Question about the camera

[jusernejm]

Hello everyone!

I'm reposting my question from the Pictures + Videos thread in hope the get an answer sooner.

I picked up a 950 XL yesterday and I have a question concerning the camera.
I'm coming form a 1020 and I'm used to do some long exposure (3-4s) night shots with low ISO.
Doing the same with the 950 XL tends to produce way to bright pictures. To counter this I would usually just increase the shutter speed.
Now on my 950 XL, using a fastish shutter speed (say 0.5 to 1s) with a low ISO (50) produces a very strange pink noise on the corners.
I cannot reproduce this effect on any other of my devices (1020 and 930). Increasing shutter speed on these just makes the pictures darker (as supposed to).
Is this normal behaviour or do I have a defective unit?

I will upload Pictures as soon as I get home.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Hello everyone!

I'm reposting my question from the Pictures + Videos thread in hope the get an answer sooner.

I picked up a 950 XL yesterday and I have a question concerning the camera.
I'm coming form a 1020 and I'm used to do some long exposure (3-4s) night shots with low ISO.
Doing the same with the 950 XL tends to produce way to bright pictures. To counter this I would usually just increase the shutter speed.
Now on my 950 XL, using a fastish shutter speed (say 0.5 to 1s) with a low ISO (50) produces a very strange pink noise on the corners.
I cannot reproduce this effect on any other of my devices (1020 and 930). Increasing shutter speed on these just makes the pictures darker (as supposed to).
Is this normal behaviour or do I have a defective unit?

I will upload Pictures as soon as I get home.

That pinkish hue might be a hardware defect. Can you install proshot app and try doing a long exposure using that app using the same settings? If the same hue appears again, then it is the hardware. Also try changing aspect ratio to 4:3 and see if the corners still have the hue

 

[eins2dreivier]

Hey Chintan!

Thanks for your advice. I tried 4:3 aspect ratio and the issue persists. I tried ProShot too, but couldn't find any setting to adjust shutter speed. The few shots I did with the ProShot app did show almost no purple/pink hue...

Here are the pics to show you what I mean. I did shoot the scene on the 1020 too for comparison. Focus point for all pictures is the small green lattern in the middle of the pic.

The Lumia 950 XL was set to manual mode for this. ISO was set to 50 on both pics.
Exposure time on the first picture was 4s and 1s on the second.
The purple/pink hue is clearly visible on the wall on the left side of the picture.




And here are the Lumia 1020 pics for comparison. I know that the second picture is to dark, but it clearly shows how the picture just gets darker with shorter exposure. The 1020 was set to manual too, ISO was 100. Exposure was again 4s for the first pic and 1s for the second. These are 5mpx oversampled pictures as windowscentral wouldn't let me upload the full resolution pictures (probably due to the large size...)




Can anyone try something similar and tell me what their results are?

The more I play with the camera the more it seems like a software issue...at least I hope so

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Open proshot (I'm in landscape mode). On the top right corner of the screen is a round icon which could be saying auto. Tap that and change to M which is manual. Once in manual mode, the list of settings on the right should show size, ISO, flash, shutter speed. That's where you can change shutter speed or ISO

By the way if you try changing white balance? Does that remove the hue at night?

 

[mtf1380]

Is there a remote shutter release for the 950xl available anywhere? Is there a way to use a SP3 as a remote shutter release?

Also, is their a preferred camera tripod, or recommendations?

Thank you!

 

[pankaj981]

@OP: Why are you lowering the ISO? Set it on default and checkout the noise and quality. Using an exif reader check the ISO the camera app sets on it (this may significantly vary from shot to shot) and then start experimenting.

 

[eins2dreivier]

@Chintan
The problem is that the manual option in ProShot is greyed out for me...I can only set it to Auto/P/C1/C2.

I will try changing the white balance tonight.

@pankaj981
I'm setting the ISO to the lowest possible value to reduce the noise.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

@Chintan
The problem is that the manual option in ProShot is greyed out for me...I can only set it to Auto/P/C1/C2.

I will try changing the white balance tonight.

@pankaj981
I'm setting the ISO to the lowest possible value to reduce the noise.

I think you have to pay for that feature in proshot

 

[pankaj981]

@pankaj981
I'm setting the ISO to the lowest possible value to reduce the noise.

Yes I get that. I meant try playing with the ISO to get to a middle ground rather than setting it to 100 or 50. You can also try shooting in DNG format and then apply noise reduction using an image processing software.

 

[Nikita Van Vinci]

Proshot doesn't support some api in new 950/950xl phones. Waiting for new proshot version.

