Note 4 vs iPhone 6 Plus Camera : Low light and motion shots

Aw Sam

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This is the low light shot by my Note 4, the photos quality is above average, I'm very happy with it.IMG_20150322_194413.jpg

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asanatheist

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I seem to have this issue big time. Yesterday at my brother's b-day party I snapped a lot of pictures with my Note 4 and sister's Iphone 6 in what I'd consider ok lighting (lights in the room we were in were on), not really low light.
Pictures on the Note 4 kept blurring with any movement of the subjects. If however there was no movement, the pictures were awesome. Tried sports mode, and I tried auto. Neither fixed the problem, in fact sports seemed to have done nothing. (probably auto was putting it in sport mode in the first place). Compared to my previous Samsung S4, the sport mode is pretty crappy and useless. This morning I tested the updated sports mode. I couldn't tell a difference.
I passed the iphone 6 off to a friend, and he took pictures like CRAZY. I think he took close to 500 pics all while panning. All were in focus and sharp, except for ones where he was moving the camera way too much, in which case even a dedicated camera would have problems.

Using the Google Camera seemed to have helped a bit but didn't eliminate this problem. Eventually however I ended up enabling flash, and it was better excellent but imho flash shouldn't be used except for very low light situations.
Here's two of the better captures moments.
 
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z06mike

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I seem to have this issue big time. Yesterday at my brother's b-day party I snapped a lot of pictures with my Note 4 and sister's Iphone 6 in what I'd consider ok lighting (lights in the room we were in were on), not really low light.
Pictures on the Note 4 kept blurring with any movement of the subjects. If however there was no movement, the pictures were awesome. Tried sports mode, and I tried auto. Neither fixed the problem, in fact sports seemed to have done nothing. (probably auto was putting it in sport mode in the first place). Compared to my previous Samsung S4, the sport mode is pretty crappy and useless. This morning I tested the updated sports mode. I couldn't tell a difference.
I passed the iphone 6 off to a friend, and he took pictures like CRAZY. I think he took close to 500 pics all while panning. All were in focus and sharp, except for ones where he was moving the camera way too much, in which case even a dedicated camera would have problems.

Using the Google Camera seemed to have helped a bit but didn't eliminate this problem. Eventually however I ended up enabling flash, and it was better excellent but imho flash shouldn't be used except for very low light situations.
Here's two of the better captures moments.
View attachment 167791View attachment 167792

Were these with the stock app?
 

sparksd

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The problem of course is shutter speed being too slow for moving objects. Three things control exposure: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO setting. The Note 4 has a fixed aperture and provides no explicit control over shutter speed - ISO is the only element that can be changed on the Note 4. The default setting for ISO is Auto - has anybody tried shooting with it changed to its highest setting, 800, to force faster shutter speeds? Moot point if Auto is pushing it to 800 but it's worth trying. The downside with higher ISO is increased grain.
 

psychok9

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I think that a lot of people confused the order of 1st photos post and they thought that second and third photos were from Note 4 (very dark, but still IP6).
If you shot in the morning, I think sports mode can solve the problem of the 1st poster (fast shutter speed).
If you are in low light... you can only slow down the the shutter (with the difficulty to focus moving subjects) and raise the ISO value of the camera.
All smartphone have very small sensor, and Note 4's sensor is one of the largest.
 

Phantasmal Images

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I seem to have this issue big time. Yesterday at my brother's b-day party I snapped a lot of pictures with my Note 4 and sister's Iphone 6 in what I'd consider ok lighting (lights in the room we were in were on), not really low light.
Pictures on the Note 4 kept blurring with any movement of the subjects. If however there was no movement, the pictures were awesome. Tried sports mode, and I tried auto. Neither fixed the problem, in fact sports seemed to have done nothing. (probably auto was putting it in sport mode in the first place). Compared to my previous Samsung S4, the sport mode is pretty crappy and useless. This morning I tested the updated sports mode. I couldn't tell a difference.
I passed the iphone 6 off to a friend, and he took pictures like CRAZY. I think he took close to 500 pics all while panning. All were in focus and sharp, except for ones where he was moving the camera way too much, in which case even a dedicated camera would have problems.

Using the Google Camera seemed to have helped a bit but didn't eliminate this problem. Eventually however I ended up enabling flash, and it was better excellent but imho flash shouldn't be used except for very low light situations.
Here's two of the better captures moments.
Normal indoor lighting is low light when you're talking about photography. Why do you think photographers use all those really bright lights...
 

Phantasmal Images

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The problem of course is shutter speed being too slow for moving objects. Three things control exposure: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO setting. The Note 4 has a fixed aperture and provides no explicit control over shutter speed - ISO is the only element that can be changed on the Note 4. The default setting for ISO is Auto - has anybody tried shooting with it changed to its highest setting, 800, to force faster shutter speeds? Moot point if Auto is pushing it to 800 but it's worth trying. The downside with higher ISO is increased grain.
The fault is not in the sensor (it's a great sensor for a phone), it's in the app controlling it. Unfortunately Samsung has chosen not to support the Camera2 API included in Lollipop which would allow manual camera settings and raw file support. Hopefully they'll add it in the next update.
 

psychok9

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Normal indoor lighting is low light when you're talking about photography. Why do you think photographers use all those really bright lights...

Yeah, today I've tried with my old Samsung S3 to do photos indoor (16:00/4PM in the afternoon, very bright here).
I was shocked how much light still outdoor from my room, also if it's near the window (the curtain is white and cover only a part of it). ISO difference was huge (700-800 vs basic 100). Flash was needed to lower the iso to more decent "100-200".
Try to point your room and move versus the windows: you will notice the jump :)
Our eyes are comfortable with it and we don't notice this.
 

coldspring22

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Old thread, but just add that I found open camera to be best for low light shots, better than Samsung app or Google app, as I can manually adjust exposure and iso level to 1600. In addition, "animated photo" mode in default samsung photo app takes good shots in low light + motion. Where I would get blurs with normal single shots using default app, animated photo mode captures clear shots.without blur.