I know this is a little bit off topic, but (1) it is a bit related to the opencamera app, (2) it is a bit related to darktable, and (3) here are the experts that could know the answers.
I have a stock samsung android on a galaxy s7 phone, which I am running almost google free (only the OS and google maps, the gallery and the file manager are proprietary, and the camera app, everything else I use comes from f-droid.
The main reason for using the stock camera app is that it is available from the lock screen, and speed is key for photographing my children. Plus, I never warmed up to the opencamera app.
However, the app has major flaws:
It does not save raws to the external sd card, only to the internal memory.
All raws are exactly the same size (to the bit), about 25 MB, which makes comparison tools such as czkawka extra slow. Furthermore, if I gzip the raws, they are less than 10 MB. I wish darktable would read gzipped raw files …
If I zoom (digital zoom only), the pixel dimension (12 MP) of the image does not change, which is plain stupid, as I end up with an 8 times upscaled picture for maximum zoom. I am using the zoom mainly to save space when photographing shopping lists or visiting cards, which obviously does not work due to the stupid upscaling.
Furthermore, there is no time priority mode, if I set the shutter speed manually, the iso is automatically set to manual al well, which is also plain stupid.
Here my questions:
Is this the case for all phone stock camera apps, or are there brands where the apps are not that stupid?
Are these limitations of the API or of the apps itself. I tried to look into the camera2 api, and to me it seems that this is not really designed photographically thinking, but I am not an expert and I did not find answers to my questions there.
At least when it comes to saving raw, most, if not all vendor camera apps indeed just do uncompressed DNGs. (Compression ain’t free in terms of latency->burst writing rate, nor processing power->battery life.)
I checked my (samsung) tablet with opencamera, and the upscaling for digital zoom happens as well, so open camera is not a solution (I was not able to check with my phone because there opencamera does not find focus anymore).
I also had a friend check the upscaling and on his oneplus phone it happens as well.
The good question is: Is it in the API, does it just deliver these pictures without control from the app side?
I don’t have any answers for you, but you inspired me to vent a bit myself. I have a newer Samsung, the S21. Nice and shiny, with as many as three cameras, with tele, wide and ultra wide focal lengths. so plenty of choices, you might think. I also like you like to use the stock camera app, since it’s available from the lock screen. And I quite often prefer the tele camera. All well as long as I just use Auto mode. If I want to go into Pro mode and do manual exposure, the only options are wide and ultra wide. So if I need a longer focal length, I am back to good old digital zoom. And what if I would dare to demand RAW? Ok, that’s fine, but then my only choice is ultra wide! What!?!
So at the end of the day, nobody is going to convince me that “proper” cameras are no longer worth it any time soon. I’ll stick to a decent DSLR or mirrorless for the foreseeable future and then a bit and continue to use my mobile mostly as an emergency camera.
Aren’t several algorithms for compression defined in dng? Maybe there is one available with a low but resource friendly compression? And if not, wouldn’t it be worth to get one into the spec? Google should have enough power to convince adobe to add this to the spec, if it is not there already. The stupidity of the current implementation causes so many trouble afterwards, that I cannot understand why they don’t care about this.
I would love to upgrade, but the newer flagship samsungs don’t have an sd card option which is a no-go. And the A series does not have raw ability in the stock camera app which is also a no-go. It’s so bad …
As I have the phone always with me, it is used a lot for photographing my family in situations where the big dslr in no option. Of my christmas present calendars for the family (grandparents of my children etc.), I would say that, in the meantime, about 50 % of the images are from the phone, and as long as I stick to A4 size it is OK, but I definitely need raw to get the same overall color look and quality independent of the camera.
Joking aside, you’re absolutely right; phone cameras certainly have their uses, and these kind of situations are an excellent example.
Instead of my phone, however, I tend to use an old Canon Powershot — it’s small enough to fit in my pocket, and The Canon Hacker’s Development Kit means it can work wonders (including shooting RAW). More importantly, if I ever break or lose it, I can pick up another one from eBay for next to nothing. It has a mechanical zoom, a view finder, and lots of other things that my phone doesn’t (I can even ring for taxi and take photos at the same time. )
Unfortunately this is likely still not flat enough for my trouser pockets, and even if, there is already the phone. And typically another phone in the other pocket, which I carry for work.
Whenever I have the chance, I carry my sony rx100m2. Which, by the way, also does not have a mode where shutter and aperture are controlled by the photographer and ISO is automatically determined by the camera. Not only the phone cameras are limited due to software.
There are many (much smaller) canons. And with CHDK installed, you have full control over everything — including aperture, shutter speed, ISO… the complete works.
I don’t have anything on the lock screen, perhaps not even a lock screen (or is it merely when phone screen switches off after a timeout?), but, at least on Pixels, double-press on power button can be configured to bring camera app up. I find it most useful as it is very quick, i.e. I double-press while still pulling the camera from pocket or bag. So when I can see the screen camera is already working. Never had a Samsung device though, so no idea the stock app or capabilities.
You can use the Google camera app on most phones, which I find often works much better than vendor apps or opencamera. Search for “gcam” to give it a shot.
At least on my Pixel 6a, the camera app saves DNGs of varying sizes (10-13 MB, depending on subject). Those are computational raws, or “proraw”, as Apple would call it.
Actually, that app is one of the major reasons I returned an iPhone two years ago, as that couldn’t take raw+jpeg by default (you have to enable raw manually every time you open the app), the camera can’t be activated with a dimple shortcut like double-power-button, then loudness for shutter (instead, it’s power, swipe, tap, then wait, then tap to shoot, most of ehich requires screen interaction and precision tapping). And worst, the stupid iPhone phone app always makes a dumb shutter sound that you can only disable by silencing the entire phone, or shooting video. Gosh, I hated that stupid iPhone camera.
I guess you need play store access to get it? So I am out.
The company I work for is iphone only, but on none of the three I already had (I guess the latest is a 13 or 14) the stock app is capable of raw. Or did I just not find the option? I guess at least google told me the same.
However, I always accidentally activate the camera app when I get the phone out of the pocket, there has to be a shortcut …
Open camera is basically just saving a tiff… On my phone the google dng are around 10-13 mb and they are 25 from open camera. The color matrix is crazy as well. The good thing is you actually get a raw of the whole sensor… On my pixel the dng is very small if I shoot with any zoom… so its really only a raw capture if I don’t zoom in… If I zoom in all the way I get about a 500K DNG. On my old lumia I would often shot snaps zoomed in and just use the jpg but later if I decided I wanted a wider crop I could go to the raw and develop that as it correctly saved the sensor data independent of where I had the phone zoomed… I guess this is a side effect of a computational raw file???
To be honest, a website that calls me “friend” in the second sentence feels a bit uncomfortable …
I never felt well with these disassembled and recompiled closed source apps and the whole ecosystem, such as the xda forum where binaries are shared. I feel much more comfortable with f-droid …
I was curious at one point as this issue with zoomed files not creating a useful raw on my pixel made me wonder if the gcam was any different. I’m with you some of these things seem too risky to mess with your phone esp if you use it for commerce or whatever…
