So in my first look at the Nexus 5 camera I wasn't particularly impressed
but I've spent a bit more time with it over the last few days and
I have some observations and I don't think it is the Nexus 5
camera's fault. I actually think all of the issues I was having really
aren't down to the rubbish app that is shipped
with Android. Now why Google didn't make any major improvements ie.
completely overhaul the Android 4.4 camera is beyond me, because it needs it.
So the problems that I have really are
its focus lock on time is rubbish. Most of the time
it doesn't actually get the right focus, apparently that's not in focus. it looks in focus
to me.
That's still not really in focus. I know obviously this is not the most ideal setup to
be able to demo this but
this is really what I've really noticed time and time again.
It does not lock on properly at all. Its focus
or focus hunting is rubbish frankly and it
needs vastly better detection algorithms than it's current got.
In low-light it's passable it's OK
but again this is all down to the camera app itself not the actual camera.
When I've used other camera apps I've actually found things have improved quite a bit, the lock on is
faster everything is generally better
and so it does seem that if you're not impressed with the Nexus 5 camera when
you first get it
it's the app that's really causing you problems. The images do have a slight softness
to them when viewed on the Nexus 5 screen.
However when sent across looking at those raw images
on my PC that softness seems to have disappeared so again,
is there some weird problem going on there with the sharpening that
they're applying in the gallery?
Not too sure. I do think there might be a few bugs and kinks they are still trying to
work out here.
Now one thing to note is that the
app hasn't really changed that much and so it's still fairly limited.
They've made a few changes within photosphere to make it better at detecting scenes
stitching everything together and so on and obviously we still have the settings
pop out here
which does have this new HDR mode.
For my mind this HDR plus mode makes not a bally difference,
really doesn't. You'd be better off just taking a normal image and then popping it into Snapseed and
hitting it with their new HDR filter.
HDR plus does not strike me as being particularly good
but again when you've got a camera that is taking so long to lock on and so long to fire every
frame
I'm not surprised the HDR plus isn't working very well.
Realistically, we need to fire those frames quite quickly
whilst adjusting the exposure to get great HDR because we don't want things moving or
getting any
extra camera shake getting in there. For my mind Google need to go back and try
again
with the camera app it simply isn't suitable
and it really is substandard in my opinion. Now,
I did try focal, or focal app
but unfortunately the developer I think needs to
release an update because it's not working particularly well.
For instance we can't really interact with the camera particularly well.
And it won't actually take the app so probably the best hope we have for a
replacement camera app
on the Nexus 5 is going to be focal but the dev needs to do a bit of work there I think to
make it compatible with the Nexus 5.
Overall the camera really
is a great camera when the camera app
works properly. When it locks on beautifully when you have a nice steady
shot,
the images are great. You'll be able to see some of them linked from
this channel, I'll put them on my Google+ for you.
Now, it's interesting
that we have now the best Nexus camera we've ever had, the
Nexus 5 but we still don't have a great camera app from Google.
I sometimes wonder if part of the agreement they have with all of the
hardware
partners is to, you know not produce some elements
of their system to be brilliant. Do you know what I mean? They very much focus on
the base operating system, and, you know things like the camera app are almost
an optional extra. If they didn't have to ship one they probably wouldn't kind
of thing.
And so it just feels like it's case of well the camera app
is there like it or don't, use something else instead.
Fair enough, you know, there are plenty of better camera apps out there. Focal
is definitely one of the best camera apps out there but it
just would have been nice if Google had spent a little bit of time really really
improving the camera app, especially when it's matched up with great camera hardware.
It just feels like people will get a poor experience and it's not the hardware's
fault.
Let's just talk very quickly about the video camera. It shoots at 1080p
it's absolutely passable. The quality in my opinion
in low-light is absolutely excellent for a video camera
very low noise very good ISO and very good exposure. And
it does everything for you. You've got no focussing or anything like that and even tapping
the screen to
focus does nothing. So you are very much reliant on
the auto focus algorithm that Google's got in the
APK, the camera APK. It's not really brilliant. It does
occasionally wobble off and focus on things that it feels
should be in focus when they shouldn't be. But overall
it's OK, it does a great job. More importantly though the actual output video
images are
excellent and very low noise. Really really nice and that's actually something I should
say
about the images generally, even in low-light the images are very low noise.
They've done a great job there with their noise reduction algorithm.