Camera flaws

[Radicans]

With this post I would like to raise two distinct issues with the Z3 camera. I know the reviews have been mostly positive, but I think there are serious flaws in the resulting image, as seen when looking closer and comparing with similarly priced phones, and I have photos to back my claims up in a very measurable way. I also want to point out that this post is not meant to be a rant, but rather a plea for Sony to acknowledge these issues so we can have them remedied. The Z3 is a fantastic phone, but the camera is not living up to its promise. I have written several posts on the xda forums, and will summarize here.

Issue 1: Washed out photos

For some reason, the photos taken with the Z3 can look quite washed out, or watercolory, especially when taking photos of fine detail, like trees with colorful autumn leaves. To see where this comes from, one can convert the photo to the YCbCr encoding scheme. Here, the image is encoded in one Luminance and two Chrominance channels, and one can see that the channels containing color information are extremely blurred in all Z3 photos. Here is a quick look of a 1:1 crop of the Cb (blueness) channel for 6 different cameras (original RGB photos taken from this phonearena review http://www.phonearena.com/news/Samsung-Galaxy-Note-4-wins-our-blind-camera-comparison-iPhone-6-is-di... (make sure to open the image in a new view to see the actual size)

As you can see, the Z3 has very little information left. The Note 4 and the other Samsungs on the other hand are very detailed, which I presume is the way it should look like. The result of the blind test, from which I have taken the photos, speaks its clear language; the photos with the most blurred out chroma channels ranked last, namely Z3 and LG. The Note 4 came out on top, which is the photo with the most detailed chroma channel.

Here is a post I wrote about it, when comparing the Z3 and iPhone5s, and also locked versus unlocked bootloader:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=56291934&postcount=329

I have witnessed this chroma blur in each and every Z3 photo I have looked at, whether it's mine or something I pulled from the web. It is most certainly not related to my particular device. It is also something that is not evident in the competition, as evidenced above. This leads me to believe that it's a flaw inherent in the Z3 camera design.

Issue 2: "Cross hatching"

I don't know the technical term for this, but it manifests when taking photos of fine detail, such as leaves. It seems to be a result of oversharpening, but I'm just guessing here. Following are three 1:1 crops comparing the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with my Z3 compact. It is not a random occurrence, but shows up in every single photo I have taken, and it also shows up in photos I see online.

More 1:1 crops from the same photo:

http://i.imgur.com/5f0PbVQ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Zy3hzJY.jpg

Next is a photo where I compare photos of the same scene between the Z3 and iPhone5s. You can clearly see that the iPhone5 has more real detail in its 8MP photo, than in the corresponding 20MP from Z3. The detail seem to have been destroyed by the processing which cause the cross hatching / over sharpened look. The Z3 8MP image is simply a resize I made to see the difference in another light.

http://i.imgur.com/PPl4wMo.jpg

Sony, if you read this, please adress these issues for the release of Android 5.0, if possible. There seems to be quite a few owners unsatisfied with the camera if you judge by forum activity, and it is generating very bad brand reputation. Also, I have seen many posts where people say they are discouraged from buying the Z3 because of the camera alone!

If you bring the camera up to par with the competition, the Z3 will pretty much be the best phone on the market right now, and I'm certain the coming Z4 will also benefit greatly from a truly competetive camera!

Thank you!

[MyAliasIsGary]

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@gremlin wrote:
Have sony said the scene selection is only available in 8mp or under or is it a software error.utterly gobsmacked at the naffness from a camera advertised as 20mp if it is intentional

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Hi Gremlin

No idea mate.

Just know that Scene Selection only appears on 8mp and is greyed out on 20mp.

Tbh think the 20mp use is PR and sales bling.

Very interesting article here about light sensors and megapixels:

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/features/more-than-megapixels-what-really-counts-in-a-smartphone-cam...

Check here too for 8mp vs 20mp on the z3 compact + use of oversampling (as mentioned in prior article). Basically explains that it's best to use 8mp, which is presumably why we don't get Scene Selection at 20mp:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/z3-compact/help/camera-t2902112

Cheers,

Gaz

[gremlin1]

I would not have bothered swapping from my n8 if i'd realised it would be so limited.it's such a waste

[scattymare666]

And another very disappointed bird here too,i purposely chose the z3 specifically for it's camera spec,and now very very gutted to of ditched my Samsung s3 as the camera on that was spot on...Hopefully this issue will be resolved soon.?

[Red_Beret]

Any news from Sony about this problem?

It will be fixed? When?

[Punyawee]

How's about the front camera?  No one talks about the very poor performance of front camera.   ALWAYS blur in every single shot when take by pushing the physical key on the side..   niose is all around the pictures... very disappointed..  I've just leave from LG G3 to Z3C..  I can't believe how Z3C is much worse than G3 like this.

[venillalollipop]

sony promised we wont need digital camera when they launched xperia z1 now till z3 people still using different camera because sony u didnt deliver the promise to us its simple ur camera software is bad we cannot get good quality pictures specially in superior auto mode all u sony need to do is fix the algorithm then sony will rule the smartphone camera buissines 

[dks_darkness]

Hello community!

I would like to make some suggestions in order to improve the camera app and how it works:

 1. Been able to configure the camera button in order to choose which mode should open by default. I'm always shot in manual mode, so I spend some time changing from A+ mode to M, when I use the camera button shortcut.

 2. The same as previous but for the lock screen shortcut.

 3. Image estabilization independent from Auto ISO.

 4. Filter effects: been able to choose the image size.

What do you think??

Thanks

[vdv]

I came accross another problem that makes Z3 Compact photographs trashy in comparisson to many other smartphones.

When taking picture in snowy environment the "Superior Auto" mode significantly shifts white balance to purple. Whenever I try using "Manual" mode in order to select the appropriate scene, left or right quarter of the frame are blurred heavily, thus, the picture looks absolutely corrupt and fairly unusable.

I have checked if the blurring issue is reproducable under different conditions: indoors, outdoors with less light tints in the frame, choosing a different "scene", under low light conditions and in the sun etc. Unfortunately, the answer is yes: the random blurring photo quality flaw persists in "Manual" mode regardless of lightning or dominating color of the scene.

Please, pay attention to the issue.

[Guren]

Very frustrated with the camera. That pale photos ( no objection against over saturation which is equally annoying) and being deprived of using some of the options in high pixel mode. I'm waiting for the Lollipop update. If that won't do any good, I'll sell it and  buy another phone. 20 years later I may check Sony phones again to see whether there is an improvement or not.

[Thommo]

Posting the same thing all over the place is spam and will get picked up as such - It's also called by some flooding the forum so that's why, Also we are a user led support forum and the Sony staff that are here leave the running of it to we the members - If you want Sony then contact Xperia care http://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/support/contact-us/