HDR is a bit of a disappointment (sort of)

[LeoRex]

I am using my wife's G6 to figure out why her pictures were pretty much junk and I found the problem: HDR. I want to preface this by saying that I am coming from a 6P... and HDR+ is an entirely different beast than other phone's HDR function, to the point where I think they should change the term since it leads you to believe the two are similar, they aren't.

Oh, and I will say that I am quite pleased with the overall results from the camera... just not in this particular use case.

But anyhow, when I set up the phone, I had set it to HDR On and left it there, not thinking... But pic after pic was just horrible. Noisy, visible image ghosting in images that had a even small amounts of movement in frame. After a fair bit of testing and pixel peeping, I found the culprit was LG's HDR implementation. When in 'Auto', it generally does a good job in boosting the dynamic range a bit, bringing shadows up a bit and easing the bright spots. But in 'On', where it processes it for every photo, things go south. Here is an example I just took (Auto would not trigger HDR here btw)... it's a mild crop.



If I didn't say which was which, you would be inclined to think the top is the standard, but that noisy, bludgeoned mess is HDR's handywork. I am actually impressed with how well the standard shot handled the picture... noise kept to a minimum, LG's usually heavy processing managed to not chew up all the little details in the collage... I have an old pic of this same scene from the S7 Edge and it beat those little pics to a digital pulp. Seriously, the G6 did a bang up job there without leaning on HDR processing. That's laudable for a sensor that's as small as it is.

So lesson learned... Leave HDR to 'Auto' and let LG decide when to use it.

 

[jhilker]

Thanks! Good to know...

 

[Jeremiah Bonds]

I am using my wife's G6 to figure out why her pictures were pretty much junk and I found the problem: HDR. I want to preface this by saying that I am coming from a 6P... and HDR+ is an entirely different beast than other phone's HDR function, to the point where I think they should change the term since it leads you to believe the two are similar, they aren't.

Oh, and I will say that I am quite pleased with the overall results from the camera... just not in this particular use case.

But anyhow, when I set up the phone, I had set it to HDR On and left it there, not thinking... But pic after pic was just horrible. Noisy, visible image ghosting in images that had a even small amounts of movement in frame. After a fair bit of testing and pixel peeping, I found the culprit was LG's HDR implementation. When in 'Auto', it generally does a good job in boosting the dynamic range a bit, bringing shadows up a bit and easing the bright spots. But in 'On', where it processes it for every photo, things go south. Here is an example I just took (Auto would not trigger HDR here btw)... it's a mild crop.

View attachment 263203

If I didn't say which was which, you would be inclined to think the top is the standard, but that noisy, bludgeoned mess is HDR's handywork. I am actually impressed with how well the standard shot handled the picture... noise kept to a minimum, LG's usually heavy processing managed to not chew up all the little details in the collage... I have an old pic of this same scene from the S7 Edge and it beat those little pics to a digital pulp. Seriously, the G6 did a bang up job there without leaning on HDR processing. That's laudable for a sensor that's as small as it is.

So lesson learned... Leave HDR to 'Auto' and let LG decide when to use it.

I generally keep HDR on, but like I mentioned before, sometimes I have it on auto just to see what the phone chooses. Thanks for putting a side to side, this will help people that don't use the manual controls.

 

[LeoRex]

yeah... auto is the right choice. I think my mindset was flawed. HDR+ on the Nexus and Pixel lines especially excels in low light. The process is actually based on tools used in astronomy and trying extract every bit of information out of a handful of photons coming into a telescope, all without artificial processing (which is absolutely useless to an astrophysicist who wants to see a star and not a gfx processing algorithm's interpretation of what a star should look like). But HDR, traditional HDR, has more to do with, well, dynamic range.. imagine that.

As one would expect, LG will toggle HDR when it pics up a wide dynamic range in the image it sees. If you got a ton of light, or very little, it stays silent. It's clear that this is done for a reason.

 

[Jeremiah Bonds]

yeah... auto is the right choice. I think my mindset was flawed. HDR+ on the Nexus and Pixel lines especially excels in low light. The process is actually based on tools used in astronomy and trying extract every bit of information out of a handful of photons coming into a telescope, all without artificial processing (which is absolutely useless to an astrophysicist who wants to see a star and not a gfx processing algorithm's interpretation of what a star should look like). But HDR, traditional HDR, has more to do with, well, dynamic range.. imagine that.

As one would expect, LG will toggle HDR when it pics up a wide dynamic range in the image it sees. If you got a ton of light, or very little, it stays silent. It's clear that this is done for a reason.

yeah, while the Pixel's HDR is gorgeous, it's also a bit fake looking. To me LG's HDR can be strong sometimes, but in comparison to Google's technology, not so much. But yeah, the shutter is faster without HDR as well.

 

[Thud Hardsmack]

I'm not the greatest photographer by any stretch, after shooting with and without HDR I'm going to agree with this assessment - photos with HDR off are turning out a lot better than the ones with it on, more noticeable with low light and night shots. They're still really noisy but they're much better than any phone camera I've used to date.

 

[Jeremiah Bonds]

I'm not the greatest photographer by any stretch, after shooting with and without HDR I'm going to agree with this assessment - photos with HDR off are turning out a lot better than the ones with it on, more noticeable with low light and night shots. They're still really noisy but they're much better than any phone camera I've used to date.

awesome. I'm glad that it's working for you. Maybe you can add some pictures to our photography discussion?

 

[Thud Hardsmack]

I don't have any side-by-side comparisons like Leo's, but here's a couple I kept.

The first is at the zoo in daylight with HDR on, the second is after dark and slightly inebriated with HDR off:

(Links to originals: 1st photo, 2nd photo)

 

[D13H4RD2L1V3]

TBH, traditional HDR doesn't do much for me. I never use it on my a6000 and I usually keep it off on my phones.

Exception is HDR+ on a modified CameraNX app on my Z and HDR on iPhones. Those work quite well, especially the former.