Smartphones that output stacked Raw

[2eyesee]

After almost a year with my P40 Pro I'm considering going back to a dedicated camera for my photography.

I just like to have a bit more control over the final image by shooting raw. I realise you can do this on a P40 Pro, but then you lose all the computational benefits, which mitigate the limitations of the small sensors.

However, I noticed there are some phones which seem to give you the best of both worlds, allowing you to capture stacked raw images. The iPhone 12 Pro/Max have ProRaw, the Google Pixels have HDR+ Raw, and more recently the announcement of the Vivo X70 Pro+ with 'Super Raw'.

I would be very interested in feedback from anyone who has had experience with one or more of these formats, and if there are any other phone options I could be considering.

For context, I was always pretty happy with the image quality I got from my RX100III with its fast f/1.8 lens at 24 mm, so I am considering going back to one of the newer RX100 models or even the ZV1 as I do a lot of video.

 

[melodika]

After almost a year with my P40 Pro I'm considering going back to a dedicated camera for my photography.

I just like to have a bit more control over the final image by shooting raw. I realise you can do this on a P40 Pro, but then you lose all the computational benefits, which mitigate the limitations of the small sensors.

However, I noticed there are some phones which seem to give you the best of both worlds, allowing you to capture stacked raw images. The iPhone 12 Pro/Max have ProRaw, the Google Pixels have HDR+ Raw, and more recently the announcement of the Vivo X70 Pro+ with 'Super Raw'.

I would be very interested in feedback from anyone who has had experience with one or more of these formats, and if there are any other phone options I could be considering.

For context, I was always pretty happy with the image quality I got from my RX100III with its fast f/1.8 lens at 24 mm, so I am considering going back to one of the newer RX100 models or even the ZV1 as I do a lot of video.

Interesting topic. There are few good options available from Xiaomi and both involve using well-tuned Google Camera software. Apple ProRAW has baked-in noise reductions so it's not actually raw in that sense. I would pass that as an option.

Xiaomi has two very good options: Mi 10 Pro (or Note 10 Pro) with 108mp Samsung HMX sensor. With GCam you get 27mp stacked DNGs, good dynamic range and low light performance. All this is available without rooting the phone; convenient and easy. Of all these models, Mi 10 Pro has the best lens with clearly better corner sharpness than the other models (Mi Note 10 Pro etc.). Still it's a large sensor with F 1.7 aperture so corners are the weak spot here.

Then there's Mi 10 Ultra that has 48mp main sensor (F 1.85). It can produce 48mp stacked DNGs with a rooted phone and Magisk Module. Low light performance is on par with HMX; in daylight 48mp allows you to capture a tad more detail than HMX, but the difference is not huge. Corner sharpness is better than with Mi Note 10 / MI 10 Pro. I have Mi 10 Ultra and although it's a bit gimmicky to get 48mp stacked working, it still provides very good results.

You can play around with these two DNGs: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GpWChznb5diT1UDQskIUwa3yuvi-KUOX?usp=sharing

Ricoh GR III with APS-C sensor and Mi 10 Ultra with GCam. This is low light example to really reveal differences. So my conclusion is that the phone is on par with APS-C sensors; definitely better than RX100.

My final point is that I would only get a phone that has unlocked Camera2 API; Xiaomi phones have that and they use he best sensors out there. Having unlocked Camera2API is important because then you can use any third party camera software and there are ongoing development with many really interesting apps such as PhotonCamera (stacked raws like GCam) and MotionCam (enables RAW video recording – phenomenal quality!). Because phone manufacturers clearly are not able to match their great hardware with clever enough software, it is vital that you can use these great apps developed by photography enthusiasts.

 

[Sugasmune]

I don't believe smartphones have true raw in burst mode. Even some Sony cameras used to capture in burst mode as a jpeg. The jpeg artifacts showed up in "RAW" files.

One 48MP 16bit RAW would be 288Mb, and 11 Would be 3168Mb.

 

[Droo]

The Oppo Find N has "RAW Plus" with HDR, which sounds like stacked RAW. I have not seen samples of it, so whether it is good or not remains to be seen. Some other high end Oppo phones might offer the same.

Anything that can run GCam would also support stacked RAWs, although I found GCam to not particularly increase dynamic range vs standard DNGs from the same phone. Getting rid of noise in shadows helps tremendously.

One 48MP 16bit RAW would be 288Mb, and 11 Would be 3168Mb.

I don't follow this math. 48 MP at 16 bpp would 96 MB, 91.55 MiB or 768 Mbit of data before any compression is applied. The uncompressed 50.3 MP DNGs from my P40 Pro are 96 MiB.

