Google's Pixel devices are usually cutting edge in terms of computational photography and the current Pixel 3 device comes with an entire range of computational imaging features, including the multi-frame-stacking Night Sight low light mode.
Now it looks like Google is planning to take things one step further with the upcoming Pixel 4 generation and offer some kind of astrophotography feature.
A fuzzy screenshot of the leaked promotional video showing off a dedicated camera mode for capturing stars.
Pro Android has managed to get hold of what appears to be an (as yet) unreleased Google Pixel 4 promotional video. The clip highlights several software features of the still unreleased device, including a Night Sight-like astrophotography mode. Unfortunately, no technical detail is provided but it is fair to assume to mode will use some combination of frame-layering techniques and artificial intelligence to create well-exposed noise-free images of the night sky.
Huawei's current flagship P30 Pro already features a multi-frame star trail mode which is capable of achieving pretty attractive results in the right circumstances. We'll have to wait until October, when the Pixel 4 is expected to be launched, to find out if Google's solution is capable of improving on the Huawei feature.
I never cared about the design or material of a phone, the only thing that annoys me is a notch. That's the reason i never got the Pixel 3XL. But from a usage point of view, software integration and camera experience, all other phones (Android and iphones) come second to any Pixel. This year i am going for an orange Pixel 4 XL. Astrophotography? If Google nails this mode as well as Motion Mode like they did with Night Sight / HDR+, then I'm pretty sure other manufacturers will have fuming brains.
Computational Photography, far from being evil, is becoming essential IMO. Just take the case of Sequator for Astro, or focus stacking apps like Zerene. The sooner camera companies adopt such technology - Like Nikon and Fuji have with their physical Focus Stacking autofocus the better. And if you have never seen what focus stacking can achieve then try it, because the simple fact is that high megapixel FF cameras are unrelenting in demonstrating that the rules around hyperfocal and COC are no longer valid.
Small amounts of movement can be accomodated: but that's partly the point. Unless manufacturers include that in their camera autofocus everything basically has to sat still and its incredibly hard to do.
I meant "simulated" depth of field with multiple exposure focus stacking vs. stopping down where the entire image can be captured in focus with one exposure....granted within limits.
Focus stacking always gives better results in a scenario vs stopping down for a couple of reasons, firstly the lens can be kept at an optimum aperture to minimise diffraction and secondly the Circle of Confusion calculations inherent in hyperfocal calculations are completely inadequate for a 25 M Pix sensor let alone 60 or 100, so the resulting image looks "soft". The 1/3rd in rule simply doesn't work, and tell-tale sign is that the bottom of an image looks soft not just in the corners but in the middle bottom as well. Its quite likely too that focus stacking largely mitigates field curvature and focus shift issues in lenses, which is always a very difficult thing for a photographer to visualize in the field
However this will pan out, however impressive the technology may be....I want a ultra WA lens on the phone because that's extremely useful and sorely missing on Google phones. The rest is just gravy.
Wow great. So instead of buying a wide-angle super fast and expensive lens + a noise free full frame body I will just wait for this phone to be released :P
You see camera companies - this is what you need. Invest in computational photography ASAP or phones will just take the market from all but pro photographers...
Ai is evil! It is designed to change the perception of the human to a particular object definitions. Once your brain accept the new concept it can no longer tell the diference between a fake or real object. (I.e. weather engineered cloud vs real cloud). In 20-30 years human will live in a virtual Ai world! In other words, in a trance state!
It's not about the product. It's just irrelevant criticising technological progress because somehow it's going to be too expensive. How do you know what the application of this technology might be across other google products etc? Do you go on the Ferrari forums as well and complain about how the newest model is too expensive? So much pointless
Most likely star photography will be replacing your photo with similar one form existing photo database. It will Photoshop night sky into your landscape. Look grandma! I can take photos of distant stars with my telephone!
DPR News continues its unfortunate decision to be a rumour-plagiary site. Quite a few articles of that ilk recently.
Rumours always cause a lot of stress and arguing that often turns out to have been completely unnecessary.
That is why it is nice to have rumour-specific sites, which one can avoid if one prefers real news.
It would be much more enjoyable here if DPR left the fake news, and often simply manufactured news, that are both core pillars of rumour sites and all part of keeping a rumour site ticking, to the experts in obfuscation.