 

[eins2dreivier]

@Chintan
I have the paid version of ProShot but I think that shutter speed on the 950/Xl is not supported yet.

@pankaj981
I get all of that...I just want to know if this is normal for the 950 camera or if my device is faulty. I already have found a workaround in case this is normal behaviour (leaving shutter speed on auto and setting exposure compensation into the negative darkens the picture without introducing purple hue).

 

[TK2011]

Nothing wrong with your phone nor software. What you are seeing is just different implementation of auto white balancing. There's no right or wrong on this. Different cameras give you different amount of color correction when you have a predominantly dark and reddish scene like that. Some like reds in tact, some prefer it completely removed.

 

[eins2dreivier]

Here are two more pictures with a different scene. Both ISO 50, exposure on the first was 1s and on the second 1/10s.




@Chintan
I did shoot the same scene of the first few shots again with manually setting different white balance and the results are...well let me just say that the phone completely ignores the manual setting.
I did four shots, each shot with a different white balance and all of them ended up having the same white balance. The Lumia 1020 does not exhibit this issue...when there's enough light the 950 changes the white balance like it's supposed to though.

Either my phone is faulty or MS needs to do some serious work on the camera software...

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Here are two more pictures with a different scene. Both ISO 50, exposure on the first was 1s and on the second 1/10s.

View attachment 125972
View attachment 125973

@Chintan
I did shoot the same scene of the first few shots again with manually setting different white balance and the results are...well let me just say that the phone completely ignores the manual setting.
I did four shots, each shot with a different white balance and all of them ended up having the same white balance. The Lumia 1020 does not exhibit this issue...when there's enough light the 950 changes the white balance like it's supposed to though.

Either my phone is faulty or MS needs to do some serious work on the camera software...

Your case is proving to be challenging :excited:

Is your 1020 or 930 on windows 10? If yes, can you try the same using the camera app? If you can reproduce the same effect using the same camera app across different models, then it's a software issue. If not, then hardware I suspect

 

[eins2dreivier]

Your case is proving to be challenging :excited:

Is your 1020 or 930 on windows 10? If yes, can you try the same using the camera app? If you can reproduce the same effect using the same camera app across different models, then it's a software issue. If not, then hardware I suspect

The Lumia 930 is on Windows 10 and I'm using the Windows Camera on both devices. No purple hue on the 930 though...

No purple hue on your 950? Did you try a low light shot with low ISO and fast shutter speed?

 

[RobotX]

Brighter Picture is expected in Lumia 950XL/950.
950XL camera aperture is f/1.9 compared to Lumia 1020 aperture f/2.2.
(smaller number means bigger opening)
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number

This effectively give 950XL 0.423 stops brighter image with the same shutter speed.
Quite significant in my opinion. This will be significantly noticeable at low shutter speed as you're setting in your test setup.

Here is an example for the same exposure to be achieved by both camera:
By 950XL in 1/67 sec @ f/1.9
By 1020 in 1/50 sec @ f/2.2

Coupled with lower megapixel (less CoC expectation for considered sharp image),
you can say 950xl has better spec for less blurry 'handheld' photograph.

As for color, I've been examining my 950XL DNG and I found out that it comes with a really poor profile.
It turns skin tones into monochromatic yellow and seems to have massive problem with blue and purple.
I'll be making a .dcp profile to correct those that can be used in Raw processor program such as adobe lightroom.
Stay tuned. Will post it in the forum to share the file.

 

[Chintan Gohel]

The Lumia 930 is on Windows 10 and I'm using the Windows Camera on both devices. No purple hue on the 930 though...

No purple hue on your 950? Did you try a low light shot with low ISO and fast shutter speed?

Actually, I have a 1020, no 950 or 950xl (not that lucky).

 

[pdch]

There are major problems with the post processing in thewindows camera app. I really wish youcould disable this. Try to look closelyat the picture right after it has been taken and see if you notice the pinkbefore the post processing has completed. If it is there before, you have a camera problem. I do not have this issues on my 950xl andhave taken quite a few iso 50/long exposure shots.

 

[eins2dreivier]

Hey pdch! Thanks for your answer.

Long exposure is fine on my device too, it's too short exposure that's creating the issue.

I noticed that when I take the shot the device shows me a normal picture with no hue for a split second...

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Hey pdch! Thanks for your answer.

Long exposure is fine on my device too, it's too short exposure that's creating the issue.

I noticed that when I take the shot the device shows me a normal picture with no hue for a split second...

what about taking in raw format? Or you don't work with RAW files?