My Latest Attempt to Get a Bad Photo with the Turbo

[PowrDroid]

Some people aren't happy with the photos from their Turbo camera. I've been called a Turbo camera apologist. I think the camera is pretty good, certainly better than any phone camera I've used before (Droid2Global, Maxx HD, Moto X). The problem seems to be low light situations and movement. So I devised a little test with a lighted party ball.

First photo shows the setup. The party ball is on the floor of my basement rec room, lights all the way up. This shot was taken so you can see the setup.

Link is a short video of the party ball in action. Click on the link to view.

Third photo is the Droid Turbo camera on auto-focus, point and shoot. All lights are off in the room. Party ball is rotating.

I guess I must have gotten a good camera.






CLICK ON LINK:

[video]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxqFx_jP7_a4czFfcjAxS0J4dmM/view?usp=sharing[/video]

 

[jdfrye]

I cant take it anymore and also have to speak up. I used to have the S4 and the Droid turbo camera is better. Not sure what the complaining is about. The S4 was supposed to have a great camera but this Turbo has a better one.

 

[jamielov]

This is what the complaining is about. Taken last weekend in good light. Unsure if I got a bad camera or some batches of the phone got a bad camera, but if you are unsure maybe that will clear it up for you?

 

[MA2GA28]

View attachment 160974

This is what the complaining is about. Taken last weekend in good light. Unsure if I got a bad camera or some batches of the phone got a bad camera, but if you are unsure maybe that will clear it up for you?

Looks like a shaky hand and possible errant focus (that person's head in front of you messing with the focus) to me. Granted, using the digital zoom won't produce quality photos, but this looks to be the culprit of something else.

 

[jamielov]

View attachment 160975[/ATTACH]. Worse lighting conditions....taken with Maxx. So hope that helps clarify the "mystery" why some are upset. Heading back to store tomorrow to see if indeed my camera is broken. Because if not, my photos are all really, really bad.

 

[jamielov]

OK, but why did ever single attempt that night come out like this? I am sadly sorry i deleted the worse ones because these were actually the best.

 

[jamielov]

Here is my dog. No "shaky hand" or anyone in my way. Good light. More crap

 

[PowrDroid]

Heading back to store tomorrow to see if indeed my camera is broken.

I'm very interested to hear what they say.

 

[droidguy1964]

This is normal for the turbo. Slightest movement is blurred.

View attachment 160977

Here is my dog. No "shaky hand" or anyone in my way. Good light. More crap

 

[PowrDroid]

This is normal for the turbo. Slightest movement is blurred.

Is that so? What about my non-blurred photo of a rotating party ball in a low light situation?

View attachment 160956

 

[wolf_walker]

This is normal for the turbo. Slightest movement is blurred.

Been my experience as well. When they set up the camera parameters, they opted for more exposure time (more blur/streaks) and less ISO(more noise) for a given light condition. I'm not sure if aperture is even adjustable on these little no-lens things. Great well lit/landscape pics, so-so dark or dim and moving pics.
I hope they adjust it a bit at some point, or give the user the option to, though frankly a cell phone cam to me is a point and shoot,
I don't really want to have to jerk around trying to adjust things the way I do with an SLR.

I walked around with an S4 in one hand and the turbo in the other side by side taking photos when I first got the DT.
The DT takes nicer photos, when it takes nicer photos. The S4 was much more capable at low light/in motion.
This really isn't a knock against the DT camera per se but rather it's software (unless the software is covering for a hardware problem).
And by software I do not mean the camera app, it's deeper than that.
A human being decided at some point that if light is X then exposure time will be Y all throughout the light scale. It's almost like they programed it expecting it to have OIS. One could up the ISO and lower the exposure time and have a better chance of "freezing" something in motion or compensating for handshake which is more and more of an issue with distance, but the tradeoff is "noise" in photos which would get an equal amount of complaints I imagine.
I have no idea which is preferable or if the sensor/lens can do better, this is just what I see happening as a (very) little bit of a shutterbug.

 

[wolf_walker]

Is that so? What about my non-blurred photo of a rotating party ball in a low light situation?

View attachment 160956

Blurry and noisy. Not your fault.

