topic Re: Main camera quality terrible in XZ Series

Main camera quality terrible

GMxz1 — Sat, 07 Oct 2017 16:06:21 GMT

Hi,

I've just bought an xz1 compact today and I find the rear camera picture quality to be terrible. The photos are really soft and blurry and look very grainy with textures impossible to render. I noticed the same problem with the M2 a few years ago - has anyone else noticed this? Will I need to return the phone for a different model to try? I've attached two photos for comparison below. The left hand photos are taken in auto mode with xz1c and on the right is the photo taken with my 4 year old xperia L. The xz1c has terrible pixelation and no discernible texture (car for example does not look metallic).

xz1c on left, L on rightxz1 on left, L on right

Re: Main camera quality terrible

GMxz1 — Sat, 07 Oct 2017 19:51:50 GMT

Anyone else think this isn't right? Has anyone else got any 100% scans to compare? It just doesn't seem right, given all the good reviews the camera is getting (other than low light) yet the photos I'm getting from it are so blurry and grainy.

Re: Main camera quality terrible

Profyler1 — Sun, 08 Oct 2017 11:02:16 GMT

thats odd

except for the distortion of the photos thanks to the horrible wide lenses, the quality is pretty good.

Sounds like a defect unit may be?

Re: Main camera quality terrible

Lord_viridis — Mon, 09 Oct 2017 11:30:51 GMT

Have you taken the film off the back of the device?

Re: Main camera quality terrible

OffQuality — Mon, 09 Oct 2017 17:02:38 GMT

Sam here, very processed looking XZ1c photos. Almost feels like a filter has been left on but I can't figure out where. Cropped portion of an image attached.

Re: Main camera quality terrible

GMxz1 — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 16:40:00 GMT

The film on the back only covers the bottom half of the phone and there is no film on the camera.

Re: Main camera quality terrible

GMxz1 — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 16:42:15 GMT

Your photos look just like mine. Very soft, fuzzy and grainy with no real sharpness to them. Edges seem very pixelated and rough, not nice and smooth/sharp. It's so disappointing given the good reviews the camera has been getting.

Re: Main camera quality terrible

Caisha — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:09:38 GMT

Those shots look like you turned on some impressionist filter

Anyway what resolution and shooting mode did you use? On Z5C I notice actual improvement of detail when lowering the resolution from 20MP to just 8MP.

Re: Main camera quality terrible

donnyjoe — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 20:58:35 GMT

I'm no camera expert, but I'm not sure you can compare photos from two different camera sensors of differing resolutions (not to mention different lenses) by zooming in to "100%" size. If you stand in the same spot, focus on the same spot, have the same lighting conditions and then compare a given portion of those photos of the same "real world" area, and the XZ1c's picture still looks worse, then I'd believe there might be a problem. My pictures so far look fine at any reasonable zoom level, and the pictures from my previous iPhone 7 look terrible like that as well if I zoom in to "actual size" on any part of the photo.

Re: Main camera quality terrible

lundan — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:12:33 GMT

Was "HDR on" in any of the images? Image samples from some reviews looked a bit painterly with this setting. Perhaps it's also worth checking if the iso the phone chose for the exposure seems unnecessarily high? In both samples you seem to be looking at the extreme right of the frame. Many mobile cameras are not so sharp towards the edges. Does things look better closer to the center of the frame?

Re: Main camera quality terrible

GMxz1 — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 15:51:23 GMT

No HDR, just straight out the box, launch the camera, auto setting. The quality is the same across the whole frame, very soft and fuzzy looking. Edges of any features within the photos seem particularly bad, no sharpness and there's this graining effect across the whole image. ISO was 80 on the photo in my example so that's definitely not the issue. I've tried to show another section, nearer the centre of the photo - the leaves on the bushes are an absolute mess!

Re: Main camera quality terrible

OffQuality — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 17:25:15 GMT

No HRD on my end either (at least not that I can turn off, doesn't seem to be a setting I can find). Even in the middle of the photo, the blurriness looks the same (attached another crop). It really does feel like there's a filter turned on, but there's nothing on this end.

Re: Main camera quality terrible

TheRealEasy — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 18:13:12 GMT

Same here.

Nearly perfect conditions at the weekend.

And the result!?

Re: Main camera quality terrible

crmb — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:11:35 GMT

The picture look the same than my XZ. Terrible nonsense over-processing algorithm destroy the picture.

