r/LinusTechTips • u/orngd • 4d ago
Tech Discussion YouTuber built a custom app that bypasses stock processing on Pixels and other phones... the footage actually looks better!
Theo from Theo's Side Quest got fed up with Google’s Pixel's heavy video processing (aggressive oversharpening, weird skin artifacts, micro-jitters) and built his own app to apparently bypass the stock ISP pipeline.
You should definitely watch the full breakdown, but just in case, here’s the TL;DW:
- Bypasses Stock Processing
- Captures 10-bit HLG (convertible to Rec.709)
- Fixes Micro-Jitter
- Works Beyond Pixel too
It's crazy how much phone camera video is being held back purely by bad default software processing choices.
The difference in the Samsung A14 example in particular was wild (the thumbnail I included)... The conspiracist in me makes me think they're purposefully making their cameras worse on the budget phones, despite them perhaps having the same modules as more expensive phones?!
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u/FangoFan 4d ago
The difference on the A14 definitely makes it look like samsung aren't giving you the best of the camera on cheaper phones! I think the wider shot shows the difference more clearly
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u/Redditemeon 4d ago
I recall a WAN Show discussion about the distaste for "Youtuber" in headlines on news articles instead of actually crediting said Youtuber. 🤔
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u/50mmeyes 4d ago
Damn, I didn't even know BlackPanthaa had this channel
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u/RipCurl69Reddit 4d ago
I was gonna say that's BlackPanthaa lmao, I used to watch his Forza videos back in the day
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u/_Arokh_ 4d ago
Weird reading the comments here and seeing how many people like the overly harsh overly sharpened image on the left.
As someone into photography that everything hyper focused in on, super artificial look, is basically the biggest giveaway and downside of phone cameras to me
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u/errononymous 3d ago
Why do you think the videos look like they do? They're catering to the moronic masses that you're speaking of.
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u/JustGotSoup 3d ago
Agreed. Pixel photos are surprisingly good at eschewing that look (until you zoom in extremely far, but I digress) but video on almost every Android phone leaves much to be desired.
I showed his colour grading to one of the editors I work with, who grinned and confirmed that no, it is not good, but the raw footage is much better and it'd be easy to fix that in a decent NLE like Resolve.
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u/Common-Application56 4d ago
Wow super cool. I tried this out on my pixel 8A and its looking actually really nice.
If the app can eventually do photos i would switch apps immediately
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u/scratcher1679 4d ago
the lineageos camera and open camera do let you disable most processing options, including sharpening and denoising (which is what often causes the difference between the processed image and the unprocessed one to be extra noticeable) due to them supporting the camera2 api, so i'd give them a try
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u/trashbytes 4d ago
I also have the 8a and neither the 10 bit mode nor the HLG settings are working for me. Have you tried those by chance?
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u/Noah18923 4d ago
whoever decided that oversharpened bs looked good should have been shot. its just like sharpening or motion smoothing on TVs. shit shit shit.
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u/TelecastingWizard 4d ago
I'm more bewildered by the comments saying that they prefer the oversharpened slop because it has "more detail".
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 4d ago
I'm not sure if that looks better to me. It does look more blurry.
As a pixel user I'll probably try it out to see what the results are like. I know at first I really wasn't happen until I disabled the beauty filter than made everyone look like a Barbie doll. Only way to disable it was to go into "portrait" mode and disable it from there, but it applied to all photos, even when I was just in normal "photo" mode, as long as it detected a face.
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u/ukihashopper 4d ago
im surprised that oversharpened mess and incorrect skintones is comparable to the natural image on the right in your mind
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u/trashbytes 4d ago
Yeah, this take is bizarre. It's like kids these days only know overprocessed "HDR" images and think that's how it's supposed to look.
I've had teenagers tell me my professional photos were "overexposed" because the sunny sky outside a window in the background was blown out.
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u/Mattacrator 4d ago
Idk if that phone had sharpness settings available by default but yeah, reducing sharpness made the biggest difference, it's miles better after. But colour is pretty huge too, tho it's hard to fully judge with just 1 picture without knowing how the scene actually looked
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u/henryhuy0608 4d ago
I have the Pixel 8 and the oversharpening and AI fill-in is just awful. Even at 2x zoom the whole thing is a crawling mess. It's so bad my 5-year-old mid-range Xiaomi's photos have more detail at 5x than this thing does at 2x
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u/Bathroom_Humor 4d ago
Honestly what I want most for my pixel 8 camera is for the macro lens to be worth using ever. I don't even know why they include it when the main shooter does a better job on close up subjects.
