Why do my 5MP images look better than my 34MP ones?

[ayejay0601]

Just got this phone a few weeks ago. I am soooo happy with it and honestly cant understand some of the complains I have been seeing (except maybe the apps complaint). Battery life, in particular is impressive. And of course camera...

I returned from a trip to Alaska (photographing Aurora's). I have two of each photo on my phone, a 5MP and a 34MP (as the phone takes both). However, when I open them up on my computer screen, the 34MP photo looks worse than the 5MP photo. It looks a little more blurry and sometimes a bit darker. Does this happen to anyone else and is there is a reason/fix for this? I have attached some images for comparison....you may need to open it up on a larger screen to really see the difference.... thanks in advance for any help. Ok, well it looks like it wont let me upload the bigger files, but I have left the smaller files so you can see how beautiful Alaska is at this time of year.

One thought that just struck me--could this be occurring because I am viewing this in Windows Photo Viewer? Maybe the viewer (which automatically will resize photos larger than the screen size) is manipulating pixels to and that is causing the distortion?

 

[troylytle]

Are you shooting in jpeg or raw?

 

[ayejay0601]

They are all in JPG

 

[Sean Miller4]

Where are the 38 mp ones I only see 5mp?


Edit I mean 34

 

[John20212]

I noticed the same thing when viewing the 34mp photos from my 1020. The problem is that you need to view the photos on a larger screen at higher res to really see them as they should be. The only way I see them at better quality than the 5mp ones is when I put them on full screen on my 17" 1080p laptop screen. Haven't tried on bigger display or higher res display, but from experience anything bellow this will show them more blurry; they are still much better for printing, so if you ever print any shots you should use the higher res ones.
For viewing on small or low resolution screens the 5mp is probably the better option.

 

[Sean Miller4]

These pics he posted are only 5mp you do know how to get the 34 mp from your phone right? Its not the same process chances are you are pulling the 5mp double copy that the phone takes every time it snaps a shot in 34 mp it takes one in 5 mp you probably aren't even looking at the 34mp.

 

[John20212]

I haven't looked at his pics, but from my experience I know what he is talking about when he mentions blurriness when viewing both 5mp and 34mp on the PC.

 

[Crasstoe]

...if you ever print any shots you should use the higher res ones.
For viewing on small or low resolution screens the 5mp is probably the better option.

THIS!

The larger files are best viewed on a Retina Display or similar.

If you view the larger file on a smaller screen it is downsampling at a terrible rate to show the photo. Flickr does a pretty good job of downsampling if you upload the larger files.

 

[Tafsern]

THIS!

The larger files are best viewed on a Retina Display or similar.

If you view the larger file on a smaller screen it is downsampling at a terrible rate to show the photo. Flickr does a pretty good job of downsampling if you upload the larger files.

It's called a high resolution display. Retina is just a stupid MADE UP name

 

[ayejay0601]

Thanks everyone. I downloaded both the 5mp and 34mp from the phone by opening up the folders on my desktop (one is called filename_pro and the other is called filename_highres). One is about 2MB in size and the other is closer to 10MB. So I am pretty sure I am looking at the correct photos. I am also looking at the photos on my 22" desktop screen. My best guess for why this is happening is the "downsampling" that somebody mentioned. I think that when I use windows photo viewer, the image is being downsampled somehow. I am going to try using different screens and different photo viewers to see if that helps.

 

[ayejay0601]

Where are the 38 mp ones I only see 5mp?


Edit I mean 34

For some reason, I was not able to upload the 34MB photos...I think this site has a limitation on attachment size.

 

[Sean Miller4]

Well the 5mp have also been touched up internally by the phone before they hit your computer.

 

[Nabkawe5]

Nokia wanted to solve the zoom problem on a phone without using lenses or moving parts, they thought up a solution used in satellite imaging where they use 130mp cameras to take pictures and use the extra resolution to zoom without degradation in quality, of course saving high res images not only would've been a chore to storage capacity but it'll also limit sharing and editing options, so the excellent engineers at Nokia thought of Pureview, its down sampling high res images to 5mp pics while choosing only the best pixels out of the full res picture (as there lots of pixels noise pixels could be skipped while attaining the information filled pixel.
This way a 5mp shot is a Pureview picture out of a 34/38mp picture that is full of noise and sometimes unwanted extra details.
You need to understand that you were never meant to use the 34mp to take big pictures (its an added bonus) but you were meant to use that extra mega pixels to zoom on your subject afterwards or during a video.

I hope this helped, look for Pureview whitepaper from Nokia it explains the technology FULLY.

