Anyone finding the flash distance and/or timing to be off on this camera? Unless the object is really close, it seems like the flash has already passed when the camera takes the pic... Is this a setting I can change?
Camera Flash Distance/Timing
- Thread starter kyoo
- Start date
updating this thread as well:
Here's what I was referring to as far as the flash goes - lights up the object ok (sometimes not even that) and the rest of the area is so much darker. Both are in decently lit areas:
and:
IDK if this is considered normal or not, but previous phones (OPO & N5) lit up a good portion of the background in addition to the foreground, much more so than the 6P - some flash shots are practically unusable, where barely the object is lit up as well. All were tapped to focus on the object.
Why this matters: I take a lot of pics of the car (i.e., suspension parts) when I'm working on it and context is crucially important. This effect is exacerbated at night in the dark compared to a lit room.
Here's what I was referring to as far as the flash goes - lights up the object ok (sometimes not even that) and the rest of the area is so much darker. Both are in decently lit areas:
and:
IDK if this is considered normal or not, but previous phones (OPO & N5) lit up a good portion of the background in addition to the foreground, much more so than the 6P - some flash shots are practically unusable, where barely the object is lit up as well. All were tapped to focus on the object.
Why this matters: I take a lot of pics of the car (i.e., suspension parts) when I'm working on it and context is crucially important. This effect is exacerbated at night in the dark compared to a lit room.
Last edited:
I get the same effect with my camera when taking pictures in dark areas.
Posted via the Android Central App
Posted via the Android Central App
i've gotten a replacement phone and it still does this. maybe a camera app would have a different flash effect
There are a few things to consider. First, with flash photography of any kind, the camera flash is entirely separate from the shutter speed. It doesn't matter when in the exposure the flash fires, the result will be the same so long as it fires during the exposure (and your subject isn't moving). The only camera settings that affect flash exposure are ISO (sensor sensitivity) and aperture (fixed at F2.0 on the 6P). The shutter speed controls how much ambient light gets let into the exposure in addition to the flash. The more you want the background to be bright, the longer the shutter will have to stay open (or the higher the ISO or wider the aperture if it wasn't fixed), and it may be too long to avoid a blurry pick. Also keep in mind you're taking pictures in pretty well the most difficult scenarios for any camera to get a decent picture in (Low light, high contrast).
The other thing you need to understand is exactly how the camera exposure meter is working, and I think this is more where your frustrations are stemming from. On the 6P, it spot meters wherever you tap the screen, which means it's only looking at a very small portion of the screen (eg. someone's face). This is ideal for many scenarios, but not all. In your flash example, look at what I assume is sour cream, is perfectly exposed. It is very bright compared to the rest of the image, so in order for your camera to avoid blowing the highlights on the sour cream, it picks an exposure for the sour cream. The camera may have decided to meter off the sour cream itself, or maybe you tapped the screen to focus and used that as your metering point. Since everything else is much darker than the sour cream, it will of course appear underexposed in comparison. If you wanted to have everything else in the image very bright, the sour cream would be totally blown out and very much over exposed, because a camera can only expose for one scenario. HDR+ will mitigate this somewhat, as it takes 3 images and lowers highlights while raising shadows, to closer simulate the high dynamic range that our eyeballs see. Your camera screen gives you a live preview for exposure, so you can tap around the screen and see how it exposes differently on different spots. If you tap on a dark area, it will try expose for the dark area, and everything else will be super bright. If you tap on a light area, it will expose for that bright area, and everything else will appear darker because it's going to get underexposed.
"Regular" cameras do the exact same thing. For example, if you take a picture with a bright sky and a dark foreground with even a $7,000 DSLR, you can only pick one to be properly exposed. Either the sky will be exposed and the foreground will be very dark, or the foreground will be exposed properly and the sky will be totally blown out. Also anytime you have a lot of white (or chrome or anything bright) in the image, for example a dinner plate, that often tricks the camera meter into thinking the image is brighter than it is, because it's trying to pick one exposure to average over the entire scene and give you the best possible overall exposure - it can't do that properly for a high dynamic range scene (very bright and very dark things in the same image).
