Anandtech HTC M9 Raw photography review

[ollieg]

Anandtech HTC M9 Raw photography review
A Quick Look at One M9 RAW Photos

Overall, HTC should be applauded for bringing RAW photo mode to the One M9.......

As for the JPEG image quality situation, the fact that it's possible to get so much improvement in image quality from processing a RAW by hand compared to the JPEG output is a very real problem for HTC. Now admittedly a hand-touched RAW will almost always be better than a quickly processed JPEG - and we going into this expecting as much.- but such a large difference, and at times significant loss of detail, indicates that HTC is losing too much quality with their JPEG output. Compared to their competitors, the end result is an image with worse quality than what I believe they could have otherwise achieved.

Ultimately I'm not interested in pointing fingers here, but the output simply isn't competitive. It's possible that the ISP simply isn't up to scratch, as*there are some very real problems with auto-focus speed and reliability as I noted in the original review. It's also possible that HTC is electing to use an extremely aggressive post-processing combined with strong JPEG compression to reduce file sizes. This is simply a problem that has to be fixed if HTC is determined to remain relevant in the hyper-competitive smartphone space.

The one truth that is clear to me here is that the sensor is far from the main problem here. A better sensor might help with high ISO noise, and PDAF should definitely help with focus speed, but in the case of the One M9's rear camera the biggest issues seem to be poor post-processing, a lack of high-quality optical image stabilization (OIS), and a smaller aperture compared to other phones on the market in that order. A better sensor can and will help, but it's far from a silver bullet. This does mean that there's some hope for the One M9's camera though, as most of the problems I've described could be resolved with an OTA update. The question now is whether HTC will follow through.

 

[Habiib]

Anandtech HTC M9 Raw photography review
A Quick Look at One M9 RAW Photos

Pretty much what I've suspected and eluded to the whole time. Everything the author noted is exactly what I saw in my testing as well.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[joewoo]

More options is nice but who's actually gonna import to lightroom?? If your photos are that important, you would be shooting with something more than a camera phone....

I guess the main point of the article is to show the chip is capable, so I hope it pushes the to improve their rendering

 

[neo905]

According to some of the comments on that article the sensor was only released by Toshiba in Feb. 2015. That really didn't give HTC that much time from launch to even optimize it. Now who's fault that is or why HTC went this route I am not sure but I would think over the next few months the post processing will be greatly improved. I have already noticed an improvement over the short time I've had it.

 

[Habiib]

I'm thinking this is a case of HTC reusing the same code base (i.e., algorithms) they've used in the past for post-processing with previous camera sensors. Also, their decision to not include the ImageSense 2 sensor may have compromised image quality as well.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[neo905]

I'm thinking this is a case of HTC reusing the same code base (i.e., algorithms) they've used in the past for post-processing with previous camera sensors. Also, their decision to not include the ImageSense 2 sensor may have compromised image quality as well.

Posted via the Android Central App

What is ImageSense 2 sensor? Is that hardware or a software algo?

 

[Habiib]

What is ImageSense 2 sensor? Is that hardware or a software algo?

It's a hardware chip. It helped to offload some of the processing and added additional features as well. It was the reason why the original Zoe features (that debuted on the M7) were possible.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[neo905]

It's a hardware chip. It helped to offload some of the processing and added additional features as well. It was the reason why the original Zoe features (that debuted on the M7) were possible.

Posted via the Android Central App

I guess that is why they removed Zoe then in the last Camera App update.

 

[Habiib]

More options is nice but who's actually gonna import to lightroom?? If your photos are that important, you would be shooting with something more than a camera phone....

I guess the main point of the article is to show the chip is capable, so I hope it pushes the to improve their rendering

There may be some who are adventurous enough to challenge themselves to seeing what they can achieve by post-processing photos generated from a smartphone. Taking this approach may uncover some deficiencies in the stock software that may be compromisng the quality of the resulting image. Time will tell though.

Posted via the Android Central App