 

[James8561]

yea try viewing it on a 1080p (at least) monitor using photoshop or something like that.

 

[Crasstoe]

1080p isn't enough to view all the information in one hit from the larger photos, you need more pixels dammit! Think 4K

Sent from my RM-875_eu_euro1_211 using Tapatalk

 

[Harshv61]

Nokia 808 vs 1020 vs QX100 Image Quality Comparison
Nokia 808 PureView vs Nokia Lumia 1020 vs Sony QX100 – a detailed comparison | PureView Club

 

[thelostsoul]

Nokia wanted to solve the zoom problem on a phone without using lenses or moving parts, they thought up a solution used in satellite imaging where they use 130mp cameras to take pictures and use the extra resolution to zoom without degradation in quality, of course saving high res images not only would've been a chore to storage capacity but it'll also limit sharing and editing options, so the excellent engineers at Nokia thought of Pureview, its down sampling high res images to 5mp pics while choosing only the best pixels out of the full res picture (as there lots of pixels noise pixels could be skipped while attaining the information filled pixel.
This way a 5mp shot is a Pureview picture out of a 34/38mp picture that is full of noise and sometimes unwanted extra details.
You need to understand that you were never meant to use the 34mp to take big pictures (its an added bonus) but you were meant to use that extra mega pixels to zoom on your subject afterwards or during a video.

I hope this helped, look for Pureview whitepaper from Nokia it explains the technology FULLY.

Nabkawe5 is right that the 34mp image was not supposed to be the image that the end user uses most of the time, but there are a few more details missing here. When you look at Nokia's 5MP image, you are seeing Nokia's carefully designed algorithm which averages pixels to produce the best possible image based on surrounding data.

When you look at the 34MP image, unless you use an advanced image viewer, you are most likely looking at your image viewer's fast algorithm that fits the image to your screen by ignoring a number of pixels and rendering the fastest image it can. This means you're missing a lot of the data and quality in the image so that it can show you an image faster. These fast image viewers are, for the most part, not programmed with any algorithms to show you a high-quality image from those 34mp images.

In addition, when set to JPG mode, you're limited to JPG compression. This is really where that blur and slight distortion comes from. If you take the picture in RAW mode, you will likely see a very sharp, but very noisy image. That sharpness and noise is usually blurred in the JPG's compression algorithms, creating an easier to use, but slightly lower quality image for convenience. This exists in the 5MP image as well, but Nokia's algorithms did their best to filter out the bad data so that when it was compressed to JPG, it only had good image data to compress. If there's only good data there, it's not getting mixed with much noise, and it will look much better. Nokia's thought process was to take as much data as possible and filter it. It's like statistics - if you want to make sure your data is accurate, you have to increase your sample size. So if you want a really good 5MP image, take a 41MP picture, then remove the outliers (the bad data) and take some averages of what's left.

And as for RAW, that is really designed for advanced photo editors who know how to handle color management and various processing to remove noise, and white balance, and so many other image processing techniques that I know very little about. This gives you the fullest ability to recreate Nokia's algorithm on their own, or to create your own, hopefully improved, algorithm. But this requires knowledge, skill, and time. I have none of these.

So TLDR:
5MP images : Processed by Nokia's algorithm to create their idea of the best quality, sharable image.
34MP JPG : Raw data from the camera compressed into a lossy JPG format, bypassing Nokia's algorithm (for the most part). Requires better image handling to print and scale down the image, but usable if you zoomed into the wrong area, or if you want larger prints that the 5MPs can give you.
RAW DNG : Use for the best possible quality if you really know image processing and have the time to do the work to make the RAW data look good.

 

[eortizr]

THIS!

The larger files are best viewed on a Retina Display or similar.

If you view the larger file on a smaller screen it is downsampling at a terrible rate to show the photo. Flickr does a pretty good job of downsampling if you upload the larger files.

Calling an HD Display 'Retina Display' is as ignorant as calling all Android Devices 'Droid'

 

[Crasstoe]

Calling an HD Display 'Retina Display' is as ignorant as calling all Android Devices 'Droid'

Or it is using an example of a high resolution display in a forum post. Apples High Resolution Display is known as the Retina Display, which makes it a perfect example of a working product people are familiar with.

Put your pitchfork down and go home.

 

[eortizr]

Or it is using an example of a high resolution display in a forum post. Apples High Resolution Display is known as the Retina Display, which makes it a perfect example of a working product people are familiar with.

Put your pitchfork down and go home.

Retina Display is not even an HD standard. The iPhone 5/5s have a retina display but it is not an HD display by any standards