@WeaselWily, I wondering if we should ask the admins to merge this thread and this bug report.
What do you think?
I believe both are related to the same type of issue and having a bug report shape helps to track and solve issues.
All in all, there are excessive loss in some parts of the image.
I think that is a good idea!
It is just some random camera app I downloaded from Aurora Store to quickly test whether the problem is the software or the hardware. I don’t know anything else about that app.
Ok.
@mods, @filip.k, @pherjung, do you think it would be possible / a good idea to merge this thread and this one which is a bug report, both talking about, in the end, related issues?
Ah right, I’ll do some testing of my own then to see if OpenCamera produces the same better results.
as the 0.5 lens producing very nice macros, the main lens is indeed like 10 years ago on low-end phones
compared by downsized to 4000x3000 and then cropped same area.
JP2026 - jolla cam - worst result
JP2026 - advanced cam - almost same but because more pixels it is sharper
iPhone SE 2nd gen (old phone) - way better
Xperia10ii (old phone too) - the best quality
I notice this same kind of “flatness” with the JP2026 camera. Have you tried HDR mode in Advanced Camera? Maybe it makes things better?
no notable difference
Just because why not, I made a comparison with the mythic Nokia N900 (2009).
Turns out it’s not totally out of interest.
N900:
JP2:
Seems the JP2 is nicer, softer to the eyes
But on a closer look, something feels weird:
N900:
JP2:
Images from different eras, very different contrast.
This tend to show there is a real HDR work in the JP2 camera, a strange one.
But adjusting the contrast reduction that way makes the image look artificial, imho.
It’s as if the image had been repainted rather than merged from three images taken at different exposures.
And still, these blurs…
The hardest stays to be done:
Study how HDR was and is done,
and most of all: study the pipeline between the sensor and the file,
how could we put our hands under the hood to talk to the chip.
The idea is slowly maturing in my old brain 
I guess you’re a bit of a photography enthusiast 
I was surprised that you compared it with a 5 MP camera from 2009, but the N900 has such a beautiful nostalgic look to its colors.
Personally, I don’t think the camera issue is that huge of a problem. In fact, I wish someone would really spend some time working on it. It would be interesting if you tried shooting at different megapixel settings as well. I’m pretty sure that by matching certain resolutions to different aspect ratios, you could get noticeably different image quality.
But that’s just my rookie opinion =)
Yeah, 30 years work in images making. 
(production, very few post-production)
But this → was directed towards the effect software study has on my mind – it’s just so complicated.
Question of taste / opinion.
I agree, it is not sooo bad for everyday life.
But knowing other cameras, even very old ones, I really do think it’s a shame to have the poorer camera on a so nice and unique phone.
Representation techniques try, since centuries, to get closer to what we see.
Little step backwards here.
Over-simplifying details and colour tones is a serious matter when it comes to capturing, preserving and reproducing moments of reality.
Especially when it would be possible, technically, to produce 10x better results.
It is even “political”, if you ask me. Details, questions, nuances. Not Generalities, answers, roughly shaped thoughts. But that’s another subject.
I don’t think here lies the improvement potential.
Look at the two last images of the 1st post: 12,5Mp and 50Mp crops. Same issue.
I’m afraid this camera is hardcoded to interpret images and “redraw” them with two goals:
-Reduce file sizes (sort of a compression)
-Increase dynamic range / reduce contrast (sort of a HDR)
Just a supposition, I’m not a specialist in image treatment and post-production knowledge.
And I really hope we could disable these things and drive it at our taste.
I also agree. It would be amazing to squeeze all possible potential out of the camera. Currently I see there a lot of improvement potential luckily!
Since I have worked with camera chips before this sounds weird. It is possible that the driver is configuring the camera wrong in a way and someone should go through the manual of the camera chip and the kernel driver and look what is wrong.
Otoh it is also possible that the vendor gave chips with a reduced firmware so not too much information about the chip leak out through the kernel driver. I’m looking at you Sony, you know what you did.
If the problem lies with the firmware is there anything that can be done about that (realistically), without involvement of Sony?
I just follow it as a layman but given that some Android apps appear to be able to deliver meaningfully better images I hope there is software potential without touching the firmware.
The question is: Where in the chain is the problem? And the chain is roughly:
Optics → Camera IC → Firmware → Configuration → Camera App → Image Correction → JPG-Encoder
It’s in the software, it’s in the camera app, and it’s already in the image correction too. And yeah, since the photos are taken in JPG format, I’m sure there are issues in the JPG stage as well
I am starting to believe, that there are multiple things that could be improved here: The tonemapping / HDR part has already been mentioned, but similar to that first post, I also believe, that there is something strange about the focussing.
I took these 2 pictures today, flipping back and forth between the dog and the background - you can see this by the exposure, higher when focusing on the dog, lower for the background. What did not change, however is the actual focus point: The background remains blurry in both photos.
A tiny bit later, I tried using the wide camera and had similar issues, but more pronounced this time: I couldn’t get it to focus at all:
Test: [Stock app JPG] vs [HedgeCam2 DNG]
Goal: try to find out if this hardware can, or not, deliver pics without the detail loss + poor textures we saw earlier.
Result: This camera is not an alien.
The hardware can render normal textures and normal “photo feeling”.
The noise is beautiful, compared to no noise.
The sharpening is not excessive anymore.
What happened, then?
It seems that the cam has a standard base JPG mode:
When an app asks a picture, it can quickly deliver a lightwight, not so bad JPEG.
Like a good gas station sandwitch.
But with this strange way of treating background and secondary subjects.
Very sub-optimal in my taste, this way to compress things, before the JPG compression.
These are elaboration on my side, as I know nothing about these processes.
Test procedure
Two pictures, to compare:
Stock SfOS app, auto-everything.
HedgeCam2 Android app, auto-everything, found by @WeaselWily
This generated DNG pics, that I developed into Darktable.
Some to match the stock pics balance, some to my taste.
Both at the same 12,5Mp resolution
Please click on the pics to enlarge.
Stock app:
DNG:
Crops:
Stock app:
DNG:
See how the gradients on the rusted steel are alive and natural
Also the concrete textures are richer
Stock app:
Almost monochromatic gravel
DNG:
More nuances in the tones
More details
(Different white balances, contrasts, exposures zones here)
Stock app:
DNG:
Crops:
Stock app:
DNG:
See the wood details, life is back
Stock app:
DNG:
Blurry but more of a natural feeling (trunk, leaves, sun)
Stock app:
DNG:
Can you smell the forest?
Unfortunately different focus distances. But still…
Stock app:
DNG:
Crops:
Stock app:
Video game feeling
DNG:
(different focus)
True photo feeling, nice noise, imho.
Stock app:
DNG:
Tar + steel post textures
Stock app:
DNG:
Nice noise.
Colors on the bus sign.
Steel post texture.
That is very encouraging to see that different software can get a lot more out of the camera. The difference is dramatic when looking at the details.
So it seems there is at least the theoretical possibility of creating an app that can get close to your DNG=>Darktable images, without any changes to the hardware or firmware of the phone or its components, is there?
We had some discussion at last weeks community meeting on camera things. I’m also testing, another recommendation could be Open Camera from F-Droid and the use of API2 (needs to be enabled in app settings).
