**June '25 with your smartphone**

[Panino Manino]

Isn't much, could've been a bit better framed, but I liked this photo. Only wish those cars weren't there.


shot of HedgeCam 2

 

[altipueri]

Sunny hazy windy day on the Jurassic coast in Devon

 

[dplatten]

https://flic.kr/p/2ra5WmN

Taken with my Google Pixel 8 Pro.

Menhirs de la Ferme Lambert, Collobrières. There are two standing stones in this field, a 90 minute walk up to a plateau from Collobrières in the Provence region of France. The farmer keeps goats, sheep and cattle in the same field. They were all sheltering from the 30° heat in the trees that can be seen in the distance on the right hand side of the picture. You could hear the bells around their necks ringing as they grazed in the cooler air.

 

[WoodWorks]

I like the way you framed that shot!

 

[André BARELIER]

https://flic.kr/p/2ra5WmN

Taken with my Google Pixel 8 Pro.

Menhirs de la Ferme Lambert, Collobrières. There are two standing stones in this field, a 90 minute walk up to a plateau from Collobrières in the Provence region of France. The farmer keeps goats, sheep and cattle in the same field. They were all sheltering from the 30° heat in the trees that can be seen in the distance on the right hand side of the picture. You could hear the bells around their necks ringing as they grazed in the cooler air.

Nice shot, of a nice place.

 

[Djingonthenet]

Given my usual messing about in LRM. Xiaomi 14 ultra. (Some reason LRM strips out exif data)


Ultrawide


Main Lens


Main lens

 

[Panino Manino]

Isn't much, nothing remarkable and isn't even a good example, but I'm very satisfied with my phone now. SuperGao had helped and gave me all the hints I needed a while ago, but took until this weekend for me to finally solve the GCAM puzzle and understand how to get that "mythical IQ". Well, yes, there are still a few places that need improvement, on the shadows and Enhanced and Night, but it's probably more a limitation of the sensor and the way GCAM works, so whatever. Now I don't need to use HedgeCam 2 anymore that 50% of the times misses focus somehow.

/end useless rant

[ATTACH alt="I specially like this photo not for what it shows, but for what it reminds me. It's inside a very nice place that I "discovered" last week, I'll be going there a lot in the future. It's a good ambient with nice people, yesterday I even laughed! and it almost made me cry. "]3786792[/ATTACH]
I specially like this photo not for what it shows, but for what it reminds me. It's inside a very nice place that I "discovered" last week, I'll be going there a lot in the future. It's a good ambient with nice people, yesterday I even laughed! and it almost made me cry.



Now, if only I had time to walk around somewhere nice to photograph... :-( I'm also dabbling with bird photography, even got a little PowerShot but those flying things are hard to shot!

 

[Panino Manino]

What you think about this "distortion" that pointing the camera up causes to these structures?

How much it annoys you, and how much would you like to have this effect "corrected" on the phone?

 

[Djingonthenet]

What you think about this "distortion" that pointing the camera up causes to these structures?

How much it annoys you, and how much would you like to have this effect "corrected" on the phone?

I like this ultrawide shot even with it's distortion, it's not a lens that I use a lot so very few of my photos have this issue (to this extent). Obviously the further to the edge you get the more stretched it becomes, but this is a 12mm lens so very wide. Amazingly I was only about 20m away from the first tower, so to get the whole bridge in without distortion would have been quite an achievement. Regarding correcting it, I think if you are standing so close to a structure, as I was, then the distortion adds something to the shot, correcting it would make it more artificial in my book.

 

[Howard V]

What you think about this "distortion" that pointing the camera up causes to these structures?

How much it annoys you, and how much would you like to have this effect "corrected" on the phone?

I like this ultrawide shot even with it's distortion, it's not a lens that I use a lot so very few of my photos have this issue (to this extent). Obviously the further to the edge you get the more stretched it becomes, but this is a 12mm lens so very wide. Amazingly I was only about 20m away from the first tower, so to get the whole bridge in without distortion would have been quite an achievement. Regarding correcting it, I think if you are standing so close to a structure, as I was, then the distortion adds something to the shot, correcting it would make it more artificial in my book.

I agree. This is a very expressive mode of representation.

 

[atom14]

What you think about this "distortion" that pointing the camera up causes to these structures?

How much it annoys you, and how much would you like to have this effect "corrected" on the phone?

You used quotes around the term "distortion", so you must know that it's not a distortion but a projection, yet you still want to "correct" it. What do you really mean by that? That is, what sort of changes would you (like to) make?