"a lot of stress and arguing that often turns out to have been completely unnecessary" @TNArgs, in a sentence you cracked the case and summarized the entire internet/social media phenomena. Although I would also argue about how most people spend their time on the internet and how ads are necessary to generate revenue.
So let me get this straight. Your saying in the name of public health that articles which are currently obviously based on speculation be removed from dpr. You know you could walk out your door and get hit by a bus right? The internet forums are a scary place to venture alone in, hold someone's hand
I couldn't care less about an astro mode. I care about focal length range (16-200 equivalent would be nice) and, secondarily, a flash that actually works as a flash (you know - lasts less than 1/1000th of a second like a Xenon flash).
All this computational nonsense does exactly nothing if the subject isn't resolved, lit or frozen.
We dont know what they are using. If they are using DRAM chip behind sensor to get a lot photos then its not possible. If they are using normal ZSL like now then you can port it to Pixel2/Pixel3. You can have Pixel 3-exclusive Super Res Zoom on Pixel 2 when you install modded Google Camera. This could also be ported if it doesnt require something new.
I used to be a Google fan, but they have abandoned so many products as of late. They have lost focus and don’t seem to put much effort into finished products. They seem a fractured company with internal issues and political divide hampering success.
You don't seem to understand google recipe for success. "Fail Fast" is even their public statement. Try everything, see what sticks, kill the rest.
They have been doing that for years and have been pretty public about it. They even want to "fail faster" in the future. So if you don't like that, probably don't invest in a google service
Camera companies with hundreds of years combined experience in the photo business could learn a thing or two on account of their asses being kicked left and right by a newcomer like Google.
I'm sorry, but I have to say that whether I like it or not, Google actually has the absolute biggest influence on my everyday life and operations of any company. Between web browsing, news, Gmail, assistant, nest, Android Auto, Google Maps, YouTube, my business operations including advertising, back-end scheduling, etc, etc, etc... No other company comes close to the impact that Google has made.
so...this comment is a general sentiment towards Google and has nothing to do with the astrophotography mode. i assume you don't like this mode and prefer to invest in lindt&spruengli shares.
I've tried star photos in Night Sight mode on my Pixel 2XL. I can get the stars, but the AF doesn't reliably choose infinity due to lack of hardly any light. If I could lock on infinity then the picture might be at least decent. Certainly I can see stars in the photos and a landscape using night sight.
Install modded Gcam to get focus presets, manual mode, super res zoom, even better night shots (you can get even 40 photos in night sight instead of 9. it will be slower to capture like 5seconds but if you have time then results will blow you away) and a lot more features,
But someone that has Canon Rebel with 18-55 could throw it away;) And thats a huuuuuge step. Even 1" P&S with nice lenses like RX100V will have problem, I hope Sony will make PlayMemories again but now with open market for developers and nice API. GoPro is using Snapdragon 625 so phone chips are already in "cameras". RX100V has 24fps burst and nice buffer. Just imagine you could just shoot 1/13s exposures for some seconds (plus extra 1/400 for highlights) and app would stitch it together without any artifacts - thats how Night Sight on Google phones works. Not only that but its 20MPx with phase detect! Make it like dual-pixel so you would get depth information from entire image - then you would have a little bit fake bokeh/portrait mode without artifacts (you get those on phone, because it needs to blur so much). And most important thing - make camera a companion for your smartphone, not 1:1 replacement! We need RX100 with ultra wide angle zoom like 17mm-50mm which would be stabilized!
A 'stars' mode can actually be quite simple. Take a LOT of medium exposure images, look for all the bright lines (which will almost certainly be fuzzy due to lack of focus and atmospherics, movement, etc), and replace these with bright points. Do some alignment between the images, cancel out 'noise' (points not seen in a majority of images).
Now, that is already moderately 'bogus' from a reality point of view, however they can then start getting really 'computational' and increase the star numbers in areas depending on density, vary the colors to make it more 'interesting', even god forbid start adding some fake nebula, etc..
Pretty pictures would not be difficult.. Accurate pictures? not so much.
Why would they bother that much. They know the position and the orientation of the camera. They know the time. They just need to render all the stars in the given constellation and be done.
haha...yes, they know your position, just go to a star map and simulate everything for the customer...it will be like those astronomy apps but just simulated as a photo...
