Spent the day with the M8 camera - My thoughts

[Kibbster]

It was my eldest's birthday yesterday so I thought it would be a good test for the M8 and it's camera.
The morning started with present opening at around 6.30am (4 year old's don't do late starts on a birthday!)
There was a lot of morning light that can be quite harsh coming in from one side of the room and sunlight through the glass in the front door reflecting off the laminate flooring.
Not exactly perfect lighting conditions for a smartphone and often the M8 proved it.
Some out of focus shots some with quite a lot of noise, bloomed out highlights, motion blur - none of the pictures I took amazed me but the shots that were left after I deleted the useless stuff weren't too bad.
Then I looked at the wife's pictures she took at the same time with her GS3 (we both upload to the same dropbox) She was taking photos of the same things but from the opposite direction so had more difficult lighting than me but suffice to say... The m8 was so far ahead in PQ I stopped complaining

Later in the day we went bowling, the M8 actually surprised me how well it did with focussing and lighting a place that is very dark apart from bright neon lights.
There was some motion blur, a couple of unfocussed shots and quite a bit of noise (all unsurprisingly.)
I would consider this a torture test for mobile devices and the M8 didn't embarrass itself.

Then the arcade.
I was actually disappointed with the shots, some shots had masses of noise and more shots out of focus.
The lighting was reasonable so I'm not sure why the camera had problems with this area. but there was very little that was useable when I checked on the PC monitor.
But I didn't take a lot of shots in the arcade so maybe with more shots I'd have had more usable photos.

In the afternoon and evening I barely used my phone, I think I had a rogue app crash that wiped out the battery and because the M8 charges so painfully slowly off USB my camera was rebooted and charged off the mains because it went from 40% battery to less than 10% in a couple of hours.

I took some shots of the cake etc later and some were focussed some weren't.
Again lots of noise but the lighting wasn't great so as to be expected for a smartphone.

So overall.
All pictures were taking on full auto with some using manual focus.
Some nice pictures, some bad, very few great pictures.
The camera never amazed me during the day but it didn't deal many crushing blows either so all in all pretty much par for the course.
The battery woes marred the experience as well but I suspect it was something wake locking the phone rather than the phone itself so I can't really blame the phone for that (seems back to normal now after the reboot.)

I think my expectations may have been a bit too high but for perspective, it was good after I saw the GS3 shots were without a doubt terrible (but to be honest on par with cameras of that generation) so I've got to admit that this generation of cameras HAS improved a lot over the GS3 era.
Even if the M8 didn't always excel I know my old Note2 and the GS3 cameras would have had far more problems and undoubtable worse results.
I guess that's a warm recommendation for the M8 camera in a real world situation, in the hands of someone who isn't a photographer and relies on the camera "sorting it out" for them.

 

[Kibbster]

I also took a few short 1080 videos.
Sound was great, picture quality was very good especially on our 1080p TV but the videos desperately needed OIS.

 

[scottysize]

That's been my experience as well. The camera takes all kinds of photos. Some good. Some bad. Did you notice a light fog over the photos? It's one major flaw that my phone keeps having when taking photos under artificial light. I haven't noticed it in natural light.

 

[Kibbster]

Got to be honest no I didn't notice a fog on them.
USed to get it with my Desire and that was caused by a plastic lens cover being scratched (common issue)
Obvious question but have you checked the lens of the camera to make sure it's clean and scratch free?
The glass in the camera lens is nothing like a tough as the screen and I wouldn't be surprised if it could get scratched easily.

 

[doc31]

That's been my experience as well. The camera takes all kinds of photos. Some good. Some bad. Did you notice a light fog over the photos? It's one major flaw that my phone keeps having when taking photos under artificial light. I haven't noticed it in natural light.

It's the way the camera software applies contrast to the jpeg. I know its more work but the best way to fix this is do a quick edit in snapseed app under auto.

 

[mchockeyvette27]

So far I haven't been too impressed with indoor (artificial lighting) pictures or indoor low light pictures. I've gotten some good pictures but nothing great like you have started. However, I have some beautiful shots during the day when I was downtown (Chicago) with my girlfriend yesterday. We walked around millennium park for a couple hours and took tons of pictures. I had one blurry picture and the rest were very sharp and clear. Virtually no noise.
I struggled getting a macro shot of some tree leaves, but I think that's cause I needed to mess with the settings some more to get it right.
These shots were both with the front and rear camera, and both performed great. I also edited some photos with the after focus and that works pretty well too.
Also, outdoor shots at night are also really good in my experience. At least for the situation, since both front and rear cameras do let in quite a bit of light.
So I'd pretty much agree with everything the OP has stated so far.
Also I have a few quick snaps of some cars I've spotted and those turned out great thanks to the quick focus.

 

[CHILLYWILL_95831]

That's been my experience as well. The camera takes all kinds of photos. Some good. Some bad. Did you notice a light fog over the photos? It's one major flaw that my phone keeps having when taking photos under artificial light. I haven't noticed it in natural light.

Try cleaning your lens, it's a game changer with this phones camera!

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Kibbster]

Just a little update.

After reading a thread on XDA I decided to try lowering the exposure slightly -0.5 and although the shots can look a little dark, I think it gives better results and seems to help avoid the light blooming and taking over the whole photo.
I still don't trust HDR, probably because I lack the skill to use it, although I feel that if it worked as well as it should, I shouldn't need to have skill to use it.
HDR on my Note2 did what it said on the tin, it balanced out large contrasts in lighting (also caused double images with any movement) with no skill involved apart from keeping the phone still for a few seconds.