[LensBeginner]

I put this in Digital processing since it involves fiddling with PP, but it could have gone in General Photography or Photographic Technique as well.

Some days ago I discovered a way to shoot RAW with my smartphone, which isn't officially suppporting this function.
My Redmi Note 3 Pro has a S5k3p3 Samsung Isocell sensor, which is ok for a smartphone, but I always felt (and opinion on the internet and - more importantly - facts support this theory) that it's hindered by a less-than-ideal NR and processing.

By using FreeDcam I managed to get 10bit DNG files, that I processed on my PC, and the results speak for themselves (sorry for the amount of dust, but it's actually good to see how fine detail ends up).



In this picture it's not all that evident, but there's always lots of uncorrected chrominance noise in the straight-out-of-camera JPEGs, while luminance noise is overcorrected to the point that the whole image becomes a mushy mess. WB is often off by quite a margin.

I've experimented with settings and can say that you need a heavy vignetting correction (Quantity 100, Midpoint 0) and an unusual Daylight setting (Temperature 4100 K, Tint 14).
Other than that, some fiddling with the HSL panel is also required, but it's worth it, especially when you can leverage a superior DR (and this juicier example sure deserves all the DR it can get!):



As you can see shooting RAW is an effective remedy against the default washed-out look and the low DR of default jpegs, which often have a bad handling of wide DR scenes (either marked underexposure or clipped highlight), and using the exposure compensation simply isn't enough.

Hope you find this as interesting as I did.

[BigMackCam]

That's an amazing result. Nice work!!

Are those 100% crops?

[LensBeginner]

That's an amazing result. Nice work!!

Are those 100% crops?

Thanks for the kind words. I think it's more the manufacturer's weakness than my merit... Samsung did much better with the same sensor on its C5-C7


Yep, a little tight because of the gallery requirements of 1024 max... so I made 500*1000 crops and paired them by eye.

[BigMackCam]

Thanks for the kind words. I think it's more the manufacturer's weakness than my merit... Samsung did much better with the same sensor on its C5-C7


Yep, a little tight because of the gallery requirements of 1024 max... so I made 500*1000 crops and paired them by eye.

That's very impressive. Good enough that you can use it as a serious photographic tool rather than merely something to take web-sized snaps...

[veato]

I can't believe how poor the JPEGs are compared to the processed RAW results.

[LensBeginner]

That's very impressive. Good enough that you can use it as a serious photographic tool rather than merely something to take web-sized snaps...

Well there are some limitations we all know (small sensor, bad ISO performance, fixed aperture, 10bit RAW), but my point is that I hope we keep getting some sort a "backdoor" (like RAW) to make things work our way, because the way the smartphone camera market took is computational photography and mass-appealing gimmicks.

I'm not averse to innovation per se, but at the present time computational photography is still green, and the results are obscene if viewed at anything more than web size.
I'm talking about "fake" portrait modes, wich often result in subject mutilation (beard, hair, chin, cheekbones...), and fake lighting modes.
The kind of interpolation to enhance resolution seen on the Lytro also leads to uneven detail rendering and bad stitching errors.

There's still much to do on that front, it's not even guaranteed we actually get to a point where it still doesn't have limits. In the meantime I'm happy leveraging the power of recent imaging sensors, which are improving as well. My smartphone is 2 years old, but when I'm upgrading (in a year or two, because it's still doing its job very well) I'm sure I'll get an even better sensor, from current generation, and the gap with my "proper" cameras will widen, and some of its shortcomings will probably have less of an impact as technology improves.

We are living in interesting times, that's for sure.

[clackers]

Sooc outdoor photography can be fine - skies not blown - because the default with both Apple and Samsung is HDR these days.

[LensBeginner]

Sooc outdoor photography can be fine - skies not blown - because the default with both Apple and Samsung is HDR these days.

Most cameras are ok in good condition (provided one is not shooting contre-jour), even my old Nokia N95 was ok.
The trouble comes when shooting in low light, and with moving subjects.

RAW is not "the" solution, merely one of the available tools.
Others include super-resolution (I've posted elsewhere in this forum... modern phones take 20-pic bursts in a matter of a couple of seconds, and discarding up to 4 shots you still get a 4-fold reduction in noise - sqrt16) and HDR, but neither is ideal with moving subjects.

I've still to make up my mind about what to use in low light conditions, but I think I'll do as follows:

RAW: moving subjects, high DR
HDR: still subjects, high and very high DR
Super resolution burst: still subjects, low light

[UncleVanya]

How did you process the files from the phone?

[stevebrot]

How did you process the files from the phone?

My question too...and how does one get RAW from a phone camera that does not support that feature? (In other words, I short description of FreeDcam and what it claims to do would be helpful.)


Steve

[savoche]

Interesting. I don't think my Huawei mangles the images quite so badly...! But I still normally shoot DNG (which is supported by the default camera app). Will look into the FreeDcam app for my retired Sony that's without native raw support - and has "only" one camera instead of the double (or triple!) we see these days.

[microlight]

Nice. The closest I can get to that so far on my iPhone 6+ is the 645 PRO app which outputs uncompressed TIFFs. There’s another app called RAW+ which works with the 6s+ and newer.

[UncleVanya]

Nice. The closest I can get to that so far on my iPhone 6+ is the 645 PRO app which outputs uncompressed TIFFs. There’s another app called RAW+ which works with the 6s+ and newer.

I miss that app on my Android phone. 645pro is a well designed app.

[leekil]

Are those crops, or the full photo? If they are crops, I'd like to see how the full photo looks, especially in the second case. That photo looks ridiculously bad in the SOOC version.

[AggieDad]

My question too...and how does one get RAW from a phone camera that does not support that feature? (In other words, I short description of FreeDcam and what it claims to do would be helpful.)


Steve

If you have an iPhone there are several apps that allow you to shoot raw files. Here is one. But your phone better have some good memory because an iPhone DNG raw file can be some 12MB (well it is a 12mp camera).