If somehow by some weird magic this mode his handheld than it will be pretty hard to argue that every other form of camera is just too cumbersome for everybody except the hard enthusiasts
You know compared to a PC and a mac, especially Mac's unwillingness to embrace a left and right click mice as a thing by this point, phone OS's are remarkably similar. You hit what is likely the only remaining button on the thing (sigh steve Jobs) to turn it on and then there's a screen full of icons which you click on to launch apps that are for all intense and purposes identical touch interfaces.
The web browsers are very similar too. The on-screen keyboards are a point of difference but apple has reluctantly put what nearly ever user prefers (basically an android default layout) if you so choose making them even more similar.
Are we really saying the iphone text message app with it's inability to let me download my texts for my own storage purposes independent of apple's cloud (which is near impossible to effectively search anyway) is so much better than the near-identical looking android text message app?
Anyone demanding iOS is weird to me. Like other things about the iphone
Android feels unpolished and wonky...not as good as an experience. And of course we know that Google loves to gobble up your privacy. I really wouldn't trust that everything done on an Android phone is not going to Google for marketing purposes.
+Thoughts R Us " I really wouldn't trust that everything done on an Android phone is not going to Google for marketing purposes." On your iPhone go to Settings > Privacy > Advertising and tell me what you see there. :) There you have LIMIT AD TRACKING. Not disable, but limit, and thats NOT enabled by default. Just like Google they are making your own ID and they analyze what you do, what you download etc.
Apple recently got in trouble for allowing any installed app on their phones to access the phone's cookies (which include call log, gps co-ordinates, etc) and relay them through the phone connection even when the app is NOT running. They promised to block the capability... for installed apps intended for minors only.
ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2021 is a fully-featured alternative to Adobe's Lightroom for Windows users. So how does it compare? Read our detailed review to find out.
The Canon EOS R3 is the company's first high-end mirrorless camera designed for sports, wildlife and photojournalism. Built around a 24MP Stacked CMOS sensor and the company's RF mount, the R3 is designed to handle virtually any situation it encounters. Learn more in our initial review.
The GFX 50S II takes a familiar sensor and adds the image stabilization and body design of the GFX 100S. Does this, and a lowest-ever price deliver a winning combination?
Leofoto is one of the best-known names in the world of affordable tripods and supports, but not necessarily for the best of reasons. With the LM-364C, Leofoto appears to offer some innovation and high value – so how does it perform?
The 2021 ASUS Zephyrus G14 offers a phenomenal combination of performance, power efficiency, and portability. With its AMD Ryzen CPU, RTX 3060 GPU, and color-accurate WQHD display, this little laptop might just be an M1 MacBook Pro killer.
What’s the best camera for around $2000? These capable cameras should be solid and well-built, have both speed and focus for capturing fast action and offer professional-level image quality. In this buying guide we’ve rounded up all the current interchangeable lens cameras costing around $2000 and recommended the best.
Most modern cameras will shoot video to one degree or another, but these are the ones we’d look at if you plan to shoot some video alongside your photos. We’ve chosen cameras that can take great photos and make it easy to get great looking video, rather than being the ones you’d choose as a committed videographer.
Although a lot of people only upload images to Instagram from their smartphones, the app is much more than just a mobile photography platform. In this guide we've chosen a selection of cameras that make it easy to shoot compelling lifestyle images, ideal for sharing on social media.
Whether you’re just sharing clips with friends or you’re launching an online on-camera career, vlogging matters. We looked at cameras with selfie-friendly screens, wide-angle lenses, microphone inputs and great video quality, and selected the best.
Ilford aims to make film photography more approachable and fun with a trio of new products, including a Pop-Up Darkroom, Darkroom Starter Kit and 35mm Gift Calendar.
The new CFexpress Type A Cobalt line offers solid performance at a relatively affordable price, a combo ProGrade hopes will the CFexpress type A format to catch on with more consumers and manufacturers.
TTartisan hasn't shared the price or release date of the lens, but has confirmed it will be available for Canon EOS M, Fujifilm X, Micro Four Thirds, Nikon Z and Sony E mount APS-C camera systems.
The Sigma 90mm F2.8 DN DG | C is the latest in the company's I series range of compact, mid-priced primes for E- and L-mounts. We caught what might be the last of Seattle's sunshine in our 90mm sample gallery.
ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2021 is a fully-featured alternative to Adobe's Lightroom for Windows users. So how does it compare? Read our detailed review to find out.
