Snapchat front camera quality??

[off2fly115]

Hello, all! Just wondering if anybody else thinks that the Snapchat front camera quality on the Zenfone 8 is a little too bad 😕 Here are 3 pics I took in my bedroom a few days ago with the front camera on Snapchat with ZF8 and I just think it looks too grainy and bad. Asus, please fix!

[linggasy]

off2fly115

https://zentalk.asus.com/en/discussion/comment/202150#Comment_202150

Sure thing! I'm at a store rn and I took 3 pics with main camera app and 3 pics with Snapchat camera app. Both shot with the front camera. Here are the results.

1. Snapchat (Front)

2. Main camera app (Front)

My thoughts:

With bright lighting, the front camera on Snapchat definitely does not perform that bad at all! Is it as good as the front camera on the main camera app? Of course not, but for a 3rd party app on Android, I think the front camera WITH the proper lighting looks good 👍 However, front camera on Snapchat is still considerably more bad with lower light compared to the front camera on the main camera app. I can take more pictures with lower light as soon as I get home and upload them for everybody to compare 🙂 Lmk what you think. Thanks!

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Ok, cool! You can try taking a shot in a room with low light later (main camera app of course). But as a low tier photographer please hear me out: every type of camera like SLR, pocket camera, phone, etc if you're taking a shot with low light situation and everything on auto settings, the camera definitely chooses high ISO to compensate the darkness. That grainy looking picture is the side effect of high ISO. How good or bad the quality of a picture depends on the hardware (mostly sensor). For what I can tell, all smartphone's front camera (not only ZF8) is a joke In quality department. It gets worse with 3rd party app because most of them already put their own "filter" even though we didn't pick any filter. For instance, I used to have a FB account and upload my pictures there, it became a bit degraded. Same thing during video call via Whatsapp or Zoom. For me, both app give different quality of video with same condition and environment.
But if you still think ZF8's front camera should be superior when using snapchat, it's your choice to complain to Asus. The mods here surely taking notes if it's definitely phone's fault and put a patch on next update.
But seriously though, Piccolo would make a very cool dad! Screw Goku!

[Danishblunt]

linggasy

https://zentalk.asus.com/en/discussion/comment/202156#Comment_202156

Ok, cool! You can try taking a shot in a room with low light later (main camera app of course). But as a low tier photographer please hear me out: every type of camera like SLR, pocket camera, phone, etc if you're taking a shot with low light situation and everything on auto settings, the camera definitely chooses high ISO to compensate the darkness. That grainy looking picture is the side effect of high ISO. How good or bad the quality of a picture depends on the hardware (mostly sensor). For what I can tell, all smartphone's front camera (not only ZF8) is a joke In quality department. It gets worse with 3rd party app because most of them already put their own "filter" even though we didn't pick any filter. For instance, I used to have a FB account and upload my pictures there, it became a bit degraded. Same thing during video call via Whatsapp or Zoom. For me, both app give different quality of video with same condition and environment.

But if you still think ZF8's front camera should be superior when using snapchat, it's your choice to complain to Asus. The mods here surely taking notes if it's definitely phone's fault and put a patch on next update.

But seriously though, Piccolo would make a very cool dad! Screw Goku!

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Please stop posting if you're not sure what you're talking about. Even the main lens will look horrible in low light.

[Danishblunt]

So let me clearify one last time for those who still don't understand how cameras in smartphones work because for whatever reason people still have the most insane ideas of how a phone camera work, like the guy above who for whatever reason thinks they work similair to actual Cameras.
Phones have very small lenses compared to actual cameras, this automaticly introduces a massive problem, aka the lens being absolutely tiny hence low light performance is abysmal. This goes for every single camera phone out there, even the ones with relatively large sensors compared to other phones.
So how come smartphone cameras can still produce very usable and good images despite lower light? Great question! The smartphones will take multiple images at different settings and then merge them together into 1 usable image. The keyword here is "computational photography" it's completely different from normal photography with actual good hardware, any photographer who for whatever reason thinks computational photography from a phone is comparible to actual good photography with proper eq. might want to reconsider their jobs.
As we now understand how smartphones typically take images and create proper low light images, what about snapchat? Well snapchat devs are quite lazy and couldn't be bothered to actually use the Camera2API which pretty much all Android phones use these days to actually create multiple images, merge them together and create something useful, instead they will take a screenshot of whatever your camera can present on the viewfinder of the phone. Since they aren't actually doing computational photography they cannot make any phone create proper low light images, end of story.
So if you still think that ASUS can somehow fix this, then I suggest you should get transported to the loony bin.

