I seem to have this issue big time. Yesterday at my brother's b-day party I snapped a lot of pictures with my Note 4 and sister's Iphone 6 in what I'd consider ok lighting (lights in the room we were in were on), not really low light.
Pictures on the Note 4 kept blurring with any movement of the subjects. If however there was no movement, the pictures were awesome. Tried sports mode, and I tried auto. Neither fixed the problem, in fact sports seemed to have done nothing. (probably auto was putting it in sport mode in the first place). Compared to my previous Samsung S4, the sport mode is pretty crappy and useless. This morning I tested the updated sports mode. I couldn't tell a difference.
I passed the iphone 6 off to a friend, and he took pictures like CRAZY. I think he took close to 500 pics all while panning. All were in focus and sharp, except for ones where he was moving the camera way too much, in which case even a dedicated camera would have problems.
Using the Google Camera seemed to have helped a bit but didn't eliminate this problem. Eventually however I ended up enabling flash, and it was better excellent but imho flash shouldn't be used except for very low light situations.
Here's two of the better captures moments.
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Normal indoor lighting is low light when you're talking about photography. Why do you think photographers use all those really bright lights...I seem to have this issue big time. Yesterday at my brother's b-day party I snapped a lot of pictures with my Note 4 and sister's Iphone 6 in what I'd consider ok lighting (lights in the room we were in were on), not really low light.
Pictures on the Note 4 kept blurring with any movement of the subjects. If however there was no movement, the pictures were awesome. Tried sports mode, and I tried auto. Neither fixed the problem, in fact sports seemed to have done nothing. (probably auto was putting it in sport mode in the first place). Compared to my previous Samsung S4, the sport mode is pretty crappy and useless. This morning I tested the updated sports mode. I couldn't tell a difference.
I passed the iphone 6 off to a friend, and he took pictures like CRAZY. I think he took close to 500 pics all while panning. All were in focus and sharp, except for ones where he was moving the camera way too much, in which case even a dedicated camera would have problems.
Using the Google Camera seemed to have helped a bit but didn't eliminate this problem. Eventually however I ended up enabling flash, and it was better excellent but imho flash shouldn't be used except for very low light situations.
Here's two of the better captures moments.
The fault is not in the sensor (it's a great sensor for a phone), it's in the app controlling it. Unfortunately Samsung has chosen not to support the Camera2 API included in Lollipop which would allow manual camera settings and raw file support. Hopefully they'll add it in the next update.The problem of course is shutter speed being too slow for moving objects. Three things control exposure: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO setting. The Note 4 has a fixed aperture and provides no explicit control over shutter speed - ISO is the only element that can be changed on the Note 4. The default setting for ISO is Auto - has anybody tried shooting with it changed to its highest setting, 800, to force faster shutter speeds? Moot point if Auto is pushing it to 800 but it's worth trying. The downside with higher ISO is increased grain.
Normal indoor lighting is low light when you're talking about photography. Why do you think photographers use all those really bright lights...