 

[2eyesee]

The Oppo Find N has "RAW Plus" with HDR, which sounds like stacked RAW. I have not seen samples of it, so whether it is good or not remains to be seen. Some other high end Oppo phones might offer the same.

One of the phones I was looking at was the Oppo Find X3, as it has a great ultra-wide camera (same sensor as the main camera). It looks like it supports "RAW Plus" also, but I can't find any information on working with the files and how much they offer.

 

[2eyesee]

Interesting topic. There are few good options available from Xiaomi and both involve using well-tuned Google Camera software. Apple ProRAW has baked-in noise reductions so it's not actually raw in that sense. I would pass that as an option.

Xiaomi has two very good options: Mi 10 Pro (or Note 10 Pro) with 108mp Samsung HMX sensor. With GCam you get 27mp stacked DNGs, good dynamic range and low light performance. All this is available without rooting the phone; convenient and easy. Of all these models, Mi 10 Pro has the best lens with clearly better corner sharpness than the other models (Mi Note 10 Pro etc.). Still it's a large sensor with F 1.7 aperture so corners are the weak spot here.

Then there's Mi 10 Ultra that has 48mp main sensor (F 1.85). It can produce 48mp stacked DNGs with a rooted phone and Magisk Module. Low light performance is on par with HMX; in daylight 48mp allows you to capture a tad more detail than HMX, but the difference is not huge. Corner sharpness is better than with Mi Note 10 / MI 10 Pro. I have Mi 10 Ultra and although it's a bit gimmicky to get 48mp stacked working, it still provides very good results.

You can play around with these two DNGs: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GpWChznb5diT1UDQskIUwa3yuvi-KUOX?usp=sharing

Ricoh GR III with APS-C sensor and Mi 10 Ultra with GCam. This is low light example to really reveal differences. So my conclusion is that the phone is on par with APS-C sensors; definitely better than RX100.

My final point is that I would only get a phone that has unlocked Camera2 API; Xiaomi phones have that and they use he best sensors out there. Having unlocked Camera2API is important because then you can use any third party camera software and there are ongoing development with many really interesting apps such as PhotonCamera (stacked raws like GCam) and MotionCam (enables RAW video recording – phenomenal quality!). Because phone manufacturers clearly are not able to match their great hardware with clever enough software, it is vital that you can use these great apps developed by photography enthusiasts.

Thanks very much for the comprehensive reply.

Where I am there are no Xiaomi 10 series - it's all the 11 series - 11/11i/11t/11t Pro. Would they offer similar results?

What about the OnePlus 9 Pro? The price has dropped a lot where I am since launch and there have been a lot of updates that seem to have resolved most of the original criticisms of the camera. The camera hardware has always been very good, and it should work with GCam.

Then of course there is the Google Pixel 6, which is the obvious answer of GCam support.

Thanks for the DNG's. Seems to be quite good detail left when you lift shadows, and along with some 'tasteful' noise reduction they come up pretty nice. Do you have any JPEGs to compare them to, to see how much more you're getting from the RAW?

 

[teemodk]

I don't believe smartphones have true raw in burst mode. Even some Sony cameras used to capture in burst mode as a jpeg. The jpeg artifacts showed up in "RAW" files.

One 48MP 16bit RAW would be 288Mb, and 11 Would be 3168Mb.

Then how about 24 raw files per second for 4k video, do they qualify?



The raw file.

 

[Sugasmune]

One article wrote the 10bit raw video is about 150 Mb/s.

Perhaps the RAW photo is not 16bit, but 10bit. One would need uhs2 uhs3 microSD supporting smartphone. Are there any? The UHS2 is not even in laptops.

 

[bloodlmt]

S21 Ultra and upcoming S22+ and S22 Ultra should support stacked HDR RAW using the Expert RAW camera apk by official Samsung

samples images so far are very convincing, some are tonnes better than apple's proraw

 

[Sugasmune]

I tested the photon camera app on my Nokia 6.1 from 2018. With 30 stacked RAW's the app crashes, but 20 works. How can i tell if this feature actually works or not? At iso 1000 there is still a lot of purple noise.

 

[I2K4]

I tested the photon camera app on my Nokia 6.1 from 2018. With 30 stacked RAW's the app crashes, but 20 works. How can i tell if this feature actually works or not? At iso 1000 there is still a lot of purple noise.

Hadn't heard of PhotonCamera (Particles) - on a quick install surprisingly seems stable on my finicky Moto phone and works at default 30 frames and other settings (4GB RAM). The OOC white balance seems good and (checking EXIF in Photo Mate R3) makes an uncompressed 16 bit DNG, a bit overexposed at higher ISO than seems necessary. Clearly meant to save RAW/DNG, the JPEGs are small and go to a different DCIM folder. I'd be comparing the HDR / DNG output with GCam and Snap Camera HDR, that both work well on my phone.