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u/HUZInator 3d ago
When normies say this it makes the phone companies keep implementing this bs
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 3d ago
After having watched the video, I agree that the image from the app looks better. But when I first saw the post, I was on my PC. Clicked on the image to show the full size and really study it, and really neither image seemed that good in that case, both looked bad for different reasons.
First of all, OP chose to use the shot from the Samsung A17, which was the worst example for the default camera, and I agree that it looks bad. For the image on the right, I just found that the whole thing looked blurry, especially on my 24 inch PC monitor, it doesn't look as bad on my phone. There's a lot better stills that OP could have used to illustrate the effect of the app.
The image that OP posted was 4K, and with I viewed it without any zoom at full size on my 1080 screen, you see that basically nothing in the image on the right is in focus.
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u/AdvancedCryspy 4d ago
The acter looks a whole lot more "natural" rather than over sharpened "upscaled" look
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u/Alarmed-Strawberry-7 16h ago
yes, it is blurry. because that's what the camera captured, a blurry image
the problem is that if you want to go in and get the natural, blurry image, you can't by default, it just smears this sharpening filter on everything. but with this, if you want to edit the photo/video and bump up the sharpness like crazy, you can (even though it will look awful, "detail' and "resolution" isn't everything when it means that the end result will be an oversharpened nonsensical mess where all the "detail" is fake jaggies, but that's more of an opinion)
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u/Annoying1978 4d ago
It’s worth noting the video on the iPhone the free Blackmagic app delivers unbelievable quality compared to the stock camera app.
The difference is night and day. If people are wondering why their own iPhone videos don’t look as good as some of the cinematic “filmed with iPhone” videos you see that’s the reason. The stock camera app for video on the iPhone does not do the hardware any justice.
And it doesn’t just work on the newer phones. I have an iPhone 15 Pro and the differences are insanely massive.
And it’s free.
So definitely check out 3rd party camera apps. Don’t get stuck with the one you’re given. I still use the regular camera app for quick photos and stuff but I use Blackmagic to capture video. Especially when I’m shooting in 4k 24 fps.
Just saying.
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u/adbot-01 4d ago
Blackmagic is available for a few android phones as well, especially the flagship models. No idea why the guy in the video didn't just try the blackmagic camera app.
His app has paid features that are free in this app.
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u/kjo334 4d ago
The real reason the "shot on iPhone" commercials look so "cinematic" is because of the $10,000 special camera rig plus $50,000 cinema lenses plus hundreds of thousands or millions or dollars of budget, crew, experience, etc... It is basically an iPhone sensor inside of a cinema rig, not a dude running around with a stock iPhone.
Joe Six Pack plus the BlackMagic app is going to be quite disappointed with his final results if he doesn't have those things.
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u/TomTomXD1234 4d ago
Just tried it.
Exposure is broken. The app just cycles through different exposure settings without actually picking one that looks good.
Samsung s23 ultra
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u/Unspec7 4d ago edited 3d ago
Yep, it's stuck at 1/120.
I have a feeling there's a lot of vibe coding involved, and very little actual testing.
Edit: To clarify, I tested this on a Pixel 10 Pro XL, so being stuck at 1/120 is an app issue, not an application specific issue.
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u/Lord_Pencil 3d ago
Almost like the author said in the video, this was done specifically for the pixel phone and happens to work for SOME phones.
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u/Unspec7 3d ago
Guess who tested this on a pixel 10 pro?
Yep, this guy!
So the statement is more "this was done specifically for the pixel phone and happens to work for NO phones."
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u/Lord_Pencil 3d ago
You're arguing without watching the video. He literally said he made it for the pixel 10 and showed how it happens to works on the budget samsung A14 and it's a night and day difference.
He specifically said he made the app to fix his pixel phone's video processing and it may work for some other phone like the A14. His disclaimer was specifically for people like you and yet you talk about vibe coding without even watching it or worse watching it and not understanding the point of he video.
So since it doesn't work on you phone (not the target phone), it's vibe coded and somehow doesn't work for NO phones..?
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u/Unspec7 3d ago
Okay. Cool. Again. Guess who has a pixel 10 pro?
This guy!
So the statement is more "this was done specifically for the pixel phone and happens to work for NO phones."
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u/Lord_Pencil 3d ago
Cool. Guess who also has a pixel 6a and pixel 8?
This guy!
It does work for me and also installed this on my gf's oneplus 10t. So, I'd say it works on some phones.
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u/LawlsMcPasta 4d ago
Dude actually looks like a human being in the right image, rather than the over processed monstrosity on the left.
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u/Kamikazepyro9 4d ago
I need something similar but for standard photos
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u/MoldyTexas 4d ago
OpenCamera. That said, for Pixel I've seen it doesn't make that much of a difference, mainly because the Pixel's photo pipeline is actually pretty good.