[off2fly115]

Danishblunt

So let me clearify one last time for those who still don't understand how cameras in smartphones work because for whatever reason people still have the most insane ideas of how a phone camera work, like the guy above who for whatever reason thinks they work similair to actual Cameras.

Phones have very small lenses compared to actual cameras, this automaticly introduces a massive problem, aka the lens being absolutely tiny hence low light performance is abysmal. This goes for every single camera phone out there, even the ones with relatively large sensors compared to other phones.

So how come smartphone cameras can still produce very usable and good images despite lower light? Great question! The smartphones will take multiple images at different settings and then merge them together into 1 usable image. The keyword here is "computational photography" it's completely different from normal photography with actual good hardware, any photographer who for whatever reason thinks computational photography from a phone is comparible to actual good photography with proper eq. might want to reconsider their jobs.

As we now understand how smartphones typically take images and create proper low light images, what about snapchat? Well snapchat devs are quite lazy and couldn't be bothered to actually use the Camera2API which pretty much all Android phones use these days to actually create multiple images, merge them together and create something useful, instead they will take a screenshot of whatever your camera can present on the viewfinder of the phone. Since they aren't actually doing computational photography they cannot make any phone create proper low light images, end of story.

So if you still think that ASUS can somehow fix this, then I suggest you should get transported to the loony bin.

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Ok, this makes total sense. I'm understanding what you're saying and I'm taking in what you said.
My question now is, is Asus capable of somehow improving the way the viewfinder displays an image on the screen in real time? So that when Snapchat does take a "screenshot" of the screen/viewfinder, it looks better?? 🤔
Another question, when taking a picture on Snapchat, there seems to be a very slight color shift of the pic, a split second after you take a picture. Is this a post image processing thing on Snapchat for Androids? Or is that something else? 🤔
I appreciate us taking a more respectful approach on this conversation btw. Please answer my questions whenever you get a chance 🙂

[Danishblunt]

off2fly115

https://zentalk.asus.com/en/discussion/comment/202209#Comment_202209

Ok, this makes total sense. I'm understanding what you're saying and I'm taking in what you said.

My question now is, is Asus capable of somehow improving the way the viewfinder displays an image on the screen in real time? So that when Snapchat does take a "screenshot" of the screen/viewfinder, it looks better?? 🤔

Another question, when taking a picture on Snapchat, there seems to be a very slight color shift of the pic, a split second after you take a picture. Is this a post image processing thing on Snapchat for Androids? Or is that something else? 🤔

I appreciate us taking a more respectful approach on this conversation btw. Please answer my questions whenever you get a chance 🙂

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1.) Not relative to Snapchats viewfinder screengrab. ASUS does something like that on their native camera app, which drains battery like mad if you have it open, to generate a better quality viewfinder, snapchat would have to do some processing in realtime much like ASUS does, which once again would require snapchat to stop being lazy and implement a camera app that utilizes the API's given to them.
2.) Thats because after the screengrab snapchat compresses the image further to make it's filesize smaller, usually resulting in worse clearity and smaller color space.

And some fanboys will tell you that snapchat cannot implement because android devices are so different. That's all b.s, almost all smartphones support camera2API and those which don't could easily just use the screengrab method. The most blatant proof that most android phones would have no issues supporting basic but proper camera capture is the gcam ports we have. You cannot tell me that a bunch of modders are capable of porting something as featurerich and complex as gcam to almost all modern android devices but a huge company like snapchat with all their emplyees can't create a very simple camera app to support most android devices.
Snapchat is lazy and as long the userbase doesn't push for proper camera quality the snapchat devs won't lift a finger.