Hi everyone, so I think I spent enough time with the HTC One M8
camera now to kind of offer you some thoughts on
what I'm really seeing here. Now overall it is a very good camera and it's
incredibly versatile.
But there's a few decisions that HTC made here which confuse me slightly.
They don't seem to have been made for what I would sort of describe as
a clear consumer business case.
So you know, for instance, the HTC One M8
does not feature optical image stabilisation unlike its sibling the M7
which does. Now this is a really puzzling thing because
high-end smartphones, you know, the flagship smartphone these days
you will not find one without optical image stabilisation.
So the question is why on earth did HTC decide to remove one of the most important
features from modern cameras
an ability to automatically stabilise the image using hardware
not a software process and take it out? There doesn't really seem to be
any logical reason other than a supply constraint.
They simply couldn't get hold of the optics. Not enough. Apple apparently is taking all of them at
the moment
and supplliers simply will not give HTC the products that they're looking for
to put into
their smartphones. Now ultimately what that means is HTC had a decision to make.
If they'd have launched the 4 Ultrapixel camera without
optical image stabilisation they'd have been laughed at by everybody and
some people are laughing at them. I'm mildly amused they would do this
but ultimately moving to a duo camera system
acted as a little bit of a kind of smoke and mirrors. Well with one hand we
take this way
but with the other hand we give you this. Oh look 3D effects.
But ultimately that loss of optical image stabilisation you can feel it
in the images. Certainly when I've compared to old shots taken on the M7 in very similar
conditions. And what I found was the lack of sharpness
on the M8 is slightly disturbing and ultimately that does come down to the
fact that those small little micro
vibrations from your hand when you're taking the image just allow for a small amount of
additional blur if you don't have the optical image stabilisation there. If you
do
then you tend to get what we class as pin sharp images as long as you're not
massively shaking your hands anyway.
And again we can also see this in video footage as well. A chap on
YouTube has done a really excellent
test where he took the M7, he took the M8 and he ran through an airport
whilst obviously filming and you can see quite clearly that the M7 provides
far superior video because it's not massively shaky.
Obviously he's walking or running through this airport. There is a small amount of shake
on the M7. You can see some movement:
but not like the M8 where it's just a juddery mess. Ultimately,
if you love video don't buy the M8.
It's as simple is that. Because for any opportunity where
you're recording video you have to have optical image stabilisation if you want
anything
like a decent image. This especially comes into play with any
fast panning shots you might do as well. Ultimately
I like what the M8 is doing from a camera point of view
in some areas. But, that's only really down to the features that come from the duo
camera.
They're cool, they're kind of quirky. They don't have any value
beyond the smartphone at the moment which is a real
shame.
What I don't like about the HTC One M8 camera
is the general lack of sharpness in the images. You have to go in and add that back in
through a digital process. So you can go in and tweak that in the advanced settings but I
believe that is basically
applied after the image is taken. It's digital sharpening.
Likewise the colour and saturation are awful
out of the box. Again you need to go in and you need to notch those up a few
to get something that actually feels like it has any life at all. Now in part HTC may very well have
done this to make their
camera filters appear more wowy
and zingy. It's well known within photography circles that
if you shoot your image as flat as possible ie. knocking out as much of the
colour and saturation as possible at the time when you shoot the image
you can then add that back in later and you have a lot more control. Likewise any filters you
might apply
will generally have an easier time because they're not having to deal with, you know,
loads of saturation in one area particularly and you know you get a much
more even effect from the filters. So it could very well be that that's what
HTC decided to do here. Now the problem with that is
if you're the kind of person who likes to snap and share, the images that you're quickly
snapping and sharing to Facebook look awful, plus the fact that Facebook then mangles your
images anyway.
So ultimately you need to go in there and you do need to tweak those settings to
make sure that you're getting
really the best point-and-shoot quality possible.
If you're the sort of person who just likes to apply filters later, fair enough, leave it
flat and you'll get overall better results. Now let's talk about that low light
performance because this is an area where HTC
always has excelled, certainly over the One
range of devices. And the same is true here. This still offers the best low
light performance that
you will find on any smartphone. Period. Full stop.
End of story. If you like low light photography or if you're looking for a camera that
provides the greatest sort of
dynamic range of photography opportunities, you know,
shooting in good light, shooting in low-light then the HTC One M8 has
it in spades. That loss of the optical image stabilisation though
does compromise slightly its abilities under low light conditions
unfortunately allowing for just a little bit more kind of shaky
fuzz unfortunately. This becomes even more important as obviously when you're trying
to focus in low light conditions
you kind of need to be metering really well. That's difficult if it's not quite
able to focus properly because there's just a little bit of extra shake there.