Re: Main camera quality terrible

Lord_viridis — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 11:53:49 GMT

@GMxz1 wrote:
No HDR, just straight out the box, launch the camera, auto setting. The quality is the same across the whole frame, very soft and fuzzy looking. Edges of any features within the photos seem particularly bad, no sharpness and there's this graining effect across the whole image. ISO was 80 on the photo in my example so that's definitely not the issue. I've tried to show another section, nearer the centre of the photo - the leaves on the bushes are an absolute mess!

Have you tried manual?

Auto will detect the backlighting and turn on hdr, you may actually see the word backlight in the viewfinder at lower right corner which shows the scene it has detected..

Myself if I was shooting those scenes would go manual, metering set to centre, HDR off, and shoot that way,

Try that.

Re: Main camera quality terrible

GMxz1 — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 17:09:15 GMT

I tried manual mode as well and the photos retain their overprocessed, totally blurry and not sharp appearance. I've tried indoor photos, outdoor photos, close ups, everything, the images all have the same 'fake' look to them. They don't look natural or like photographs, they look as if there's a 'coloured pencil' filter on them or something.

Not impressed at all. As I said in my first post, this was the same I experienced with the M2. It was a midrange phone though, and about 1/5 of the price and 3 years old. For a fairly expensive 2017 compact flagship phone, I would have expected the camera to at least take useable pictures, but so far all I've seen are some very poor quality images.

I bought my phone in Carphone Warehouse (UK) and it's back with them just now to be sent for repair - although I suspect they'll conclude there's nothing wrong with it, even though this sort of quality image just can't be acceptable.

Re: Main camera quality terrible

Stalker79 — Sat, 14 Oct 2017 16:49:58 GMT

Why the guys from Sonymobile did not fix these problems for many years, we do not know.

Today i tested XZ1 camera, and it so weak:smileyangry:

Dark shadows, on images i see friable detail in the form of fine sand, indoor WB so horrible, (green tone) I compared with my 2015 year Lg G4 takes more natural colors with better WB. XZ1 photo looks so unnatural. PS. Why Sony puts this RGB sensor...? Big question

Note 8, Iphone 8, HTC U11 with new Pixel 2, easily destroy XZ1 camera . Sony 2017 motion eye camera - FAIL.

16mp auto HDR off17mp (manual) HDR off100% crops

Re: Main camera quality terrible

Caisha — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 17:47:18 GMT

Went to the shop today to have a real life preview. The unit itself was fantastic - snappy, great screen (colours were exceptionally deep for LCD), felt good in the hand.

And the camera... "Terrible" is the right word to describe it. Took a few shots with XZ1C and Z5C, compared side by side and the difference was really noticeable. XZ1C had worse WB, extreme loss of detail (ex. the price tags were blurred beyond readability when taking a shot 1m away) and those slightly curved lines mentioned elsewhere. Even the shop assistant when looking at comparison agreed - yep, that looks bad. I know that Z5C is an averarage performer in terms of camera quality, but compared to this new phone it looked godly.

It's hard to believe that Sony packed the same camera on XZ Premium, because that would have been a ripoff.

Re: Main camera quality terrible

Profyler1 — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 19:04:43 GMT

We all know that camera is not the strong point from Sony.

If youre looking to quality pics, than move along...

Re: Main camera quality terrible

MyAliasIsGary — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 22:38:38 GMT

hi everyone

I've got a z3 compact (and no I'm not posting in the wrong forum).

I was about to get the xz1 compact, as my z3 is knackered (the softkeys have decided to stop working, the battery life has suddenly got much worse, the notification pulldown menu i.e. basically the top of the touchscreen failed about 6 months ago) and am both really disappointed to hear of your news but actually not entirely surprised. You have my complete sympathy. I've repeatedly read the the Sony sensors are decent enough but the end product (i.e. photos) just aren't.

The photo output you're experiencing 'feels' very similar to my experiences with my z3 compact. Heaps of post processing, pixellation (around leaves and stuff like that).

My only suggestion is to try a different photo app, just to check cos Sony are notorious for post-processing crap.

I'm not saying it's the best camera app at all but I've used an app called opencamera for a while. I felt I got better photos out of the phone but at the same time, it didn't cure the pixellation, etc.

A couple of other thoughts - I'd have hoped that the xz1 compact supports RAW files now. Have you tried outputting to them? NOTE: worryingly I've searched for RAW info and it 'seems' that Sony hasn't implemented it. God knows why not. It's been part of Android's Camera2 API since I think lollipop.

Anyway, my point is that if you output to RAW, you'd hopefully see an unadulterated image, so you could better assess whether it's software or hardware.

regards,

Gary