pro1x Pro¹ X camera issues?

[Rob. S. 1,661]

Except for the shutter release button not having two steps (which is no problem for my as camera apps seem to start with continuous autofocus anyway), I have not seen any complaints yet with regard to the camera, or were there some?

I've only found a small one so far; my preferred camera app ('Manual Camera') does offer RAW mode, but, when activated, either freezes or crashes when I try to shoot. 

The default 'Snapdragon Camera' app doesn't offer RAW mode to begin with.

Neither does 'Open Camera', although it ought to, as long as the camera itself supports it. 

Might be a bug in both 'Open Camera' and 'Manual Camera' app, though? Just tried the 'Pro Shot' app instead, which does have a working RAW setting (including RAW+JPEG and RAW+HEIF)!

'Pro Shot' doesn't offer an HDR mode, though, so while it might become my new standard photo app, as it also seems to improve image quality a bit specifically towards the corners of the frame, it cannot fully replace other camera apps.  

Edited August 13, 2022 by Rob. S.

[EskeRahn 5,460]

If you run the Camera2 app, it reports for both the Pro1 and Pro1X that it ought to be able to do raw.
The biggest difference reported seems to be on video where the Pro1 apart from the QFHD (or 3840x2160) as the highest, it also  reports it can do 4000x3000 - does not sound very likely though... So maybe the information reported through the Camera 2 API is simply incorrect.... And that can obviously confuse an app trying to use it.

[Rob. S. 1,661]

Indeed. Interesting.

[cash 12]

Sorry - not meaning to hijack, but has anyone had luck getting 4K video and does anyone know what the rear camera actually is? There's a physical label that says 48MP, but that sounds fake to me and the camera app goes to 12MP maximum.

[Rob. S. 1,661]

1 hour ago, cash said:

[...] has anyone had luck getting 4K video and does anyone know what the rear camera actually is? There's a physical label that says 48MP, but that sounds fake to me and the camera app goes to 12MP maximum.

The rear camera is a Sony IMX586. The sensor really has 48 MP, but the full resolution is only used internally, like for AF. This is standard for Quad Bayer layout sensors (the 20 MP, physically 80 MP sensor of the high-end OM System / Olympus OM-1 interchangeable lens camera, for example, has the same design and the same limitation). A full-resolution readout would not make much sense, as the colour matrix only has 12 million colour squares, each one covering an array of 2x2 pixels. (There are few phones with 12/48 MP sensors which make an exception, though, and try to make 48 MP results available, too.)

Thanks for mentioning 4K though; I cannot find any way to enable 4K, either. Filmic Pro reports 2K 1152p (2048x1152) downscaled from 2688x1512 as the maximum video resolution. The sensor definitely does 4K, and the phone is specified to capture up to 4K @ 30 fps, so this definitely seems like a bug.

[claude0001 1,341]

6 hours ago, Rob. S. said:

A full-resolution readout would not make much sense, as the colour matrix only has 12 million colour squares, each one covering an array of 2x2 pixels. (There are few phones with 12/48 MP sensors which make an exception, though, and try to make 48 MP results available, too.)

Thanks for information and for summarizing this so nicely. I guess, most people are not aware that the typical camera sensor uses only a fraction of its pixels for each of the red, green, and blue colour channels, respectively. I also agree that, at the given size of phone sensors and lenses, and given the high density of a 48-megapixel sensor, just grouping pixels 4-by-4 is likely the most reasonable thing to do, except (maybe) for the most high-end phone cameras.

That said, it is also true that, in the days before CCD/CMOS sensors reached today's insanely high pixel densities, demosaicing, i.e. the (attempted) reconstruction of an image at the full pixel resolution of the chip by interpolation of colour values, was commonplace. At the time, it was standard for a "6-megapixel" camera to actually also write a 6-million-pixel image file to disk, even though each of the red, green, and blue sub-pictures had only some fraction of that resolution. Given how little this was "advertised" at the time, it's no surprise people nowadays wonder where their resolution has gone ... 😄   

Edited August 15, 2022 by claude0001

[EskeRahn 5,460]

5 hours ago, Rob. S. said:

The rear camera is a Sony IMX586.

Are you sure it is not IMX582?
https://www.techarp.com/photo-video/sony-imx586-imx582-comparison

Both should be able to do 4K@30fps though - the 586 even more. Could it be the rest of the device that is not fast enough to do the 4K@30?

[Rob. S. 1,661]

Thanks @toast, yes, it was in the official update. Also, they showed images of the first cameras they received, and they showed '586' in the print on the ribbon cable:

 

[cash 12]

23 hours ago, Rob. S. said:

The rear camera is a Sony IMX586. The sensor really has 48 MP, but the full resolution is only used internally, like for AF. This is standard for Quad Bayer layout sensors (the 20 MP, physically 80 MP sensor of the high-end OM System / Olympus OM-1 interchangeable lens camera, for example, has the same design and the same limitation). A full-resolution readout would not make much sense, as the colour matrix only has 12 million colour squares, each one covering an array of 2x2 pixels. (There are few phones with 12/48 MP sensors which make an exception, though, and try to make 48 MP results available, too.)

Thanks for mentioning 4K though; I cannot find any way to enable 4K, either. Filmic Pro reports 2K 1152p (2048x1152) downscaled from 2688x1512 as the maximum video resolution. The sensor definitely does 4K, and the phone is specified to capture up to 4K @ 30 fps, so this definitely seems like a bug.

I completely agree that 48MP is unnecessary on such a tiny camera lens. All it would do is fill up flash storage very quickly!

Thanks for the interesting post - it was good to learn a few things.

And I'm glad that this is actually a decent camera sensor. I was just afraid that when I saw the "48MP" label that maybe it had been swapped for a cheap camera last minute. The label reminded me a lot of the standard fake Chinese specs.

[shuntcap 5]

I ported Google Camera to the Cosmo Communicator, which has a "24MP" Quad Bayer sensor (as advertised).  My work can be found in the OESF forum.  The stock camera app produces horrific interpolated 24MP images with smudged detail, no shadow detail, and often burnt or washed-out colors.  GCam produces a clean 6MP RAW image with high detail (for a 6MP sensor) and accurate colors, and 6MP JPEG images of similar high quality.  The sensor definitely performs better in low light than conventional Bayer sensors of even higher resolution (for cell phones and tiny pocket cameras).  So in my experience, the advertised 4x resolution of Quad Bayer sensors is just a marketing gimmick, but you do get better low light performance.

I tested my GCam port on my new Pro1 X and was able to take RAW photos.  The sensor reports its resolution as 12MP, not 48MP, whereas the Cosmo reported 24MP and needed fixes in the GCam code since the RAW image came out filling only 1/4 (6MP) of a 24MP image with the rest black.  Therefore, my port worked on the Pro1 X without modification, at least for photos (video crashes).  And like the OP, I could not get OpenCamera to save a RAW image.  It would just freeze.

It might be worth trying the GCam port that popped up a couple years ago for the original Pro1.  I don't expect to do any work on my port because the Pro1 X's cellular, Wi-Fi, and GPS reception is utterly abysmal, forcing me to shelve the thing.  What a disappointment.