Clarifications on M8 camera?

[ShAdoWSKy]

Hi all! I'm looking to buy a new phone in the next week and I absolutely love everything about the M8 with the exception of a few worries with the camera. By no means am I a professional photographer, but I love to take pictures, edit (with snapseed), and post it to Instagram as well as Facebook. My biggest worry with the camera is it's over-exposure in bright light like a sunny day because that seems to be a problem in most of the photos I have seen. Will playing with the exposure and other settings on the camera fix that? Thanks in advance!

 

[Skyway]

Hi all! I'm looking to buy a new phone in the next week and I absolutely love everything about the M8 with the exception of a few worries with the camera. By no means am I a professional photographer, but I love to take pictures, edit (with snapseed), and post it to Instagram as well as Facebook. My biggest worry with the camera is it's over-exposure in bright light like a sunny day because that seems to be a problem in most of the photos I have seen. Will playing with the exposure and other settings on the camera fix that? Thanks in advance!

Yes

Posted via Android Central App

 

[jhilker]

I'm no professional photographer, but I've found that the camera on the M8 more than meets my needs. I really haven't seen any problems taking shots in bright light. Here's a sample using the u-focus feature.

Sent from my HTC One M8 using Tapatalk.

 

[RockyMtnRedRaider]

Don't let the camera scare you. I have found it to be amazing in all situations, with some tweaking of settings (which is easy, and you can save camera settings under different names). The only negative world be if you zoom and crop, due to the 4 megapixel images.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[dty06]

Don't let the camera scare you. I have found it to be amazing in all situations, with some tweaking of settings (which is easy, and you can save camera settings under different names). The only negative world be if you zoom and crop, due to the 4 megapixel images.

Posted via Android Central App

I agree. Even the stock settings work well, but they can be improved easily, and because of the low pixel count the pictures are taken and stored instantly.

This is a pic I took at dusk with stock settings:

Posted from my M8

 

[AussieAndroid]

My friends are too shy to post photos from their phones now that they've seen what my M8 can do.

 

[barnabyj]

I had a friend who is a semi-pro photographer over at my house this weekend. She was lamenting on not being able to set the aperture on her iPhone camera to try a shot. I showed her my M8, and it's full manual mode. I then showed her some of the other stuff as well, like ufocus and zoom blur. She said, man that's easy, it takes forever to get the zoom blur effect on her dslr. I then showed her the ease of putting together some zoe videos, and she handed the phone back to me, saying get this thing away from me! It can almost do everything I've been trying to learn to do with no effort!

From my own experience, it seems the majority of the people complaining about the camera having problems with over exposing the sky in photos, doesn't know how to frame a shot well. Cameras are dumb when it comes to white balance and exposure. This is why on even your really expensive cameras, you can adjust both settings on it, as the camera just won't know what things are supposed to look like to us. Most semi-pro cameras and up come with special built in filters, called a ND filter, which help even out the contrast issues that happen in landscape shots. This was one of the selling points for my Canon G7 back in the day, as I wanted to get nice landscapes without over exposing the sky, but not have to buy a dslr. I've found I get nice blue skies in my shots on the One, but sometimes I need to tell the camera where to perform it's AE/AF. Which is what I'd expect, the camera doesn't know what I want my picture to look like. It's just a tool, not the photographer. I've found I only really need to select my WB when outside, and select different points in my framing to get the exposure right. It takes all of 2 seconds to do this, and get the shot you want, and most of the time, I don't need to anyways.

While the htc One camera at first was a slight concern, based on the reviews, for me as well, I found in practice that the camera, combined with the photo gallery and zoe videos, has become one of the most compelling features of the phone. It makes taking pictures fun again. Taking a variety of photos, and videos, and putting together a zoe video, is so easy, and produces such a fun and fresh way to remember your events, you won't want to use another smartphone camera. Just forget the stupid 4MP spec as it is not telling the whole picture. The camera is outrageously fast in taking photos, focuses fast, has amazing low light capabilities, and the quality of pics is amazing. I've also taken some great late afternoon shots with ranging contrast that really caught the sun coming through the trees in my shots, while having the right exposure on the foreground image. You just have to keep your expectations in check. If you want to be able to badly frame shots, and not give too much thought, and count on having the extra MP to correct your bad shot, so you can zoom and crop, then you might be disappointed. I've cropped photos, and they still look fine, you just aren't going to get CSI level zooms like on a 13+ MP camera.

 

[mlee19841]

I had a friend who is a semi-pro photographer over at my house this weekend. She was lamenting on not being able to set the aperture on her iPhone camera to try a shot. I showed her my M8, and it's full manual mode. I then showed her some of the other stuff as well, like ufocus and zoom blur. She said, man that's easy, it takes forever to get the zoom blur effect on her dslr. I then showed her the ease of putting together some zoe videos, and she handed the phone back to me, saying get this thing away from me! It can almost do everything I've been trying to learn to do with no effort!