In your second image of the pill bottle, what is happening with the flash, is you're asking the camera to expose something very bright compared to the background, and use flash to do it. It doesn't need to raise the ISO or use a long shutter speed, because it's going to get a flash for a light source (and the bottle is white), so instead you get a faster shutter speed and/or a lower ISO, which kills background light very quickly, which is why the background is so dark. It's also going to use a very weak flash, because the distance of the bottle to the camera is very small, further reducing background illumination. It is behaving exactly as one would expect given the scenario.
The flash on my 6P works exactly how it should be given the settings. It's also a camera phone, so the flash has **** for range, like every other phone I have ever used. If you don't like the settings it chooses for the particular work you do (eg. the car parts), grab a different camera app like Manual Camera or Pro Shot and force certain manual settings along with the flash to get the result you're after. The principals of photo exposure remain the same, so in my opinion you are getting frustrated by A) Asking the camera to give you an unrealistic exposure for the given subject matter, and B) the settings it uses by default for flash.
The other thing you need to understand is exactly how the camera exposure meter is working, and I think this is more where your frustrations are stemming from. On the 6P, it spot meters wherever you tap the screen, which means it's only looking at a very small portion of the screen (eg. someone's face). This is ideal for many scenarios, but not all. In your flash example, look at what I assume is sour cream, is perfectly exposed. It is very bright compared to the rest of the image, so in order for your camera to avoid blowing the highlights on the sour cream, it picks an exposure for the sour cream. The camera may have decided to meter off the sour cream itself, or maybe you tapped the screen to focus and used that as your metering point. Since everything else is much darker than the sour cream, it will of course appear underexposed in comparison. If you wanted to have everything else in the image very bright, the sour cream would be totally blown out and very much over exposed, because a camera can only expose for one scenario. HDR+ will mitigate this somewhat, as it takes 3 images and lowers highlights while raising shadows, to closer simulate the high dynamic range that our eyeballs see. Your camera screen gives you a live preview for exposure, so you can tap around the screen and see how it exposes differently on different spots. If you tap on a dark area, it will try expose for the dark area, and everything else will be super bright. If you tap on a light area, it will expose for that bright area, and everything else will appear darker because it's going to get underexposed.
"Regular" cameras do the exact same thing. For example, if you take a picture with a bright sky and a dark foreground with even a $7,000 DSLR, you can only pick one to be properly exposed. Either the sky will be exposed and the foreground will be very dark, or the foreground will be exposed properly and the sky will be totally blown out. Also anytime you have a lot of white (or chrome or anything bright) in the image, for example a dinner plate, that often tricks the camera meter into thinking the image is brighter than it is, because it's trying to pick one exposure to average over the entire scene and give you the best possible overall exposure - it can't do that properly for a high dynamic range scene (very bright and very dark things in the same image).
In your second image of the pill bottle, what is happening with the flash, is you're asking the camera to expose something very bright compared to the background, and use flash to do it. It doesn't need to raise the ISO or use a long shutter speed, because it's going to get a flash for a light source (and the bottle is white), so instead you get a faster shutter speed and/or a lower ISO, which kills background light very quickly, which is why the background is so dark. It's also going to use a very weak flash, because the distance of the bottle to the camera is very small, further reducing background illumination. It is behaving exactly as one would expect given the scenario.
The flash on my 6P works exactly how it should be given the settings. It's also a camera phone, so the flash has **** for range, like every other phone I have ever used. If you don't like the settings it chooses for the particular work you do (eg. the car parts), grab a different camera app like Manual Camera or Pro Shot and force certain manual settings along with the flash to get the result you're after. The principals of photo exposure remain the same, so in my opinion you are getting frustrated by A) Asking the camera to give you an unrealistic exposure for the given subject matter, and B) the settings it uses by default for flash.
Thanks for the detailed response -- I've taken similar shots with the point and shoot with less drastic results, and everything else better illuminated.
