Who owns a Pixel 6 pro, how's the camera?

mfinley wrote:

Who owns a Pixel 6 pro, how's the camera?

I got one. I posted a bunch of test images from it in this thread. (Look at the images with "Info" enabled--I put explanations in the "Description" field for most of the images.) There are also some comparison shots with my Pixel 2. And with my Canon EOS M50.)

The camera is OK. The 4x tele works very well. The .7x ultra-wide is OK, but mildly disappointing because .7x isn't very ultra-wide (other flagship phones are .5x.) 2x interpolated zoom is disappointing. "Computational Photography" doesn't seem to apply for 2x--it looks like simple interpolation. 1X works very well.

There is a consensus that Google didn't really optimize the software for the new (for Pixel) hardware and could do better. I don't care because it has been working for me. My keeper rate is pretty good and it is impressing me based on its cumulative performance--its computational photography chops keep on ticking. I don't get show stopping images like others are posting with other phones on the DPReview Mobile forum, but it serves my needs out of the box. (The show stopping images usually involve modding the phone. With phones that aren't generally available in the U.S.))

Wayne

mfinley wrote:

Hi Wayne,

I would be going from a Pixel 3 to the Pixel Pro 6. Specifically I need a better cell phone camera for work related projects, do you think the is a big difference between the Pixel 3 camra and the pixel 6 pro camera?

My comparison is a Pixel 2. I don't think the 1x camera performs noticeably better than the one in my Pixel 2. The main gain is the 4x. And the .7x when you need a bit more wide.

I've been mostly using mine to document home repair projects since I got the 6 Pro. The 4x lens is surprisingly useful for documenting. For forensic purposes, you can go to 10x and higher and still get usable images (albeit not pixel sharp.) This also works hand-held in low light. This is really useful!

The camera hardware is definitely better in the 6s than in any earlier Pixels. The sensor for the 1x camera is about three times larger than the one in any of the older Pixels. But, thus far, that isn't showing up much with the 1x camera images. Thus far. It isn't appreciably better than what I am used to in the P2. Others (on the Mobile forum) feel that Google will release software that makes better use of the new sensor in the 6s. We hope.

Wayne

I went from a 3 to a 6 pro, but because I needed to - my 3's case is coming apart.

Frankly, I don't see a huge step up, but that's largely because the 3 did a great job.

One thing I've found is that RAW is useless.  I've been shooting raw for a long time on my 3, and now my 6, but at least in LR, it's impossible to get the raw shots even as good as the jpg.  And at least under windows, the raw pics seem to be lower resolution to boot.

Strange.

ken_in_nh wrote:

I went from a 3 to a 6 pro, but because I needed to - my 3's case is coming apart.

Frankly, I don't see a huge step up, but that's largely because the 3 did a great job.

One thing I've found is that RAW is useless. I've been shooting raw for a long time on my 3, and now my 6, but at least in LR, it's impossible to get the raw shots even as good as the jpg. And at least under windows, the raw pics seem to be lower resolution to boot.

Strange.

that is bad news to me. I plan to get pixel 6 and use RAW to avoid oversharpening and get natual color

How could that be so? That is not what Google said about pixel RAW file

there is a new December update for pixel, does it improve IQ for pixel 6?

Jefftan wrote:

ken_in_nh wrote:

I went from a 3 to a 6 pro, but because I needed to - my 3's case is coming apart.

Frankly, I don't see a huge step up, but that's largely because the 3 did a great job.

One thing I've found is that RAW is useless. I've been shooting raw for a long time on my 3, and now my 6, but at least in LR, it's impossible to get the raw shots even as good as the jpg. And at least under windows, the raw pics seem to be lower resolution to boot.

Strange.

that is bad news to me. I plan to get pixel 6 and use RAW to avoid oversharpening and get natual color

How could that be so? That is not what Google said about pixel RAW file

The raw resolution issue is curious.  If, under Win 10, I check the picture file properties, it shows dimensions of roughly 640x480, but the same picture in LR shows full sensor (12mp) dimensions.  The jpg images are so good, though, that I'm doubting the need to mess with raw.  I don't, for example, see the over-sharpening that I did with my Pixel 3.

There are several review sites that have posted sample pictures, some full sized.  you might look at some of those before finalizing your decision.

My next experimenting is to look more closely at zoom.  Since the pictures we take are binned from a much higher resolution photo, I wonder if zoomed photos are just crops of the next size, or based on full sensor use?  I'll know soon...

Just did some experimenting of zoomed pictures with curious results.  No matter how much I zoomed, all the jog were 4080x3072.  The dng, however, varied with zoom.  For example, at maximum zoom, 20x, the dng was 832x622!   It's pretty obvious to me that the camera algorithms upsize and rescale the zoomed images.  Gigapixel anyone? The pictures look pretty good to me, though.

Not ready to put away my ILC but for everyday snapshots, the pixel it is.

Peter_Rbt wrote:

raw has more detail, less sharpening, and almost? no noise reduction

jpgs have consumer preferences output, tho not too excessive - more saturation and contrast, some extra sharpening, a bit of noise reduction. but none of that is horrid like other android phones... jpgs are quite usable. jpgs also have lens correction. RAWs do not have lens correction

one can easily do all that with RAW even with a preset (more saturation and contrast, some extra sharpening, a bit of noise reduction.). For example i set a preset of highlight 20 shadow 20 in c1 for my A6500 RAW

i just wonder why ken_in_nh said this?

"One thing I've found is that RAW is useless. I've been shooting raw for a long time on my 3, and now my 6, but at least in LR, it's impossible to get the raw shots even as good as the jpg. And at least under windows, the raw pics seem to be lower resolution to boot.

Strange."