 

[Sugasmune]

In low light room, the image quality looks higher than HedgeCam 2's. But the HedgeCam 2's 7 shot Exposure bracketing with HDR merge in Vibrance HDR, gives better dynamic range. The photon camera has a blown highlights on night street shots.

The photon camera is way faster, it's good for fast snapshots. The 7 shot bracket with noise remove takes 2-3 minutes on HedgeCam 2.

 

[I2K4]

In low light room, the image quality looks higher than HedgeCam 2's. But the HedgeCam 2's 7 shot Exposure bracketing with HDR merge in Vibrance HDR, gives better dynamic range. The photon camera has a blown highlights on night street shots.

The photon camera is way faster, it's good for fast snapshots. The 7 shot bracket with noise remove takes 2-3 minutes on HedgeCam 2.

Having done some preliminary side-by-side of the DNGs on PC I'm finding too much color correction adjustment needed compared with GCam's - maybe need to know more about PCam's settings. GCam is faster at processing. Something I do like about PCam is changing CFA to "Mono", producing good out of camera black and white JPEGs from the HDR - with good in-app adjustments for that - along with the colored DNGs - not doable with GCam HDRs. Sadly the preview screen is colored but it seems to be early days for the project.

The "About" screen lists some devs from the GCam projects - interesting because it's hard to know where GCam development will go with Pixels putting so much of the camera onto the new exclusive Tensor SoC.

 

[teemodk]

One article wrote the 10bit raw video is about 150 Mb/s.

Perhaps the RAW photo is not 16bit, but 10bit. One would need uhs2 uhs3 microSD supporting smartphone. Are there any? The UHS2 is not even in laptops.

For now it's 10bit raw. The app can do 12 and 16 as well, but I doubt you will see any difference. The clip I posted is a 4000x2400 raw, cropped (in camera before writing the raw) from 4000x3000. 6.7MB which gives about 160MB/s. My phone can write 170-200MB/s internal, external sdcard maybe 20.
The devs from amvr has tested external drives, which seem to work well. Here's a sample video (not mine) with links to the projects:

 

[Sugasmune]

Strange that HedgeCam 2 DNG is only 8bit, but Photon Camera 16bit. Both DNG's are identical in size.

 

[AlgarvePhotography]

Have a look at the Sony Xperia Pro-I.
It has the RX100-series sensor and is their flagship dedicated to photography. They have basically made a pocket camera that can make calls etc rather than a smartphone that can take photos.
Bear in mind Xoami, Apple etc are all using Sony sensors too but Sony reserve their best for their own smartphones.

 

[2eyesee]

S21 Ultra and upcoming S22+ and S22 Ultra should support stacked HDR RAW using the Expert RAW camera apk by official Samsung
samples images so far are very convincing, some are tonnes better than apple's proraw

Thanks for the tip. I've looked into the S21 Ultra though and there seems to be some concerns about image quality if you look at the DXO review - it actually scores 2 points lower than the S20 Ultra. I'm unclear if this has been improved by software updates.

It would be interesting to see a comparison between the different stacked RAW approaches by Samsung, Vivo, Google and Apple - but I don't think one exists yet. I've seen plenty of comment that in at least some cases you're still not getting true RAW and there is still noise reduction baked in. Perhaps there's no getting around the fact that these small sensors with their tiny optics would just look too ugly to be seen without any corrections (although the sensors aren't that small now, they are still around 1/2 the size of the Sony 1" sensor in the RX100/ZV-1).

 

[2eyesee]

Have a look at the Sony Xperia Pro-I.
It has the RX100-series sensor and is their flagship dedicated to photography. They have basically made a pocket camera that can make calls etc rather than a smartphone that can take photos.

What use is a 1" sensor if you're only using 60% of it ?

• 20MP 1"-type stacked-CMOS Exmor RS sensor with built-in DRAM (2.4µm pixels)
  *only 12MP, or ~60%, central portion used for 4:3 stills

 

[Sugasmune]

I tested Photon Camera stacked RAW vs HedgeCam 2 HDR bracketing from 0.6 sec to 1/600 sec (11 shots merged in Vibrance HDR).

When i lift shadows +33, the stacked RAW has nothing in shadows. But i do get the notice unsupported device.




HedgeCam 2 ACES HDR




HedgeCam 2 Filmic HDR




Photon Camera shadows +33




Photon Camera

 

[melodika]

GCam stacked RAWs, Mi 10 Ultra.