Interesting that the FP5 camera for Wide angle is worse in day-mode than in night-mode.
Seems to be over-smoothing the image horribly, especially the grassy areas (image set 5).
The good news is that the HW is still capable, the GCam versions of daylight wide angle look decent. While FP5 camera wins in the night modes by a small margin.
If you take two images in daylight with FP5 Camera in normal- vs night-mode, are the differences still that big?
Could you force the better performance in wide angle by always running night mode with FP5 camera…
To me this looks like the lense is not clean (fingerprints?). The Pixel didn’t have the light shining directly into its direction (different perspective, but did the lights change their direction, too?). Those two points together probably make the biggest difference.
Sure, things are not exactly the same. But I think everyone can agree the FP5 night mode has improved. But that there is still some room for improvement. We can of course have a long discussion about the details (not really interested in that though). But I think this general conclusion applies. Of course I took more pictures over time and use that for this conclusion as well. The FP5 improved surprisingly well. Other brands and more modern Pixels do better of course. But this is just to show the progress on the FP side.
I think it’s called resistance to flare, in photography.
Doesn’t look like a dirty lens.
But even some Zeiss lenses are not perfect at flare resistance, when you point a direct light source.
So, I agree that in the pixel picture the perspective and direction of light is different.
A more realistic scenario is a FP5 picture without those flares.
But even with flares the details are good.
Better than FP4 night mode and for sure it has been improved.
What is a good photo anyway? I feel that smartphones often make the colours richer than they really are, but I am not sure if that is good or bad. On the one hand, a small screen probably needs richer colours to have a similar effect to reality. On the other hand, especially if overdone, I think it leads to unrealistic expectations and tempts us to prefer the artificial to the natural. In that it aligns with the cosmetics industry, ultra-processed foods and photoshopped models.
Natural pictures are best IMHO. But this depends. Pixels make natural images, unless you use the portrait/night mode. iPhones create a yellow warm glow. Samsung devices create overall saturated colors. I prefer Pixel quality, and according to blind tests, most people do.