The aperture and the lens has been opened up fully to I think it's the F2.8
for this particular one. You're going to end up getting just a little bit more
perceivable shake in there and that does have a slight impact
on the quality of the images. Images appear softer in low light
than they did on the HTC One 7 in my opinion.
But overall the fact that this camera is even capable of taking pictures in low light
when if we were to put something like the Samsung Galaxy S4
Nexus 5, LG's phones, Sony's phones
in a similar kind of test all we would generally see is a smudge.
That's if it even took the picture. Because in most cases it would just say
too dark, turn the flash on. So this well, I can think of only one
occasion so far where I turned the
flash on, simple as that.
Only one occasion where I needed to turn the flash on to take a picture
in low light conditions. That is a remarkable thing.
For my mind while HTC have delivered a somewhat compromised
camera system here. It isn't a material
impact necessarily on the quality of the images you're going to get
in most scenarios. My kind of testing tends to be in the little bit more of the
extremes. I tend to be looking for
those opportunities to show where the camera has some limitations.
But ultimately if you're looking for an all-round shooter the HTC One M8 is
a very fine option, especially because of that low light performance.
It does suffer now from having only 4 Ultrapixels which only gives you an image
resolution of
something around 2,000 pixels, which ultimately these days is starting to
look a little old school.
I actually remember buying my first digital camera digital point-and-shoot
and it had 3.4 megapixels on it.
Now fair enough. We're dealing with Ultrapixels here but that lens was also a
F2.8, so you can see that that was nearly 15-years-ago.
We have a very similar optical arrangement in some respects -
a high end point-and-shoot camera from 15-years-ago that was digital.
Very very similar resolution, same amount of light coming in etcetera,
so it's quite an interesting one that, that HTC might be saying that these sensors are
better in a camera, in a smartphone
but ultimately if you were actually to put that same optics into a camera today you
would get laughed at.
So it's a very interesting issue for HTC really.
Four Ultrapixels, the resolution they're working with will not hold
HTC in good stead in 2015. It may not hold them in good stead by the mid part of
this year if Samsung's ISO cell technology turns out to be
quite a hit. ISO cell technology again, it rearranges the
way the optics and sensors work so that more light
is able to actually reach the sensor. Now we don't know
yet, whether that is going to make a massive difference in low-light performance
for Samsung but certainly an increase of even
five to ten per cent additional light may very well bring the S5
within range of low light performance, similar but not identical to
the HTC One. Now just speaking again about the HTC One's kind of
image quality, one of the things that we found slightly disturbing really is the
amount
of noise that has found its way into the images this time.
Personally I think this is going to be something that HTC want to look at and maybe
patch post release because ultimately these images are noisy.
Even in good light these images are noisy
and there is a certain amount of detectable purple fringing going on
as well. Something that we've seen unfortunately as an overheating issue around
the camera.
I've only seen it in very, very minute amounts and in part it could be caused by a diffusion of light
hitting whatever the actual lens cover is over the top of the optics
but ultimately there is just a small fraction of purple fringing. If that annoyed you last time,
still there but not as bad. So we've been sprinkling some of the images that
we've taken on the HTC One M8
throughout this video so that you can get a bit of a sense
for how they look. Now obviously YouTube, we have to reduce the images to 1080p so they have to be
compressed, then they've been mangled through the fact that they've gone through the video process and YouTube.
So if you look in the description you'll be able to find a set of links
those are pointed to where all of the images are on our Google+ page
and we've turned off autoawesome on all of those images as well so
what you're seeing is as close as possible to what I'm seeing
on my device. However do bear in mind
that the way that processing images online works
you may see some additional noise and so on that wasn't there in the original
image. But I can
assure you the original images do feature a certain amount of noise and
futsiness I would say within the pixels that is just not
too pleasing. Normally if we had that kind of situation we would reduce the
resolution of the image
thus compacting the pixels a bit and helping to sharpen everything up and remove some of that noise but
ultimately here we don't have that kind of resolution with the HTC One M8
you have very little cropping room unfortunately with this camera.
And so unfortunately you also have very little resizing room as well to try and improve
the density of those images.
But ultimately I like what HTC have done here. I question why they removed optical
image stabilisation
because for my mind if you're a flagship phone and you don't have that
well you're not a flagship phone, sorry but you're not.
It's kind of a benchmark in the ground now, a line in the sand as to what we
consider
to be acceptable optics. Now ultimately HTC have managed to kind of
work their way round that with that some software processing, the addition of the duo camera,
but you can feel it and especially in video footage. It is not
nice the loss of that optical image stabilisation I'm afraid.
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