This is just to clarify terminology, since it's in a photographic context.

atom14.

 

[Panino Manino]

What you think about this "distortion" that pointing the camera up causes to these structures?

How much it annoys you, and how much would you like to have this effect "corrected" on the phone?

You used quotes around the term "distortion", so you must know that it's not a distortion but a projection, yet you still want to "correct" it. What do you really mean by that? That is, what sort of changes would you (like to) make?

This is just to clarify terminology, since it's in a photographic context.

atom14.

Are you stalking me? I was reading this thread: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4781702?page=2

You know what I mean, others here know what I man. I'm not a "photographer", I'm only a person with a phone.

Anyway, I was thinking about Huawei Pura 80 Ultra's new Panorama feature that straights the line. If you could do that so easily, would you? Or would you still choose to not "correct" the photo?

 

[André BARELIER]

Isn't much, nothing remarkable and isn't even a good example, but I'm very satisfied with my phone now. SuperGao had helped and gave me all the hints I needed a while ago, but took until this weekend for me to finally solve the GCAM puzzle and understand how to get that "mythical IQ". Well, yes, there are still a few places that need improvement, on the shadows and Enhanced and Night, but it's probably more a limitation of the sensor and the way GCAM works, so whatever. Now I don't need to use HedgeCam 2 anymore that 50% of the times misses focus somehow.

/end useless rant

[ATTACH alt="I specially like this photo not for what it shows, but for what it reminds me. It's inside a very nice place that I "discovered" last week, I'll be going there a lot in the future. It's a good ambient with nice people, yesterday I even laughed! and it almost made me cry."]3786792[/ATTACH]
I specially like this photo not for what it shows, but for what it reminds me. It's inside a very nice place that I "discovered" last week, I'll be going there a lot in the future. It's a good ambient with nice people, yesterday I even laughed! and it almost made me cry.

Now, if only I had time to walk around somewhere nice to photograph... :-( I'm also dabbling with bird photography, even got a little PowerShot but those flying things are hard to shot!

Could you point me towards some tips about how to fine tune Gcam? I've tried a lot of versions with my Pixel 9 pro, and I always end up going back to the native app.

Seems GCAM allows to tweak the settings in order to get exactly what you want, but it's really complicated (and more so for me, since English is not my native langage).

--
André

 

[Panino Manino]

Could you point me towards some tips about how to fine tune Gcam? I've tried a lot of versions with my Pixel 9 pro, and I always end up going back to the native app.

Seems GCAM allows to tweak the settings in order to get exactly what you want, but it's really complicated (and more so for me, since English is not my native langage).

I could answer by private message, but I think it's useful to share this here, because I remember a lot of people sharing their perfected GCAMs but rarely explaining the settings.

I'm using GCAM because it has a lot better "dynamic range" and contrast than the native cam (Motorola G84) and it's much faster than HedgeCam 2 with better focus (also, I can set resize and compression percentages to decrease the size of the files).
My problem with GCAM was with the denoising. I wanted to have those super natural clean photos but not actually clean with a bit of "tasteful noise" that you some times see people sharing here. But on my phone not only GCAM it was smoothing too much it was also creating artifacts with Enhanced HDR+. I had asked SuperGao months ago but because the version I use and want to use is different from his, I couldn't replicated his settings. But now I finally understood what some crucial settings do and what I should do with them.
Search for the "Denoise" settings from HDR+, Enhanced HDR+ and Night, you should find "Luma Revert Factor" and "Luma Outlier Threshold Factor". These two are the villains, set to zero. After that you set "Chroma Strength Factor" and "Luma Strength Factor" to zero and then takes a shot and go back into the settings to increase its values. They remove the natural noise produced by the sensor, increase it's values until you're satisfied with the amount of noise. Luma Denoise New A-B can be left default or increased a bit without damages, this last part seems to have more effect in Enhanced HDR+.

A quick test that worked better than I expected:


This is default settings , pay attention to the lens ring


This is with the changes I described, see that text on the lens ring that had been erased?

Not only there's more actual detail in the photos, the noise also "adds" and makes everything blend together much more smoothly. Changing these settings even improved digital zoom a lot. Now I'm thinking if switching between Wiener, Sabre, Shasta, or whatever it is and does can improve digital zoom further, but for now I'm satisfied. All smoothing and "pixelation" that is characteristic to Pixel is gone.
I also limit the range of the HDR+ exposures to +6.5 and -1.0 to prevent any unnatural "HDR look".

