In several posts of mine, I've already talked about the photo taking capabilities of the Note 4. I've also explained
1, the built-in, stock Camera app may have too strong noise reduction and oversharpening
2, third-party apps work differently on the two different CPU architectures currently the Note4 is delivered with and
3, most third-party apps can't make use of the 1/8s (or, in cases, even the 1/15s) shutter speed but max out at either 1/15s or 1/30s, bumping up the ISO used to twice or four times that of the ISO needed at 1/8s.
In the writeup below, I very thoroughly scrutinize the low-light performance of the Samsung Note4 running on the latest, NK4 4.4.4 KitKat version and compare it to both the Nokia 808 (the, apart form the Pana CM1, current cameraphone king) and the Fujifilm X-E1 MILC, which has as excellent low-light performance as any other Fujifilm mirrorless with an X-Trans-filtered sensor.
Note that I only discuss low-light shooting. I'll dedicate other posts to shooting in different environments.
First and foremost, as I've previously explained several times, the stock Camera app produces substandard results in many cases and you'll, time permitting, want to shoot with third-party apps allowing for outputting almost RAW-level shots with very little noise reduction or sharpening. Currently, as of firmware version NK4 (Snapdragon 805) / NK5 (Exynos version) and OS version 4.4.4, this only seems to be possible on Snapdragon 805-based devices. This means that, if you have a Note 4 with the Exynos CPU, currently, you simply can't shoot less-processed shots with your phone. While the third-party apps will run on your phone, their output will exhibit the same processing artifacts as those exported by the stock app and, currently, there doesn't seem to be a way of fixing this. (Hopefully with Lollipop...)
Let's take a look at the test image, with a contrasty circle at the center so that (contrast-based) focusing to the center of the image can, most probably, lock. A shot with the Fujifilm, with the minimum shutter speed of 1/60s, resulting in the ISO being bumped up to 6400 (the maximum in auto mode) and the shutter speed reduced to 1/35s, at f/2.8:
Fuji X-E1 + 18-55 at 18mm - 1/35s ISO6400 f2.8
(the full image is HERE)
Let's take a look at the crop in the center – the one we'll be comparing:
Fuji X-E1 + 18-55 at 18mm - 1/35s ISO6400 f2.8
Now, here's the same crop with 1/8s shutter speed and a significantly lower (1600) ISO, still with the Fuji:
Fuji X-E1 + 18-55 at 18mm - 1/8s ISO1200 f2.8
(original, full image . Note that the latter image shows some camera shake. Nevertheless, this has no effect on the noise levels.)
In both cases, I used the default JPEG encoding parameters in Standard mode, with noise reduction turned down to the minimum (-2). As you can see, both images are, noise- and resolution-wise, excellent, particularly if you also factor in the 18-55 zoom lens operating at 18mm and wide open at f/2.8, which exactly isn't its sweet spot. (At f/5.6, pixel-level sharpness would have been even higher.)
The following is the Nokia 808's rendition of the same scene, in auto ISO mode. This has resulted in using 1/5s shutter speed and ISO640:
Nokia 808
(original)
The result is significantly more blurry caused by the noise reduction, making “System certification” in the two circles on the right almost unreadable, while the quality labels are still almost perfectly readable in the upper left circle. (They're significantly worse than the ISO6400 shot of the Fuji – that is, a shot taken at more than three times the signal amplification.)
Now, the Note 4. Let's start with the stock Camera app:
Note 4, stock Camera app, Night scene mode
(Original. Note that, as it's been taken using the “Night scene” (automatic fallback) mode, the resolution, 6 Mpixels, is significantly lower than that of the sensor (16 Mpixels): 3264*1836. Incidentally, this is why the stock Camera app produces pretty acceptable results compared to third-party ones using full resolution with post processing (on which I'll talk later) – downsizing helps a LOT.)
Now, that of “Snap camera HDR” (PlayStore link) as of the test version 6.1.3; note that all versions starting with 5.6.1test1 are capable of making use all the currently-supported features of Snapdragon 805-based Note4's. Also note that, unless you subscribe to the test version in the Play Store (doing this is explained HERE), you will only have access to version 5.4 there, which isn't recommended for Note4 users. Then, you may want to sideload the test APK file made available by the developer HERE . Nevertheless, subscribing to betas is really easy (and safe) in Play Store, I heavily recommend it. Make absolute sure you do enable the Photo > “Samsung Camera Mode” checkbox; otherwise, it will NOT be able to go under 1/15s, resulting in a complete loss of no less than 1EV!
Note that I recommend the setting Photo > Sharpness to zero to get rid of any kind of sharpening - something (namely, excessive oversharpening) the just-seen stock Camera app image suffers a lot from. As do every single image and video shot with the stock Camera app.
Here's the shot of Snap (parameters: full resolution, 1/8s and ISO1000):
Note4, Snap camera HDR, 1/8s ISO1000
(original )
As you can see, it exhibits tons of color noise (showing there's no or very little noise reduction going on) and no oversharpening artifacts – exactly the two features I'm recommending it the most (for Snapdragon 805 users, obviously). Thanks to the ability to use of the minimal shutter speed, 1/8s, it “only” needed to use ISO1000, which resulted in significantly more legible labels than with the stock Camera app above (again, in Night scene mode, the stock Camera app decreases the resolution).
Now, take a look at other, popular Android apps. Start with the most popular one, Camera FV-5 (PlayStore link ) version 2.35. The crop is as follows:
Note 4 Camera FV-5 1/30s ISO4000
(original)
What's this? - I hear the outcry. It's significantly worse than the Snap camera HDR crop above – much noisier and still noise reduction-artifact-ridden. What's it caused by?
The cause for this is the fact I've already referred to above: very few current apps can decrease their shutter speed all the way down to 1/15s, let alone 1/8s, the absolute minimum for the Note 4. Regretfully, the otherwise excellent Camera FV-5 isn't one of them – it just can't go under 1/30s. This means it has to use two EV's higher ISO's than any 1/8s-capable camera apps (in this test, either Snap camera HDR or the stock Camera app); for example, in this case, a whopping ISO4000 as opposed to ISO1000. No wonder it produces far-far inferior images.
This means you in no way want to use this apps in (severely) low-light conditions, when making use of shutter speeds below 1/30s can be advantageous.
Now, let's turn to, because of it being free, another popular app, OpenCamera (PlayStore link; current, tested version: 1.22). The crop:
Note4 - OpenCamera 1.22 - 1/15s iso2000
(original)
This is also pretty bad compared to the output of both Snap camera HDR and the stock Camera app. The reason for this is almost exactly the same as with FV-5: the inability to decrease the shutter speed under 1/15s. This, in this case, meant it needed to use ISO2000, resulting in significantly worse image quality because of being able to make use of half the number of photons as in the 1/8s case.
All in all,
currently (10/Jan/2015), you in no way want to use either OpenCamera or Camera FV-5 when there's little light: both Snap camera HDR and the stock Camera app will deliver significantly better results. And, don't forget that all this, currently, only applies to Snapdragon 805-based devices, the Exynos CPU not being supported by third-party apps. On the latter devices, just use the stock app.
