Camera quality

[maverick96]

I have trouble with it focusing right away as ive mentioned earlier in this thread. Takes forever. As has been pointed out to me, its best if you manually focus. By the way, the moto x hasn't got an OIS sensor, so if the reason haalcyons Note 4 worked if he shook it was because it jostled the sensor (which may or may not be the case), then its not gonna work on this phone, cos there's no sensor to jostle.

Posted via the Android Central App

Even manual focus doesn't help. For me at least.

 

[nickname303]

Even manual focus doesn't help. For me at least.

Depends how fast you're expecting it to be. Its never gonna be the fastest focusing camera ever, but it is slightly better if you do it manually

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Haalcyon]

Depends how fast you're expecting it to be. Its never gonna be the fastest focusing camera ever, but it is slightly better if you do it manually

Posted via the Android Central App

I think it should focus in less than 5 seconds or so.

from the S5

 

[maverick96]

It's not the speed in focusing. It's that it sometimes never get focus. Stay blurry.

 

[Haalcyon]

It's not the speed in focusing. It's that it sometimes never get focus. Stay blurry.

That too.

from the S5

 

[jephanie]

It can make a big difference. But it does take longer to take the shot, so if you don't have the time to let it focus it's better to leave it off.

However, I feel the HDR Mode really improves the Moto X photos of landscapes and stills that have high contrast between lit areas and shadows.

Sent from my Moto X

It was definitely the case prior to 5.0, but the entire point of HDR is for high contrast photography, so your feelings would be correct in that regard.

The human eye's dynamic range varies constantly like (a video camera) and can see upwards of 24 comparable camera f-stops between light and dark. But smartphone cameras, like compact/pocket cameras, are lucky to be able to see less than a third of that range. So HDR works to grab a middle image, then one each of an over-exposed and under-exposed (compared to the initial shot) image; then it combines them into one image to give you the broader visual range between light and dark areas to get closer to what your eye can see.

This is why when you are looking at a valley of trees the shadows of a bright sunny day with gorgeous blue sky, and then you take a photo of it, you are usually left with either the blue sky and pitch black valley OR you get the nice green trees in the shade but the sky looks like a nuclear bomb just went off and it is blasted out as total white space. HDR photography, done correctly, fixes that.

 

[Photo_Drew]

So it's 3 bucks, but DSLR Camera is a pretty nice camera app. It lets you adjust the focus, but not the exposure/metering, or ISO. There's quick sliders for zoom and exposure compensation. On some phones I guess it can get at ISO and metering settings. Why the X doesn't allow this? Who knows. Wish it did. I think my favorite thing will be the macro focus mode. The hardware itself doesn't have THAT close of focus ability, but it did better than the stock focus at close range.