DPReview.com is closing April 10th - Find out more

FV-5 and HedgeCam 2 woes

Started Nov 16, 2021 | Discussions thread
Fred Colon Regular Member • Posts: 103
Re: A tip about free usually paid app

A little late to this discussion and I think I've discussed a similar topic with I2K4 before.

I don't use my phone for much more than snapshots and mostly on auto but that said I've been searching for many months for the a camera app that's better than the stock app on my Realme 6.

The initial problem with the stock app was one of jpeg compression, which was very heavy, and the lack of raw.  Despite a 64Mp/16Mpixel camera it would produce files of say a landscape at about 2.5Mbytes, which is about half of what my dSLR would do.

Subsequent phone updates seem to have improved on the jpeg compression but still no raw.  It does have the capability of producing 64Mpixel images instead of the usual binned 16Mpixels.

The phone is full Camera2Api compliant.

I have tried the following and 'mileage' certainly varies.  I get the impression that most of them just provide different GUIs and Controls but the underlying processing is done at the OS level.  Also they only seem to be able to use the main lens and not the others such as macro.  Electronic stabilisation also seems to be missing.

1.  Camera FV5 - a decent enough interface but can't get full resolution images.  It tops out at 4000 x 3000 pixels when the stock app delivers 4608 x 3456.

It also has some problem with filenaming.

No response from developer

2.  Opencamera/Hedgecam 2 - very similar in capability.  Interface might not be as 'pretty' as some but the app delivers JPEG and Raw at full resolution.

3.  SnapCamera - a nice clean interface and delivers Jpeg and Raw at full resolution.  However, one problem is that its slow to produce the images.  If you close the app just after taking the shot the image files don't get completed and you only get a tmp file.

No response from developer

4. Lightroom Mobile.  - good interface, Jpegs limited to 4000 x 3000 but it carries all the baggage of Lightroom and you can't seem to open the app directly into the camera module.

Bacon, Manual Camera, nothing special and no real difference from the above.

I also tried Gcam but it was very flaky and when it did work wasn't any better than the above.

In terms of video the stock app is the best.  The image stablisation works very well, which none of the others seem to use, and it has the ability to lock the exposure when starting which again I can't seem to get the others to do.

Slo mo is amazing.  Snap supposedly has this feature but it doesn't work.  In fac it killed the app and I had to reload it.

Currently Hedgcam 2 is my default app for still and the stock app for videos.

 Fred Colon's gear list:Fred Colon's gear list
Canon EOS 7D Mark II
Keyboard shortcuts:
FForum PPrevious NNext WNext unread UUpvote SSubscribe RReply QQuote BBookmark MMy threads
Color scheme? Blue / Yellow