New Moto Z2 Force - is camera supposed to take awful pics?

[ChuckInNH]

I have a new phone... This phone is terrific, except for one big problem. The pics from it are literally the worst I have ever seen from any phone or digital camera (with the possible exception of $5 Tracfones). Everything is dark and dreary. The usual pictures I would take of my house with blue sky and clouds in the background comes out with whitewashed sky and dark house/yard. Both indoor and outdoor are awful. How are people getting nice pics to post in the pics thread? I'm not getting anything like that at all.

I also have Moto G4 and X Pure... Pics are great on those. My previous LG G4 took great pics. Same for the really old HTC Evo 4G.

One thing I noticed is the pic saved into the gallery is much worse than what I was seeing on the screen at the time I clicked the shutter. It's as if it overlayed the B&W camera image over the color and just made it awful. Can that be disabled? If I could make it generate an image only from the color camera, I suspect it will be much better.

 

[D13H4RD2L1V3]

Could you show a few examples and then perhaps using another device or a camera to show how it should've been?

The Z2 doesn't have the world's best phone camera, but it should be more than capable enough.

 

[ChuckInNH]

I will once I am home during daylight... I need to get some examples that are worthwhile. At the office now. Does anyone know of some setting to disable the BW camera or would another camera app bypass it? Although if it is too low level, perhaps bypassing is impossible if any use of the camera apis is just going to pass through the stuff that combines the camera images.

 

[AgoristNH]

Okay, the conditions for photos were not optimum since the sun was setting with heavy cloud cover. But, I took a few dozen side by side comparison photos between my Z2 and my old LG G4. Now, while doing this, I learned a few things:

First, the photos are only looking crappy while viewed on my Z2 (despite the screen otherwise looking amazing). When transferred to the PC and compared side by side on dual monitors, they actually look good, even slightly better than the LG. I'm not sure I understand how this could be happening. Although, I do notice something when I try to view a photo on the Z2... it very briefly shows me a good image for a fraction of a second then immediately replace it with a darker dreary image. I think the good image was the first pass then it does some more rendering of the image and says "Ta dah!!! Here's the finished crappy image!" Although, this is my first time encountering an image viewer that actually worsens the image in the second pass.... it's supposed to make it better!

Second, there's this round thingy in the center of the camera screen. I had just been ignoring it. If I click it so the circle becomes selected/highlighted, the image I'm seeing is then brighter and more colorful. The images I was taking yesterday were not done with this circle thingy in use. I do realize the little dot on the circle can be grabbed and make the image brighter/darker, although I'm surprised that the camera's default without this feature in use was so dark. My wife's Moto X Pure also has this feature but we never saw any dark dreary images from it by default.

So, I think I can stand down my initial panic that a $600 phone ($200 off at Best Buy now) had an awful camera, just a confusing camera. I'll still wait for a nice sunny day to do some more comparisons, but this is looking encouraging. Thanks for entertaining my ramblings about this. And, if anyone knows what's up with the 2-pass image viewer thing in the camera, I'd be interested in what anyone might know about it.

 

[AgoristNH]

(Ha... sorry about the 2 user names... I've been posting between Tapatalk and the PC, and didn't realize Tapatalk signed me in as a user I had forgotten about. I'm the same person!)

 

[L0n3N1nja]

Is your phone set for any kind of adaptive display? It may automatically be adjusted the screen settings when viewing the photos and that's why they look different.

 

[D13H4RD2L1V3]

Second, there's this round thingy in the center of the camera screen. I had just been ignoring it. If I click it so the circle becomes selected/highlighted, the image I'm seeing is then brighter and more colorful. The images I was taking yesterday were not done with this circle thingy in use. I do realize the little dot on the circle can be grabbed and make the image brighter/darker, although I'm surprised that the camera's default without this feature in use was so dark. My wife's Moto X Pure also has this feature but we never saw any dark dreary images from it by default.

That’s your focus and exposure.

You tap and slide it to set your focal point and tell the camera what to exposure for. You then slide the little sun for extra fine tuning.

 

[AgoristNH]

Oh...! You're referring to the "adaptive brightness" toggle? Yes, I had that on. I had thought it would be similar to (or the same as) the check box normally found on the screen brightness slider (where is that check box anyway??) Yes, with it checked off it looks much better when viewing photos. It never occurred to me that feature would somehow dynamically adjust the brightness based on what I'm viewing, rather than simply detecting how much light is in the room.

Well, I can live with that feature off, although it would be handy if the display dimmed when I went into the dark. But not at the expense of weird stuff happening with the appearance.

Thanks, everyone here is very helpful!

 

[D13H4RD2L1V3]

Oh...! You're referring to the "adaptive brightness" toggle?

If you were talking about the circle in the camera viewfinder, that's what I mean by what I said.

Though if you're taking photos in the sun, make sure the screen is at its maximum brightness.

 

[gordol]

Oh...! You're referring to the "adaptive brightness" toggle? Yes, I had that on. I had thought it would be similar to (or the same as) the check box normally found on the screen brightness slider (where is that check box anyway??) Yes, with it checked off it looks much better when viewing photos. It never occurred to me that feature would somehow dynamically adjust the brightness based on what I'm viewing, rather than simply detecting how much light is in the room.

What I do on my iPhone (don't worry, I'm switching to Android soon) is leave what they call "Night Shift" on by default, and toggle it off when viewing photos or videos.