 

[wolf_walker]

Here is an example that required me to do nothing but turn to my left slightly.
The dark walls of this 70 year old house are a great torture test for cameras,
the overall ambient light level is eye-accurate assuming your monitor is reasonably calibrated, but it's not
bright in here. There is enough light from the windows to create shadows however.

Pic 1, note the lack of focus on anything, tree, wall, fireplace, stockings, etc.
And the excessive noise.

Pic 2, note the non-super-fast-movement of the small dog laying his head back down after I called his name
to get him to raise it up. Blur, also note the excessive noise.

Both these should be clickable to view full size unedited images if one wanted though I have stripped the exif data
since it had my location in it. Both were ISO 1600 (noise) Exposure 1/15 (slow) which is less than ideal.
If you google around you'll find some charts showing ideal relationships between ISO and Exposure, and
those aren't it.

 

[wolf_walker]

And here is the DT doing well, ISO 60 Exposure 1/935.

 

[PowrDroid]

Blurry and noisy. Not your fault.

Well, yeah, it's going to have noise, it was shot in a completely darkened room. As to the blur, the globe is rotating at perhaps 50 rpm yet the circular lighted holes are well defined, reflections of the circular lights on the base of the device can clearly be seen and you can see texture in the carpeting.

I see that the ISO was set at 1,000 and the exposure was at 1/17 sec.

 

[droidguy1964]

Is that so? What about my non-blurred photo of a rotating party ball in a low light situation?

View attachment 160956

Sorry but after years of motos and years of moto camera experience. I don't believe that the photo that you posted is of a moving target.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[PowrDroid]

Been my experience as well. When they set up the camera parameters, they opted for more exposure time (more blur/streaks) and less ISO(more noise) for a given light condition.

Actually lesser ISO numbers mean less noise. I think you've identified the problem. The software opts for longer exposure time over higher ISO. Apparently they've decided that they'd rather have less noise in the photo than less blur. That's the tradeoff.

I'm not sure if aperture is even adjustable on these little no-lens things. Great well lit/landscape pics, so-so dark or dim and moving pics.
I hope they adjust it a bit at some point, or give the user the option to, though frankly a cell phone cam to me is a point and shoot,
I don't really want to have to jerk around trying to adjust things the way I do with an SLR.

No, the aperture is not adjustable. If they don't address this exposure/ISO ratio in software updates, the alternative is to go to a third party app and set the ISO at say, 400 or 600 for decently lit scenes to cut down on the blur and let the camera pick the exposure time.

 

[PowrDroid]

Sorry but after years of motos and years of moto camera experience. I don't believe that the photo that you posted is of a moving target.

Posted via the Android Central App

Yeah, whatever... I'm a lying shill for Motorola.

If you don't like the rotating party ball, you can look at a rolling soccer ball. Or did I fake these photos too?
http://forums.androidcentral.com/mo...to-s-auto-focus-blurry-why-2.html#post4108426

 

[wolf_walker]

I may very well have the iso/noise backwards.

Having to manually adjust is a non-starter in my book, and I suspect to most folks. Photography wasn't especially easy when manual was all there was, especially with film. I have a nice Nikon DSLR for that (which also has a great auto mode and scene selection pre-sets). In 2014 there shouldn't be any more mystery to a Point N Shoots programing. I wouldn't return the DT over the camera since I have others and most of what I take with it are BS pics of labels and part numbers and parts to remember how to reassemble something and so forth and stuff that will be cropped and compressed online anyway, but every single time I've tried to use it on people at an event or the dogs or anything that wasn't a very well prepped/lit or still shot, it sucked. A lot. I had to call my mother in law in with her Iphone 6+ at Thanksgiving to get pics of her daughter and three friends in the kitchen cooking since they were not holding perfectly still, and that was a bit embarrassing. I can't speak further as to the ip6 camera, but she got the shots I wanted but my DT wouldn't do, same time, same place, same room, same subjects, and she's way less of a shutterbug than I am. Point and click. I don't even take the thing out for such anymore.
Great for impromptu scenery though.

 

[Eli_C]

These camera's won't ever perform great in low light without bigger sensors and OIS. We don't need 21MP, we need larger pixels and optical image stabilization.

http://forums.androidcentral.com/android-concepts-dream-devices/456528-dream-cell-phone-camera.html