Eye Control might sound like a complicated gimmick, but Richard Butler found himself looking at it as a technology to cut through the complexity of modern cameras.
Apple has just released a 7-minute video outlining the key improvements to the phones, mainly in the camera photo and video department. It's worth a watch if you're trying to determine which model to pre-order.
Gordon Laing is back with another episode of Retro Review, this time showing off the first digital camera he owned, a 3.3MP Sony S70, which was released 21 years ago.
Chris and Jordan received a lot of feedback after their preview of the Canon EOS R3, and in this episode the pair answer some of the questions that came up in the YouTube comments. Watch the video to see if they answered one of yours.
Jupiter is hit with objects throughout the year, but it's an infrequent event that's often observable for only a second or two. Amateur astronomer José Luis Pereira observed Jupiter on a clear night earlier this week and caught such an impact with his camera and telescope.
Did our coverage of new film emulsion No. 5 last month pique your interest? Arnas Špaka, the creator of NoColorStudio, shares how the initiative's first film stock came to fruition, speaking to our friends at 35mmc.
In the latest episode of Japan Camera Hunter’s ‘Camera Geekery’ video series, Bellamy Hunt provides an in-depth look at one of the most sought-after Rolleiflex TLR cameras to ever be produced.
GoPro's Hero9 action camera included a new design and a 23MP sensor. GoPro has retained the same sensor and design this year but added a faster chip inside the camera. With more speed, the camera takes better advantage of its sensor and offers improved all-around performance.
Chris and Jordan from DPReview TV recently reviewed Sigma's new 24mm F2 DG DN 'Contemporary' lens. Check out the sample gallery from their review to see what this lens can deliver.
Canon recently paid a visit to the DPReview headquarters and took us out for some sports shooting with pre-production EOS R3's. One of the first things we wanted to know was, can Eye Control AF replace the tried-and-true AF joystick?
Instagram's Head of Public Policy has responded to a story from The Wall Street Journal that claims Facebook has ignored its own research, which shows the toll Instagram has on the mental health of teens.
The new 11T and 11T Pro offer nearly identical specifications, including a triple-camera array headlined by a 109MP Samsung sensor with a 24mm (equiv.) lens in front.
Oppo and Kodak have formed a new partnership. The first product to come from the relationship is a Kodak 35-inspired Find X3 Pro Photographer Edition smartphone.
The Canon EOS R3 is here! Click through for more information about Canon's new professional mirrorless camera, our thoughts on how it handles, and a breakdown of its major features.
Chris and Jordan from DPReview TV recently published their first impressions review of the Canon EOS R3 with eye-controlled focus. Check out their sample gallery, which includes sports photos, to see how the images look.
We conducted an ask-me-anything thread over on Reddit on Tuesday, inviting questions about the EOS R3. We ended up digging into some of the fine detail and will be back online today to mop up any remaining questions later today.
Apple iPhone 13's new Cinematic Mode uses its multiple cameras to capture a depth map when shooting video so you can rack focus and adjust depth-of-field after the fact. Apple also studied creative choices DPs make to enhance video AF.
In addition to its flagship iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max devices, Apple also shared the details of its base-level iPhone 13 smartphone, as well as its new iPad and updated iPad Mini models.
Today, during its online 'California Streaming' livestream, Apple revealed the details of its latest iPhone models, including the iPhone 13, 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. Two updated iPad models we also announced, the 'new' iPad and a substantially updated iPad Mini.
The Canon EOS R3 is the company's first high-end mirrorless camera designed for sports, wildlife and photojournalism. Built around a 24MP Stacked CMOS sensor and the company's RF mount, the R3 is designed to handle virtually any situation it encounters. Learn more in our initial review.
Chris and Jordan have been using a pre-production copy of the new EOS R3. Find out what they think of it after a day of shooting sports and wildlife, including the return of Canon's eye-controlled focus.
We had the opportunity recently to shoot with pre-production samples of the Canon EOS R3, including a long session at a soccer practice, and a trip to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. Check out what this all-new sensor is capable of in our sample gallery.
Canon has just introduced a portable 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM tele-zoom lens along with an ultra-compact 16mm F2.8 STM for its RF-mount. The 100-400 is easy to hand-hold and has up to 5.5 stops of shake reduction. The 16mm F2.8 won't take up much room in your bag and is priced at under $300.
Comments