up. It works great for stationary objects and landscapes but the backside is that if the subject itself moves the OIS won't compensate for that movement. In the end you end up with great sharp low ISO surroundings but a blurry subject. I think it's a good priority though and when you need to freeze movement you have to force it to choose a faster shutter at the cost of overall image quality.

 

[jerry1023]

Image stabilization is a family of techniques used to reduce blurring associated with the motion of a camera during exposure. Specifically, it compensates for pan and tilt (angular movement, equivalent to yaw and pitch) of a camera or other imaging device. It is used in image-stabilized binoculars, still and video cameras, and astronomical telescopes. With still cameras, camera shake is particularly problematic at slow shutter speeds or with long focal length (telephoto) lenses. With video cameras, camera shake causes visible frame-to-frame jitter in the recorded video. In astronomy, the problem of lens-shake is added to by variations in the atmosphere over time, which will cause the apparent positions of objects to change.