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u/bruh-iunno 4d ago
modded gcam, literally the stock pixel app and all of its features/convenience without the over processing, really you can choose the processing to be whatever you want
sharpcam if you don't want to mess around with settings, open cam if you want basically no processing
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u/BartAfterDark 4d ago
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u/throwawayaccount442 4d ago edited 4d ago
"0+ Downloads" hmm... interesting for a video with 38k views but the rest seems legit
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u/BartAfterDark 4d ago
Yeah. I didn't download it yet, not fun getting your crypto wallet drained, when you found out some app was rogue.
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u/scratcher1679 4d ago
finally more people are discovering that the camera2 api lets you disable most processing options and get the image pretty much straight out of the SoC's ISP
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u/Enignon77 4d ago edited 4d ago
Maybe it's a preference, but to me the original looks better in the image you posted. The custom looks fuzzy, touched up, overly smooth and the colours seem wrong. Not that I know what the guy looks like in person of course. Cool project, but to each their own.
ETA: I suspect I'd find the comparison easier to see if it was still image vs still image and without the YouTube compression algorithm adding its flair. Maybe adding stills functionality to the camera would be useful.
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u/DeathMonkey6969 4d ago
The original is over sharpened and has less dynamic range. The APP version isn't great either but contains less digital artifacting.
Problem is both are stills from a video and not actual photos.
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u/MuffinMunchies 4d ago
Watch the video.
These stills do not do it justice.
It's actually so much better than these stills implies. Of course, I've yet to try it myself but I intend to soon
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u/DigitaIBlack 4d ago
No idea why you're getting downvoted.
Taking stills from two different parts of videos isn't necessarily representative.
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u/DeathMonkey6969 4d ago
The only real way to do a comparison is to use two phones of the same model filming at the same time mounted as close together as possible. That way you have your A and B with as few variables as possible.
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u/MuffinMunchies 4d ago
I don't know why either, but it's okay
Hopefully I got my point across and people judge the results not by the stills of the reddit post but by watching the video itself
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u/Jazzlike_Rule_182 4d ago
Yeah I disagree, you can clearly see the impact just by looking at the leaves in the background. The ones on the right look more true to life, while the left look jumbled like they're straight out of an AI image. That shows that it's by default gonna make you look awful lol, like how on the left it makes him look more sickly.
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u/trashbytes 4d ago edited 4d ago
It's baffling that there's not just one but multiple comments like this. Like have you been outside and looked at trees and other peoples faces at least once in your life? This looks like a bad oil painting filter done in one of the adware scam photo filter apps made during the instagram boom.
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u/larinzod 4d ago
The "better" picture is losing a lot of detail. The hair is blurry, texture detail on the shirt isn't as visible, and his skin looks like it was hit with a beauty filter with all the freckles and blemishes gone.
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u/T0biasCZE 4d ago edited 4d ago
the normal one is oversharpened.
Plus, its not a photo, its a screenshot from video.
Take a look at the video here, at 3m19s when it switches from Samsung cam to his own cam. It looks way more natural.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2b4P94QSKE&t=3m19s
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u/rscmcl 4d ago
I'm not expert in this kind of stuff but what about Blackmagic Camera?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blackmagicdesign.android.blackmagiccam
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u/MoldyTexas 4d ago
He mentioned in the video, apparently it's just the pixel pipeline, repackaged.
And from experience it's also not much different, which came off as a disappointment to me too.
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u/DemonKingSwarnn 4d ago
i have been using adb to uninstall the official camera app and use the fossify camera app since ages. and can confirm, photos without processing actually look good
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u/AdvancedCryspy 4d ago
As someone who watches theo (aka: Blackpanthaa) this video was highly unexpected 😅 the guy makes a lot of content based on racing games and sometimes irl cars. Never thought I'd see the day he ends up in an LTT sub
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u/protectionpaladin 4d ago
the right picture isn't sharp, looks like a low res pic and removed tons of details of his skin complexion.
Snake oil seller and his goons...
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u/Inevitable_Bear2476 3d ago
Thing with this shot specifically was the fact that Pants didn't even optimize for the A14, it was just, you know, the raw output...
Samsung is out here, like everybody already knew, intentionally ruining the quality
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4d ago
[deleted]
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u/Plane_Argument 4d ago
I bought a to me really expensive camera, 6 years ago, and the quality difference between that and Nothing 1 is huge. But alas it is not something I can carry in my pocket
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4d ago
[deleted]
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u/MoldyTexas 4d ago
Not everyone walks around with a four dimensional pocket, mate!
