I want to talk about a great camera software for Android I was introduced to a few weeks ago.
The
Google Camera Port Hub was developed by
xda developers. It is an Android application matching the quality levels of the
Google Pixel and Pixel 2 cameras.
I tested it out due to its feature called ‘
Night Sight’ and I was pleasantly surprised.
With Night Sight activated you can take clear pictures in low light conditions without using your phones flash.
“Using machine learning, Night Sight balances the colours of your photo so that objects show their natural colour at night”. Read more about Night Sight here:
https://www.blog.google/products/pixel/see-light-night-sight/The application is about 120 MB in size and can be downloaded from the official xda developer’s site here:
https://www.xda-developers.com/google-camera-port-hub/If you have an Android phone with a Snapdragon chipset check the list on the site if your device supports the Google Camera app.
Once installed, and if your device supports the ‘Night Sight’ feature you will be able to activate it from the Settings menu by clicking on More > Night.
Night Sight can come in handy in situations where you want to take a clear picture and you can’t or don’t want to use flash. If you have a baby and it is asleep in its crib, taking a picture with the phones flash can scare it and wake it up. The app is able to use minimum light available in the room to create a nice looking picture.
I tested Night Sight in my room and you can see the results below.
The 1st picture was taken with the standard camera on my phone with the flash turned off.
The only light in my room was from my laptop and monitor from my work desk. You can see that the picture is almost black and white with very bad colour quality.
The 2nd picture was taken with the Google Camera App on Night Sight mode in the same conditions (laptop and monitor turned on in the background).
Take a look at the 3rd picture. On this picture I am holding another phone in my left hand and taking a picture with my phones camera. The light conditions are poor and the overall quality is bad.
The last picture was taken on Night Sight with the Google Camera App. The overall quality is not spectacular but it is much better compared to the third picture. Take a look at the background and the colours on the TV and my laptop and compare those to the quality on picture #3.
Besides Night Sight the Google Camera also has a Panorama and Portrait option. I haven’t tested those yet. I might get around to do that later.
Feel free to share your own photos and compare them with the hardware camera on your phone, it might be fun to see your results here as well.
Enjoy!
