Soft photos - I think it is noise reduction.

[michail71]

I did some test yesterday to see if noise reduction could be the cause of the overly soft photos we are all seeing from this phone. It was a crude test but I did a test shot at ISO 100 and then another at ISO 400. This test shot had a bit of fine detail in it. Anyway, the ISO 100 shot looked sharper, but still not as sharp as it should be. The ISO 400 shot looked very soft in comparison.

It's possible the noise reduction is kicking in too high at the higher ISO levels since noise should go up with ISO.

Would anyone else like to test this theory out?

I'll try to get my test shots up later.

 

[pjeung]

somebody said that a while back.. i remember cuz i have my ISO set at 100... daytime pictures aren't immaculate, but they are passable =)

 

[anon(5370748)]

We're not going to know until someone starts messing around with API. I poked around on the dev sites, and I think it's not that big of an issue (for someone who knows what they're doing) to write an app that extracts the raw data prior to compression. I don't know enough about code to try it myself. Once we can get the raw data to use as a baseline, we can start making real comparisons.

 

[joeynox]

u can visually see the phone applying the softness to the pictures as u take it. i dont undertsand how people are getting sharp pictures. i had my phone mounteted to a tripod and tapped the screena nd it still did the exact same thing. the detail between a iphone 4,4s,5 and l920 is night and day

 

[congusano]

u can visually see the phone applying the softness to the pictures as u take it. i dont undertsand how people are getting sharp pictures. i had my phone mounteted to a tripod and tapped the screena nd it still did the exact same thing. the detail between a iphone 4,4s,5 and l920 is night and day

The phone excels with macros, low light and night time photography. It needs some tweaking with the daylight photo's. i believe also that it is just an over zealous use of noise reduction AND jpeg compression.

 

[jdhooghe]

Leave the poor horse alone.

 

[michail71]

The first thing I photographed with the phone was a horse. I thought the picture looked rather soft before reading any of these threads.

 

[michail71]

I contacted support on this and let them know about these issues with jpeg compression and noise reduction. It should be interesting to see how (or if) they respond.

 

[joeynox]

I just left an att store because a friend wanted the galaxy express and played around with the 8x. Wow now that's a camera that produces sharp images. It'd also so light. I hope Nokia fixes this issue an all of the other issues because they release a 930 or a new phone. The galaxy express is nice and the 5mp camera is really good. Low like was well also. Samsung makes phones really well. Besides the soft image the only other thing that bothers me with the camera is the white balance and the constant changing of balance