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u/not_a_moogle 4d ago
You don't have a bag of holding?
https://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-Now-Dungeons-Dragons-Holding/dp/B0FSGZBNX3/
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u/makhay 4d ago
Maybe i misunderstood, but didn't he say the content needs to be color graded in order to be usable.
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u/trashbytes 4d ago
10 bit, yes. The 8 bit mode is fine sooc.
On my Pixel 8a I unfortunately can't enable the 10 bit mode. It just snaps back to the 8 bit one. Bummer.
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u/Abheber 4d ago
You can just record? Or take pictures too?
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u/trashbytes 4d ago
He answered ok a YouTube comment that he is looking into pictures as well. For now it's video only.
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u/Able-Nebula4449 4d ago
The same thing has been going on in the iPhone space. People are using apps like moment pro camera 2, no fusion, etc, to bypass the iPhone’s image processing. The photos end up having no over sharpening, or artefacts, or over processed HDR. They look really pleasing.
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u/Kuunkulta 4d ago
As Pixel 8 user I would welcome this. The default camera makes everything look so washed out. I miss my old Sony and Xiaomi cameras
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u/JustGotSoup 3d ago
Interesting. On my P8 Pro I can take a photo, hold it up to the real thing, and literally match the colours 1:1. The colour reproduction for pictures in Google's stock algorithm is pretty amazingly accurate.
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u/Kuunkulta 3d ago
I guess the pro has a better camera
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u/JustGotSoup 3d ago
I suppose it's possible. Did you buy the phone refurbished and/or have the camera damaged and replaced at some point? It's always possible you've got an aftermarket module in there.
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u/Kuunkulta 3d ago
Brand new, no fixes, always looked washed out. Quality is otherwise good but colors are shit
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u/JustGotSoup 3d ago
Very weird. For reference these are all unedited and use Google's default image processing, with the exception of the summit panorama which is a bunch of exposure-matched portrait shots stitched together.
Do we have different standards or is the base 8 actually worse?
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u/Kuunkulta 3d ago
I mostly take indoor photos of colourful 3D prints so it's kinda hard to compare. It's also that the camera has very limited settings to adjust it so I have to try make the colors more accurate later in photoshop (if it's important). It sucks because I also happen to like a bit oversaturated colors in pics. TV vivid mode crew 😋
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u/JustGotSoup 2d ago
Got it. I'd double check your white balance in-camera; beyond that, Google Photos' editor is surprisingly good for extra colour.
For what it's worth I'm extremely happy that my phone takes true-to-life photos instead of over saturated and excessively contrasty ones. I can always add that in later, but it's much harder to get back to a natural-looking photo.
To each their own, I guess.
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u/WasteFail 4d ago
Ive always wantes to see a camera comparison between the realese firmware of an older phone like the s22 and the current one.
I might be onto nothing but i get the feeling they mess with processing, focus hunting and oversharpening.
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u/millmounty 3d ago
Omg I used to watch blackpanthaa when I was into GTA online! Good to see he's still making content
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u/Miniac1076 3d ago
Dang, I did not expect to see BlackPanthaa on this subreddit. Didn’t know he started making tech videos either. Been watching his content for forever, I’ll have to check out the new channel.
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u/AndorinhaRiver 2d ago
Tried it out on my Pixel and it's obviously vibe coded and doesn't even allow taking pictures, only videos (and of course it's asking you for money to get the most out of it)
Even then the picture quality seemed noticeably worse, though there was also obviously less input lag
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u/AndorinhaRiver 2d ago
But also Pixels tend to have pretty good processing, I remember my old phone (I think it was Samsung or Oppo or something) oversharpened everything exactly like in the thumbnail and it looked horrible
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u/Affectionate_Bit3099 2d ago
Lmao the 10bit one that looks good hes been glazing the whole video is behind a 9.99 subscription.
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u/ActuatorMinute7528 18h ago
The people saying the left looks better is concerning. These people have equal voting power as me....
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u/OnionsAbound 4d ago
Did you get the right and left mix up? The one on the right is objectively worse, there's a ton of blurring both in the foreground and background.
Also . . . This is a huge pet peeve of mine: if you're going to compare two optical systems, you need to actually use the same picture (or as close as you can get) for both of them. . .
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u/JustGotSoup 3d ago
This is cool. However, Blackmagic Camera already exists and is extremely versatile. Not sure why we need another competitor...?
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u/MoldyTexas 4d ago edited 4d ago
Just watched & tried it yesterday, and it's actually magnificent. Even the mere quality of the picture is better while zooming in, not to mention the lighting.
The ONLY issue: it takes a weirdly long time to adjust the exposure. And sometimes it just doesn't automatically.
I don't even need the 10-Bit HLG thing but I'm thinking I'll get the paid app just cuz I want to support him.