Hello,
I’m getting more reliable models (less holes) with my (sometimes a bit blurry) 8 MP smartphone than with my 500 € sharp 20 mp camera.
Being a total newbie at RC, I’m under the impression that the sharper images confuse RC more than my blurred images.
Do I have to change the downscale for the sharp images or what else can I try?
Thank you.
Hi Antonio
I’m under the impression that the sharper images confuse RC more than my blurred images.
Do I have to change the downscale for the sharp images or what else can I try?
how did you come to this conclusion ??
Ok, I will first do some exact tests to compare.
I think this topic should belong to the “Off-Topic” section now, but there isn’t one yet.
Here is a comparison between my Sony Cybershot DSC-HX400V (even placed on a tripod and triggered by a remote device) with 20 MP and my smartphone with 8 MP, held in my hands.
Does anybody have any experience if I should get more experienced with my Cybershot, or if smart phones are just almost equal to “full-blown” cameras these days in aspects of quality?
I put my Cybershot to “Automatic” because there were so many settings, and I couldn’t estimate the results looking at the display.
I have to say that I’m rather disappointed with the Sony Cybershot which is 4 times as expensive as my smart phone, and I don’t see much difference between 8 and 20 MP.
If anybody has experienced something similar, I would really like to hear about his opinion.
Thanks.
Antonio,
First off, that’s a very impressive camera phone you have! Long story short, the Sony Cybershot should produce better results but it requires a lot more knowledge and tinkering than your phone. I shoot on Sony cams, I think they are the best bang for the buck, but I’m not knowledgeable of your particular line (though I know it’s still considered very good for its class)
Here are some things to note off the top of my head, can’t promise they are correct, so don’t take this as gospel.
A) Sensor size
– Bigger sensor size, the better results you can get, your Sony Cybershot’s sensor is quite small compared to other full-on cameras, but it’s a good performer. Also still a lot bigger than your phone’s sensor so the potential is there
B) Resolution capability
– Your comparison is a bit off because you’re using 40% of the Sony’s picture compared to 100% of your phone’s sensor in your example. Once tweaked correctly, every shot of your Sony will be like taking 2.5 shots from your phone.
C) Settings
– Using automatic on your Sony is what is killing you here. Your phone will be limited in the settings it can use so things will be static across all of your shots. While the Sony is a good investment, the settings allow for things that are good for RC and things that are good for general photography (but bad for RC), and it’ll change the settings with each shot you take on Automatic. Things must be constant across your pictures for RC to work well (again, your phone doesn’t have the capability to change settings up on each shot, but your Sony does).
– You want to shoot at 100 ISO and F11 as a general rule. If you have a tripod, long exposure times are fine. Once you get a bit more advanced you’ll want to use manual focus (there is a special focal distance that is kind of ‘set it and forget it’).
– Your Sony allows for RAW photos, and RAW+JPG (I’m pretty sure). Shoot in the latter. If there is a scene you really like and are willing to learn some complex stuff, the RAW photos will let you do a lot more with the scene in post. I’m still wrestling with RAW photos with RC, but when I get it to work it’s loads better than JPG. Very advanced stuff, so you may not use it, but would be nice to go back if you ever wanted to…
I got to run, but those are the basics as far as I see them - that Sony is so expensive as it lets you muck with things under the hood that your phone does not; RC will shine when you spend the time to get to that level. It takes a bit though - you’ll get better work out of your phone out of the box but you’ve already hit the ceiling on performance with that device. With the Sony you’ll be able to blow past what you can do with the phone once you learn the ins-and-outs of exposure, light settings, aperture, and scene collection.
Good luck!
Thank you for the insights.
Unfortunately my cam is one of the few ones not equipped with saving RAW photos.
I read “RAW” all over the place, so I thought all nowadays cameras had it, but my one didn’t.
tw2016 wrote:
Thank you for the insights.
Unfortunately my cam is one of the few ones not equipped with saving RAW photos.
I read “RAW” all over the place, so I thought all nowadays cameras had it, but my one didn’t.
I think RAW is for crazy advanced stuff and you won’t miss it unless you’re top of the field for this work. I’m on the final day or two on my first ‘big’ project that was designed to be really tough to figure out the best workflow for different shoots - I have an ‘inside to outside’ transition, so both trees and open areas and then a transition into a building with lots of stuff to look at. I shot the outside on an old camera that if it had RAW I didn’t use it, and the inside my settings were off with my new gear so didn’t get RAW there either.
I went back and re-shot a few things in RAW but man is it hard to work with - not a lot of advice on how to process the RAW files for photogrammetry out there, let alone with whatever specific gear you are using, so you have to go through a ton of iterations to get them to work. I find my JPEGs look a lot worse in direct comparison but RC will pick about 25% more of them up compared to my processed RAWS as I haven’t figured out the right settings yet. So most of my stuff is still JPG based.
I guess my point is that if you can afford to wait a bit, this sort of stuff is going to become more popular when VR/AR continues to take off and you won’t have to spend tons of hours banging your head against the wall to take advantage of RAW conversions, you’ll be able to hit a forum like this one and dial in the settings from another user.
Antonio,
One other thing to note about your comparison. Sony cameras are not known for their ‘JPG Quality’ - from my research though, this is a bit of a misnomer. What a lot of experts say is that the Sony JPGs are simply much more ‘true to life’ than other cameras. Nikon, Cannon, and every phone manufacturer will mess with saturation and contrast a bit more to have the images get more ‘pop’. That’s something I noticed with your phone image - it looks a bit crisper as it’s more saturated than the Sony - I think for RC you want the more natural image on the left as it’ll ultimately work better. You can always change the saturation in post (JPG lets you change a little bit without messing things up, RAW lets you change a good deal more without messing things up).
If you’re shooting on a tripod, shoot from a remote (like a smartphone) and turn off image stabilization - that can make it a bit crisper as well, along with those very important fstop and ISO settings that the automatic surely had off from shot to shot or in general when you were recording the scene. A quick search says your camera can shoot at 80 ISO, so use that if possible. Lower ISO, crisper the image.
I’ll shut up now, trying to pay back the 20 posts I made to the devs/community over the holidays.
Hey Castlenock,
what do you mean by set-it-and-forget-it focus?