Jefftan wrote:

Peter_Rbt wrote:

raw has more detail, less sharpening, and almost? no noise reduction

jpgs have consumer preferences output, tho not too excessive - more saturation and contrast, some extra sharpening, a bit of noise reduction. but none of that is horrid like other android phones... jpgs are quite usable. jpgs also have lens correction. RAWs do not have lens correction

one can easily do all that with RAW even with a preset (more saturation and contrast, some extra sharpening, a bit of noise reduction.). For example i set a preset of highlight 20 shadow 20 in c1 for my A6500 RAW

i just wonder why ken_in_nh said this?

"One thing I've found is that RAW is useless. I've been shooting raw for a long time on my 3, and now my 6, but at least in LR, it's impossible to get the raw shots even as good as the jpg. And at least under windows, the raw pics seem to be lower resolution to boot.

Strange."

I already explained the resolution issue:

"The raw resolution issue is curious. If, under Win 10, I check the picture file properties, it shows dimensions of roughly 640x480, but the same picture in LR shows full sensor (12mp) dimensions. The jpg images are so good, though, that I'm doubting the need to mess with raw. I don't, for example, see the over-sharpening that I did with my Pixel 3."

I suspect the reason I don't find much value in raw is because computational processing as applied to jpg is so good.  Some jpg are combinations of multiple shots, for example, but you don't have access to each shot in raw.

ken_in_nh wrote:

I suspect the reason I don't find much value in raw is because computational processing as applied to jpg is so good. Some jpg are combinations of multiple shots, for example, but you don't have access to each shot in raw.

This doesn't align with my understanding of how Google processes multiple raw frames. Referring to Google Research's white paper on

Burst photography for high dynamic range and low-light imaging
on mobile cameras
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/hdrplusdata.org/en//hdrplus.pdf

Pages 1-9 cover all the operations they do on the individual raw frames. At page 9 we have:

6 Finishing

Aligning and merging the captured Bayer raw frames produces a
single raw image with higher bit depth and SNR. In practice our
input is 10-bit raw and we merge to 14 bits to preserve the precision
gained from merging. This image must now undergo correction,
demosaicking, and tone mapping–operations that would normally
be performed by an ISP, but in our case is implemented are software
and include the key additional step of dynamic range compression ...

There isn't any concept of being able to "access each shot in raw." Each JPEG is a  combination of multiple raw frames.  Step 6 Finishing describes what happens to the image after all the raw frames have been merged to a single frame.

This white paper is early and doesn't explicitly describe Pixel raw files. It describes how Pixels produce JPEG files. I'm assuming that the Pixels export raw files somewhere around step 6 Finishing.

It is also possible that there aren't color profiles yet for Pixel 6 raw files. This would be another reason for underwhelming Pixel 6 raw file conversions.

I welcome the Pixel 6 computational photography JPEG conversion. This is one of the major reasons why I switched to using a Pixel 2 (now a Pixel 6 Pro) instead of shooting 100% raw with my Canon P&Ss and ILCs: I got really tired of needing to hand process each raw file in order to get images that look as good as (most) Pixel JPEGs. I don't want to go anywhere near any Pixel raw files!

Wayne

mfinley wrote:

Wayne Larmon wrote:

It is also possible that there aren't color profiles yet for Pixel 6 raw files. This would be another reason for underwhelming Pixel 6 raw file conversions.

Wayne

Are you referring to light room?

I'm an ACR/Photoshop user, but Lightroom uses the same raw conversion engine.  Yes, I was referring to them.   Adobe supplies the color profiles for individual cameras for ACR/Light room conversions, as best as I remember.  I don't know how profiles work in any other raw converter.

Wayne

mfinley wrote:

Wayne Larmon wrote:

mfinley wrote:

Wayne Larmon wrote:

It is also possible that there aren't color profiles yet for Pixel 6 raw files. This would be another reason for underwhelming Pixel 6 raw file conversions.

Wayne

Are you referring to light room?

I'm an ACR/Photoshop user, but Lightroom uses the same raw conversion engine. Yes, I was referring to them. Adobe supplies the color profiles for individual cameras for ACR/Light room conversions, as best as I remember. I don't know how profiles work in any other raw converter.

Wayne

Thanks for the info. So there is no way to go out and load the color profiles into lightroom? Adobe has to put them in there as an update?

You can put your own profiles into ACR/Lightroom but you have to come up with them yourself. It has been a while since I've done Adobe style DNG camera profiles, but I think you start with the

(XRite) Calibrite ColorChecker Passport Photo 2

("XRite" is now "Calibrate" for non-pro products.) It is a portable XRite Calibrate ColorChecker chart along with software that can generate color profiles. I've used an older version to make ACR camera profiles for specific lighting. I haven't used the current version of the software so I can't tell you much about it.

Start with that software. Adobe has their own DNG profile editing software, but this is probably a deeper dive into the color profile tarpit than you want to go. "DNG Profile Editor (September 2012)" is the software I used. But try the XRite/Calibrate software first.

If you already have an XRite (Calibrate) ColorChecker chart, the color profile generation camera calibration software is a free download.

Maybe try it with a conventional camera first before you try it with a smartphone camera.  You generally want to lock down as much as you can (ISO, white balance, etc. before making profiles.  You also need to make profiles for the illuminant you are shooting under (daylight, tungsten, etc.)  The ideal is a dual illuminant profile (daylight and tungsten in the same profile.)  The Adobe software can make a dual illuminant profile--I don't know if the current XRite/Calibrate software can.

If you've never done anything with color profiles, I'm leaving a lot out. I'm going to assume that the Calibrate software will walk you through everything you need to know to make color camera profiles. (The Adobe software doesn't--you are assumed to already know a lot about color science.)

Wayne

yea, you can worry a lot about color profiles etc. in your quest for raw, or just stick with the jpg like I'm learning to do.