Google Rolls Out Night Sight Tech to Improve Quality of Low-Light Photos
by Anton Shilov on November 14, 2018 1:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Android
- Pixel
Google on Wednesday began to roll out its Night Sight low-light computational photography technology to its Pixel-branded smartphones. The technology is designed to improve the quality of low-light photos, though with one significant caveat: it cannot handle moving objects.
As noted on our recent Pixel 3 smartphone review, one big thing brought by the latest generation of Google’s handsets is computational photography, which currently supports two modes to improve the picture quality of still pictures: Super Res Zoom, and Night Sight. As the names imply, the first one promises to introduce a superior zoom, whereas the second one enhances lighting. Both algorithms capture multiple temporally different images by the same sensor, then blend them and apply a special filter to either increase the spatial resolution or image exposure (without adding noise). Since the algorithms capture multiple pictures in burst mode, when something in the frame is moving, the Night Sight mode produces a motion blur effect on the picture rather than improve quality.
Despite its limitation, in our testing we saw that Night Sight brought rather dramatic enhancements to still images, to the point where flash lighting might not be needed for low-light conditions (think museums, for example, where flash photography is either prohibited or makes no sense because items are covered by glass).
Google’s Night Sight mode will be initially available only on the company’s own Pixel handsets (all generations). Though Google may end up having to play a game of cat & mouse, as ROM hackers have been able to modify imaging applications to get it working on third-party phones as well.
Related Reading:
- The Google Pixel 3 Review: The Ultimate Camera Test
- Hands On With Google’s Pixel 2 XL: More Pixels, More Google
- The Google Pixel XL Review: Life After Nexus
- Google Announces Pixel and Pixel XL Phones: Snapdragon 821, 5" & 5.5" Screens, $649, Preorders Start Today
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melgross - Wednesday, November 14, 2018 - link
The super Rez zoom produces a zoom up to 1.5 times magnification. It’s better than a simple interpolation, but worse than having two lenses, where the two can be blended together to produce a continuous 2:1 zoom that’s much sharper.The night feature is done after the photo is taken, not during, and can’t be adjusted. It takes a bit of time.
Calin - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
If you have two lenses (in fact two cameras - lenses plus sensors plus image stabilization plus ...), you can apply the super Rez zoom to the telephoto camera in order to bring an additional "computational 3x" zoom mode instead of the physical 1x (normal camera) and 2x (tele camera).Most current flagship phones have better cameras than my 10 years old Nikon D5100 - but none has a 450mm equivalent telephoto module.
melgross - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
This is intended for single camera phones. It’s not clear if it works on two camera models. It’s also not the only company using more sophisticated modeling for sharper zoom beyond the longest lens.johnhopf - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
Even on my iPhone 8 plus, if I select the 2x camera in a limited-light situation, it will shoot with the 1x lens and crop. Since the telephoto camera is tiny and unstabilized, Apple themselves have discovered that interpolation may be better.melgross - Thursday, November 15, 2018 - link
The newer phones have stabaliztuon for the tele. It’s true that the tele sensor is smaller, and the lens is slower.webindiacrown - Tuesday, December 11, 2018 - link
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CourtneyCampbell - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link
This is a very helpful improvement for us https://best-vegas.com/magic-shows/the-mentalist-t... We have to make a lot of photos during the night, and with this update, the quality became much better. Great mode for everyone you like the night events.ninazhudson - Thursday, May 23, 2019 - link
Google is actively improving to give users the best experience , I look forward to thishttp://motox3m.org
usman1213 - Saturday, July 27, 2019 - link
This is a very helpful improvement for us We have to make a lot of photos during the night, and with this update, the quality became much better. Great mode for everyone you like the night events. It always tries to improve the user experience.https://www.techvinn.com/youcanyouwill - Tuesday, September 3, 2019 - link
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