From my own experience, it seems the majority of the people complaining about the camera having problems with over exposing the sky in photos, doesn't know how to frame a shot well. Cameras are dumb when it comes to white balance and exposure. This is why on even your really expensive cameras, you can adjust both settings on it, as the camera just won't know what things are supposed to look like to us. Most semi-pro cameras and up come with special built in filters, called a ND filter, which help even out the contrast issues that happen in landscape shots. This was one of the selling points for my Canon G7 back in the day, as I wanted to get nice landscapes without over exposing the sky, but not have to buy a dslr. I've found I get nice blue skies in my shots on the One, but sometimes I need to tell the camera where to perform it's AE/AF. Which is what I'd expect, the camera doesn't know what I want my picture to look like. It's just a tool, not the photographer. I've found I only really need to select my WB when outside, and select different points in my framing to get the exposure right. It takes all of 2 seconds to do this, and get the shot you want, and most of the time, I don't need to anyways.

While the htc One camera at first was a slight concern, based on the reviews, for me as well, I found in practice that the camera, combined with the photo gallery and zoe videos, has become one of the most compelling features of the phone. It makes taking pictures fun again. Taking a variety of photos, and videos, and putting together a zoe video, is so easy, and produces such a fun and fresh way to remember your events, you won't want to use another smartphone camera. Just forget the stupid 4MP spec as it is not telling the whole picture. The camera is outrageously fast in taking photos, focuses fast, has amazing low light capabilities, and the quality of pics is amazing. I've also taken some great late afternoon shots with ranging contrast that really caught the sun coming through the trees in my shots, while having the right exposure on the foreground image. You just have to keep your expectations in check. If you want to be able to badly frame shots, and not give too much thought, and count on having the extra MP to correct your bad shot, so you can zoom and crop, then you might be disappointed. I've cropped photos, and they still look fine, you just aren't going to get CSI level zooms like on a 13+ MP camera.

Agreed. Great cam. just gets fuzzy when you zoom in on the pic

Posted via HTC m8

 

[Mooncatt]

I was reading some reports that mentioned one of the back camera's has a 15X optical zoom, which when combined with the other, is supposed to offer some sort of hybrid(?) zoom that isn't fully digital but not fully optical. What's the real deal on that, can you get a decent zoom quality out of the camera when setting up the shot?

 

[jtc303]

Anyone have recommendations on settings/auto focus etc...

[JTC ONE m8]

 

[Skyway]

I was reading some reports that mentioned one of the back camera's has a 15X optical zoom, which when combined with the other, is supposed to offer some sort of hybrid(?) zoom that isn't fully digital but not fully optical. What's the real deal on that, can you get a decent zoom quality out of the camera when setting up the shot?

Here's a really boring picture fully zoomed in. I was just messing around.



sent from my HTC One M8

 

[CHILLYWILL_95831]

I was reading some reports that mentioned one of the back camera's has a 15X optical zoom, which when combined with the other, is supposed to offer some sort of hybrid(?) zoom that isn't fully digital but not fully optical. What's the real deal on that, can you get a decent zoom quality out of the camera when setting up the shot?

This technology is not yet available on any phone, but it's coming and it does use a two lens set up to get a real optical zoom. And, I'm willing to bet that HTC gets it first and will probably have the most successful implementation of it. As of now,I don't think it's choose effective for cell phones. As for my M8,I have found that zooming in on pictures can create some grain with the camera. It's my suggestion to get as close to your subject as possible then crop after the fact. I just haven't found post cropping to be as horrible as some reviewers have reported. And, post cropping is absolutely outstanding when used in combination with the Ufocus feature! I'm still stunned and excited with the M8 and I had the first generation M7!

Posted via Android Central App

 

[CHILLYWILL_95831]

Anyone have recommendations on settings/auto focus etc...

[JTC ONE m8]

One trick that I've tried with some pretty good success is when you have some really bright lighting in a scene, try tapping that area and holding to set AE/AF in normal mode, then once set, switch your camera to HDR and shoot your picture..you might be surprised with the result!

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Mooncatt]

This technology is not yet available on any phone, but it's coming and it does use a two lens set up to get a real optical zoom. And, I'm willing to bet that HTC gets it first and will probably have the most successful implementation of it.

Let me clarify by saying I meant a 15X fixed optical zoom, not one that can zoom in and out. One of the reports I was reading was quoting one of HTC's officials, stating they expect to have a true optical zoom function on a phone some time next year, and their aim is to rival the quality of dedicated cameras with it.