topic Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium... in Z Series

God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Alienangie — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 08:12:37 GMT

Ok. So "upgraded" from my Note 3 to is piece of crap, because of all the marketing calling this the best camera phone on the market. And I use my phone camera a lot.

On 23mp, manual and auto mode I cannot focus. Close up or macro images are blurry. All images have a soft edge and lack definition when enlarged. It looks like I've downgraded rather than upgraded! I have reset the cache and cleared it. Even done a factory reset. There is no case or dirt over the lens. No camera wobble. I have the latest software update.

if I can't resolve this, I'm selling it and waiting for the Note 5, which the only reason I didn't go with was the lack of SD card. With the Z5 I feel I've taken a MASSIVE step backward in tech. The UI isn't as friendly as Samsung, it's not as pretty, and the camera is just plain crap. 2 days of ownership and so far I hate it.

I need some redeeming features for this phone, so please tell me how to fix it. I'm an amateur photographer and I e won competitions with pictures taken on the Note. This, so far, is useless to me.

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Uliwooly — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 08:16:13 GMT

@Alienangie

I'm sorry to hear that, do you have the latest camera update?

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

SebastianD — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 08:47:35 GMT

In my experience, Close up or macro images are not good in the Z5 camera, speciallly with mid light. (And I really love close ups).

They're not bad when you have a lot of light. But when you see them in a computer monitor you can still notice a lot of noise at the "real size" of the photo (compared to the competence).

Videos are excellent, specially at 60fps with Sony software stabilization.

And daylight photos to landscape (no close ups or macro images, unless you have a lot of sunlight) are good too!

Anyway I hope Sony improves the definition of the photo (at real size) in a future firmware update with camera2 api or something like that because, at the moment, the camera is just an upgrade for the users that come from an older Xperia phone but not from users that come from another flagship, like from LG, Samsung or Google (excluding N4 and older phones).

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Alienangie — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 12:34:22 GMT

Oh for God's...if I'd have known the camera was so.limited I never would have chosen the phone. I tried to take a picture of my dog. Not macro close. But face portrait. In good light and there is no definition. Soft edges and poor detail. I had far better results with my 16mp note 3.
Definitely the worst photos I've taken on a phone in a very long time. Extremely disappointed

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Lord_viridis — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 12:43:59 GMT

I had S6 edge before this and I rate this camera better in good light, slightly worse in low light due to the lack of control.
But in good light it's far superior imo

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Alienangie — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 18:27:55 GMT

Yep, have checked the updates. All up to date software wise

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Uliwooly — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 22:20:22 GMT

@Alienangie

Do you have this new camera UI?

http://www.xperiablog.net/2015/11/16/new-sony-camera-app-with-refreshed-ui-rolling-for-xperia-z5-series/

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Alienangie — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 22:51:46 GMT

Yes, still producing pictures which are almost identical in quality to the 5mp camera on my dad's E3
Soft edges, pixelated and/or blurry edges when enlarged, even though set to highest quality options. Just a really really bad camera.
Is this software or hardware issue. If it can be improved via software updates I'll keep the phone. If not, it's being sold asap. Because it doesn't do what it said it could.

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Uliwooly — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 00:38:52 GMT

@Alienangie

You probably have a defective Xperia Z5

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Shardlake — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 05:51:03 GMT

Did you take the back protector off when you took it out the box?

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Alienangie — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 08:30:42 GMT

Hahaha! Of course I did 🙂

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

skycamefalling — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 17:18:38 GMT

Sonys cameras for phones are never really good. They lack sharpness and details, you'll have to get used to this. Dynamic range, contrasts and overall picture quality is good, though, but the photos are clearly behind the Lumia 950 or the Samsung Galaxy S6.

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Alienangie — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 18:36:03 GMT

That's really annoying. As I use this as a method to make money...like I said, I've captured great quality pictures on the note 3 and won competitions with them,so when this has been hyped for months as the best camera available in a phone, I jumped at it. To find that it's utter crap is beyond dissapointing. False marketing at its finest...

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

getandrew — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 08:44:31 GMT

Sorry to hear that, have u tried any thrid party camera app if not try and if you face the same issue then you got some hardware issue or else it's software issue only for sure, if software based issue sony will release a update to clear the bug below are some pics which is taken in different camera app. i'm using Z1

Camera-fv5:

Camera mx:

Sony Camera:

The above 3 pics taken using same setting in all the camera apps

below used color splash filter

camera mx :

Sony camera :

Sony hardware is good only they lack in software sure they will update the software, even samsung is using sony camera sensor imx240 and isocell for note 5 and s6 and most of the people said imx240 sensor based device capture good pics

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

SebastianD — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 09:26:07 GMT

I think they need to design from scratch the camera drivers and libraries using the camera 2 API as a base. Who cares about a good hardware if then the software ruins it.
It doesn't really matter the camera we are using (Sony Camera, Google Camera, or another Android camera), the quality of the camera is in the sony firmware. Then, of course, you can get more quality with one camera or another, but the big factor is in the firmware and affects all android cameras.

Regarding the closeups, I think it's not possible to improve them. Because the camera minimum focus distance (and maybe the FoV in this camera too) doesn't let you take a really close picture with pure details. You need to be away and doing that the object ends occupying just 15-50% of the picture area.

In this case, if 23MP was better than 8MP in this phone, you could just use 23MP and then crop the rest of the photo. But since 23MP at the moment has equal or worse quality than 8MP we're stuck at 8MP focus with bad minimun focus distance and blurry details at actual size. (blurry compared to S6, G4, 5X/6P photos).

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

vanSmuk — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 19:59:32 GMT

Sony has acknowledged an issue of some faulty cameras that produce soft areas and pixelations on Z5/C/P and have notified service centres to replace the camera modules. Give it a try. Sounds like you have a faulty one.

My experience with the Z5P camera is brilliant so far. Low light, macro, face shots are all better than the previous Zs and iPhone 6s plus (direct comparisons). Have not compared to S6

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

PiotrB1 — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 07:19:22 GMT

I'm having the same issues. I test my Xperia Z5 premium phtoo vs iPhone 5, both w hdr on, and I kid you not, the iPhone photos are less grainy and better edge details. I don't know if this is an isolated defect or what, but I'm returning the phone if this isn't resolved w a software update in the next few days. Anyone got any suggestions for what I could try? I shoot photos and film professionally so the tests were done correctly. I was hoping the Z5 would replace my Fuji x100t

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

Lord_viridis — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 09:07:01 GMT

Sorry, but you genuinely considered that a smartphone would replace a Fuji x100t?

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

KunalS — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 11:31:36 GMT

welcome to the world of sony's camera phone. Here you would need to know all the technicalities in order to get a decent photo clicked.

Re: God awful camera on Z5 premium...

PiotrB1 — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 16:49:51 GMT

The issue here is that my three year old iPhone beats it in photo quality.