What I'll do next is take the same picture using my girlfriend's S6 and my 6P. I still feel the illumination is dim/low on the phone. I'll pick a subject that's got a few different colors, and post pics of the 4 results (6P - HDR, flash; S6 - HDR, flash). I never noticed this on my OPO, and while I still have it it's boxed up to be sold so I'd rather not grab it
What I'll do next is take the same picture using my girlfriend's S6 and my 6P. I still feel the illumination is dim/low on the phone. I'll pick a subject that's got a few different colors, and post pics of the 4 results (6P - HDR, flash; S6 - HDR, flash). I never noticed this on my OPO, and while I still have it it's boxed up to be sold so I'd rather not grab it
You're welcome. Sure, post up some more pictures and I can do my best to tell you what went right/wrong as far as camera settings & exposure. Also keep in mind if the S6 meters differently, you may get significantly different results on the same subject. The 6P is way more sensitive with it's spot meter as soon as you touch an area of the screen to focus on. I *think* if you don't touch the screen on the 6P and give it a second to focus on it's own, it uses more of an evaluative metering style and a more balanced exposure, but I need to confirm that. It's also giving you a live preview of the image, so if it looks too dark for you, try focus (tap) on a slightly darker area of the image to force the camera to raise the exposure on the rest of the image while it tries to set an appropriate exposure for the dark area. At the end of the day, the default algorithms the 6P uses for flash photography just may not be to your liking, and an app change should go a long way to fixing that.
interesting point - so should I select the object for this test, or just have it auto-focus? i'll throw in the point and shoot to the test as well. good point about the metering, and I agree that this is definitely software, not hardware. I'm really not even trying to really complain about it, it's just something I've noticed as seemingly quite different from phones I've had in the past.
Well try both methods, I am not 100% sure what the 6P does when you give it a second to pick the focus point itself. What you see on the screen though is a live preview of the image it will take (less helpful for a flash image though). If you tap the screen and select the focus point yourself though, it will spot meter on that point, and it's pretty aggressive. I have an S6 too and it's less aggressive with it's metering style. I understand you aren't complaining, it's just a quirk that may not be to your liking. Regardless of the outcome, hopefully just using a new camera app or a better understanding of exactly how the camera meters will fix the issue.
Focusing or not didn't seem to make too much difference. Pics below - pics are by no means bad, just not as well lit wish flash as I'd like - will probably just try a different camera app:
No flash:
6P:
S6:
Flash:
6P (Several):
S6 Flash:
Note the colors of the carpet in the S6's shot compared to the 6P's. In general, the S6's flash is more what I'm used to. I take a lot of pictures of my car at night, as previously mentioned, so it does make a difference for me.
No flash:
6P:
S6:
Flash:
6P (Several):
S6 Flash:
Note the colors of the carpet in the S6's shot compared to the 6P's. In general, the S6's flash is more what I'm used to. I take a lot of pictures of my car at night, as previously mentioned, so it does make a difference for me.
The 6P should be able to make the identical image as the S6, it's just settings. Also if the meter in the 6P is hypersensitive, it might see the glossy/reflective cover on that puzzle as brighter than it is. What did the S6 and 6P use for ISO and shutter speed in the last couple images? I had an EXIF program to see for myself but it doesn't seem to work anymore in chrome unfortunately. I'm guessing the S6' default parameters for flash shots is just more to your liking.
Both cameras just default settings for everything. Basically yea, S6 just takes (to me) better flash shots, everything is brighter.
Well that's why I asked what ISO and shutter speed both used ("details" tab in google photos). The S6 is probably just using a combination that you prefer, which is totally reasonable. You can get the 6P to take the identical picture as the S6 though, but you may need a different app for your specific application. At least you know the phone isn't defective
Rukbat
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If you can find a camera app that allows you to fix the ISO and shutter speed, you get better control over the exposure. If you want to avoid washing out bright objects, put the corner of a handkerchief over just the flash - it'll diffuse it. (As Go0gle said, these are all photographic things, not phone-specific things - a $7,00 DSLR has the same problems in someone who hasn't read Kodak's guides to making properly exposed pictures, while a $50 phone with a cheap camera would make some fantastic pictures if Dorothea Lange used it. (Look her up online and look at some of her pictures - the camera helped, but she's the one who chose the subjects, framed the pictures and set the exposure and focus. Ansel Adams once too a few fantastic pictures with a $2 Kodak box camera Fixed focus, fixed exposure, no flash.)
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