FP3: Pixel camera app / Google Camera Port

I’d rather call them blue squares, but that’s a different story :wink:

It depends on the light reflected :grin: and the eyes looking at the squares.
Anyway, we both agree these are squares :wink:
I think it’s the sensor reflecting on the back of the lens…

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@Namu, is your FP3+ review published somewhere? If so, might be nice to add it to the topic below

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Yes, I published it yesterday on my blog and on my mobile provider site. Both are in French though.

https://emmanuel.bedrune.fr/blog/2020/09/test-du-fairphone-3/

I added the links to the curated list :slight_smile: (I didn’t think I was able to, so I didn’t do it earlier)

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The new cameras arrived yesterday and I’ll try Nikita’s latest revision NGCam_7.4.104-v1.6.apk for now (https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/f/changelog1347/). Night mode is quite remarkable on this. Also Google AWB (Auto White Balance) can be very useful under certain lighting conditions. (Selfies inside a room turned shockingly orange or blue depending on the kind of light with the standard cam. AWB was a large improvement and relief…)

This port seems to be missing some Google standard features, though. I can’t find a way to enable motion pictures, for instance.

And Fairphone’s updated standard app has some neat new features as well like object tracking that I couldn’t find on any GCam port yet. Have you?

So, I might switch between standard app and GCam.

I am a little underwhelmed by the new cameras, though. Can’t see much of a difference with the back camera. Zooming in should result in much sharper pictures than with the old camera - but those 48MP don’t seem to do that much, with the output still being 12MP. Selfies are a little sharper, though, of course.

As explained here, the 48MP claim is just a marketing ploy. It’s a 12MP camera that could in theory produce higher quality photos (though I can’t see a difference either). No benefit at all for zooming.

Really nothing remarkable?

Sorry, I don’t know what you mean by that.

If what I’ve read is correct, the 48Mpx should make it possible to take pictures in 4x digital zoom without loss of definition in the final image for a 12Mpx picture.

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I thought I’d read this too, but I can’t remember where. Anyway. It’s definitely not the case though. It’s just a cropped and enlarged 12MP image with horrible pixelation.

Here’s an (unedited) photo taken with the new camera module at 4x zoom. The new sensor seems to offer no advantage whatsoever.
Edit: The forum software downscales it to 50% its original size, but the pixellation is still obvious.

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And here are two shots taken with the new module, the first with the stock camera (automatic scene detection, flash off, auto HDR) and the second with nikita’s port of the 7.4 Google Camera app (flash off, Google AWB, HDR+ on). Both are pretty much what I would have expected with the old camera. Even the brighter parts of the stock camera image are so noisy that I expect it will be clearly visible in the version downsized by the forum software.

Edit: the GCam version was not downsized by the software, I guess because its filesize was smaller to begin with. Less noise makes images easier to compress…

Another edit: losslessly cropped, non-shrinked version of the stock camera photo here.

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If that’s the case, I’d feel cheated… Any good point to mention compared to the old camera modules?

@Antoine
The 48MP won’t allow less pixelisation, as it it is a quad bayer sensor (explanation in the link given higher), which means it compiles 4 pixels in one (more or less). But it will theoritically allow a higher image quality when zooming, as well as in general better photos. You might want to look for the option to shoot in 48MP with a 48MP output and allow for less pixelisation. I’m still wondering whether anyone found it (perhaps in the developer options).
Though the difference will perhaps be little and not very noticeable in everyday’s photos. I agree there is a part of marketing in their new modules, but I don’t believe it is only marketing. I will wait for a good camera modules comparison, as we can’t judge based on nothing (currently I think there is none).
I don’t care much about the new modules, I don’t own a FP3 and I probably wouldn’t have bought them anyway. But for those wanting them, I was expecting a much improved software. Let’s see if it’s the case or not (seems not to be as much improved as I expected).

(I have no experience in photography, I only read different things and this is what I understood. Please correct me if I said something wrong)

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I do feel cheated. Absolutely no advantage to the old module as far as I can tell. But still looking forward to somebody proving me wrong.

I’m starting to wonder whether maybe something has gone wrong here. I got the famous “production delay” email minutes before the “package sent” email. Maybe something is wrong with the modules that were sent out before they halted the shipment?

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Here’s a version of the photo I took with the stock app losslessly cropped (using cropgui) to be below 5 MB in size so that hopefully the forum software won’t shrink it.

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The new cameras arrived yesterday and I’ll try Nikita’s latest revision NGCam_7.4.104-v1.6.apk for now. (…) This port seems to be missing some Google standard features, though. I can’t find a way to enable motion pictures, for instance.
And Fairphone’s updated standard app has some neat new features as well like object tracking that I couldn’t find on any GCam port yet. Have you?

After having messed around with a few other ports, Nikita’s 7.4 port started crashing when trying to save frontcam pics. As I didn’t find a way to make it work again, I switched to Nikita’s final 7.3 port (Nikita: Nikita-v1.7_GCam_7.3.020_Urnyx05_mod) and am much happier with it.

Not only doesn’t it crash - it also has a lot of the missing features like motion pictures, focus tracking and ISO settings. So, this might be the port to have.

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Thank you very much for these test photos!

Can someone who has the old and the new module upload pictures (in the best case with the same subject and same lightning conditions) with 4x zoom for each camera module?
This would make objective comparison much easier.
Also if someone could upload raw (dng) files of zoomed in photos would be very helpful, this would exclude a lot of problems which might could get fixed in future software updates.

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Until now, I was testing GCam_7.3.018_Urnyx05-v2.2.apk but I can’t remember Who portes it.
No issues to report but I will give a try to your version as well.

Hey, I’m new here at the forum.
I have fp3+ and I downloaded the camera app from the link as mentioned above (https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/f/changelog1322/)

I like the Nikita app much more than the standard camera app.

Have anyone tried with another camera app for fp3+ ? Would like to compare with Nikita.