Now, you already have a Pixel phone... I don't know how different you can make it look from the default camera. Maybe decrease the exposure range like I did, at least? What is it that you're trying to change?



EDIT: if anyone has any idea of how to force the phone to expose for the shadows automatically, please tell me!

 

[Ryan Schwartz]

There were wispy looking clouds in the neighborhood and the sunset lit them up pretty good, so I snapped a photo on my antique iPhone XS. It sort of looked like the sky was on fire. Sharpened and denoised in Topaz.





--
Ryan

 

[Ryan Schwartz]

What you think about this "distortion" that pointing the camera up causes to these structures?

How much it annoys you, and how much would you like to have this effect "corrected" on the phone?

I think it adds more to the composition than detracts. Wouldn’t want it corrected, even if it’s an option.

 

[ZorSy]

And that is exactly why I finally gave up on GCAM: I had a spreadsheet with changes linked to my test photos, endlessly tuning things and building profiles (as there is no universal one for all occasions). Needless to say how many times I had to reinstall GCAM as some settings would stuff up badly. After countless days, all those benefits were miniscule and perhaps noticeable only on the full screen at 100% magnification... I could not unlock the full resolution on the main camera (not even 50MP mode on S23U), just a waste of time sorry to say. If the phone allows raw (even a cooked one), use it and 'massage' that file until happier than with the jpeg you got at the same time.

 

[SuperGao]

IQ is not good because i forgot to turn on raw capture

 

[Panino Manino]

And that is exactly why I finally gave up on GCAM: I had a spreadsheet with changes linked to my test photos, endlessly tuning things and building profiles (as there is no universal one for all occasions). Needless to say how many times I had to reinstall GCAM as some settings would stuff up badly. After countless days, all those benefits were miniscule and perhaps noticeable only on the full screen at 100% magnification... I could not unlock the full resolution on the main camera (not even 50MP mode on S23U), just a waste of time sorry to say. If the phone allows raw (even a cooked one), use it and 'massage' that file until happier than with the jpeg you got at the same time.

Think like this, imagine GCAM is a "lens". In different situations you use different lenses, right? I use GCAM, HedgeCam 2 and the Native Cam, depending on the scene and my mood to produce the results I want. Most of the time I only want to quickly capture the scene so I use GCAM.

I was already satisfied with the results, it just happens that I only discovered "my lens was dirty and found some cloth to clean it", that's it. That's why I shared the settings here, I believe most people who venture into GCAM have the same goal of taking photos with a less processed aspect directly from SOOC without needing to edit RAWs.
I don't think that the time it takes for you to understand how GCAM settings work makes it not worth using it. Frustrating yes, but how is this any different from learning to takes photos? It takes trial and error to really learn and understand everything. And my experience is partly my fault, because of course as a noob stumbling around I was a bit "scared" to turn some settings on and off.

 

[André BARELIER]

And that is exactly why I finally gave up on GCAM: I had a spreadsheet with changes linked to my test photos, endlessly tuning things and building profiles (as there is no universal one for all occasions). Needless to say how many times I had to reinstall GCAM as some settings would stuff up badly. After countless days, all those benefits were miniscule and perhaps noticeable only on the full screen at 100% magnification... I could not unlock the full resolution on the main camera (not even 50MP mode on S23U), just a waste of time sorry to say. If the phone allows raw (even a cooked one), use it and 'massage' that file until happier than with the jpeg you got at the same time.

Think like this, imagine GCAM is a "lens". In different situations you use different lenses, right? I use GCAM, HedgeCam 2 and the Native Cam, depending on the scene and my mood to produce the results I want. Most of the time I only want to quickly capture the scene so I use GCAM.

I was already satisfied with the results, it just happens that I only discovered "my lens was dirty and found some cloth to clean it", that's it. That's why I shared the settings here, I believe most people who venture into GCAM have the same goal of taking photos with a less processed aspect directly from SOOC without needing to edit RAWs.
I don't think that the time it takes for you to understand how GCAM settings work makes it not worth using it. Frustrating yes, but how is this any different from learning to takes photos? It takes trial and error to really learn and understand everything. And my experience is partly my fault, because of course as a noob stumbling around I was a bit "scared" to turn some settings on and off.

Thank you very much for having taken the time to write your very detailed answer. Very useful.

I’ll follow your recommendations, and see how it goes.