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fact is that high megapixel FF cameras are unrelenting in demonstrating that the rules around hyperfocal and COC are no longer valid.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.
For me 28mm is enough, 24mm is better. I mostly want a portrait lens, hate taking portraits with distorted face features because of the wide angle lens.
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.
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