[thrownaway2424]

Meh. The camera software on Android is so bad that a default-setting picture from an iPhone looks as good or better than an HDR picture on Android. People have demonstrated the quality you can get from the sensor on a Nexus 5 if you capture raw and process offline[1]. I realize that these Google[x] researchers are probably not responsible for the mainline camera application, but the organizational details of Android management don't interest me. What would interest me would be an Android camera app that captures decent pictures, has usable auto-exposure and auto-focus algorithms, and doesn't take tens of seconds to start.

1: http://imgur.com/a/qQkkR#0

[personZ]

What a dismissive bunch of prattle. Meh.

This is about algorithms to achieve better results with a given sensor. The Nexus 5, like the various Nexii that came before, has a poor image sensor -- it's a $300 smartphone, and LG wasn't going to put the best in it. HDR+ gives rather decent results in a wide range of settings despite that, and mine has managed a large number of fantastic shots.

The Nexus 6, being twice the price, apparently has a fantastic sensor, and with that dramatically better base results, made even better with HDR+. Awesome. That's good.

[adrusi]

I'm hoping the 6's optical image stabilization will help make HDR+ even better.

[thrownaway2424]

The 5 already has OIS. Is the 6 supposed to be better?

[adrusi]

My mistake, I forgot that the 5 had OIS. That was actually the feature that compelled me to accept the camera downgrade when I bought mine. Regardless, the 6 has a much better camera than the 5, so I imagine that its OIS will be at least somewhat improved.

[thrownaway2424]

The Nexus 5 has a really excellent Sony camera module with 1.4 micron pixels. It's comparable to bordering on identical to the sensor in the iPhone 5s, which produces far better images.

[personZ]

They are entirely different sensors, and share nothing at all in common. To start, the Nexus 5 has a 1/3.2" sensor, while the 5s has a 1/3.0" sensor (making evident from the start that in no universe are they "bordering on identical"). The iPhone has a f2.2 lens assembly. The Nexus has a f2.5 lens assembly. Empirically in both of those cases the iPhone has the superior option, not even getting into the specifics of tiering and segmentation.

The Nexus 5 has a camera sensor equivalent with the iPhone 5, on paper, but is handily and easily beaten by the 5s, and it shows.

[dingaling]

> They are entirely different sensors, and share nothing at all in common.

I wouldn't say that. The 5s uses the IMX145 and the Nexus 5 uses the IMX179. Both are Sony CMOS arrays.

The 1/3.0 size of the 5s array does enable larger individual photon 'buckets' for better light sensitivity but they're both closely related in terms of contemporary Sony technology.

The faster 5s lens is a key differentiator, I agree. But it is rather outclassed by the the Galaxy S5 and the Xperia Z2 / Z3. No serious Android-using photographer looks much beyond those for a smartphone.

[thrownaway2424]

You're right, I meant the 5, not the 5s. No reason to get so upset.

[shawabawa3]

All that guy seems to have done is manually set the ISO to 100 when taking a relatively dark picture with his phone on a tripod. If the camera app did that by default pretty much every photo would be blurry

[heliodor]

I have a Nexus 5 at the moment and while the pictures are not amazing, what boggles my mind is that the camera sensor and the phone's screen don't have the same aspect ratio!

[simias]

It usually makes more sense for sensors to be closer to a circular shape (i.e. square aspect ratio) because the image projected by the lens is going to be circular anyway. So if you have a very wide sensor you lose a lot of light on the top and bottom in order to expose the sides correctly.

[thrownaway2424]

You can just crop it if it bothers you. The lenses throw a circle of light, so the farther the aspect ratio gets from 1:1 the more lens you are wasting. What surprised me was the new Blackberry has a square (1:1) screen but doesn't capitalize on it with a 1:1 camera sensor. Probably they couldn't source a decent sensor with that aspect ratio.

[personZ]

Worth noting that this is the case across most compact camera devices. Most smartphone camera sensors are 4:3 (e.g. iPhones), while the screen on the device is often 16:9 or 16:10. In contrast full-sized SLRs are usually 3:2 owing to the 35mm legacy.

[rcthompson]

How is it fair to compare the default settings, which are presumably optimized for handheld shots, to a half-second exposure from a tripod? Of course a picture with a stable half-second exposure will be far, far better than anything the defaults come up with. But it's effectively complaining that a tripod gives better results than handheld shots.

[seunosewa]

I guess HDR+ is supposed to close that gap. Recent iPhones do something very similar all the time.

[crishoj]

HDR is provided as an additional, alternative photo by the iOS camera app, if the scene is deemed to benefit from HDR processing.