Photo quality

[jit-010101]

The "AI" (big question-mark) is likely embedded in the camera framework . That's something you can totally forget ever fixing yourself. Look at Sony with its ASOP initiative - proprietary bugged blobs - because licenses from these chip-vendors restrict them. No Open-Source drivers.

If you're lucky there'll be an official Rom like PixelExperience or ASOPExtended released with alternative blobs. Most of the time these are targeting lower end Xiaomi Phones like Redmi and the more expensive pack is ignored since people buying them are generally either happy or just sell the phone and move on.

Really, if you're a photography guy then any "Android One" device is a lot better since they pair way better with any GCam or alternative Camera (which is in the end limited by what it gets input) simply by the factor that the vendors are restricted in what they can do with the underlying OS (or better said how much they can destroy it).

That said I own a Pixel 3a and have seen lots and lots of GCams on many devices. I gifted my father a Mi 9T - and wasn't impressed by the intial photo quality in terms of consistency first. But as it is now, a few months in - Stock Camera - I rarely see a picture that's looking bad in terms of colors, details, noise or bad focus. That impressed me, that's why I even considered the Mi Note 10.

Most people here likely haven't seen how bad the old pack was - Smartphone sensors and Software has come a long way in the last 3 years.

Xiaomi as well. I can't say that for example for LG or Samsung (especially in terms of point and shot). But lets not dive into that discussion ...

... I'd say for Point-And-Shot the taste plays and important role as well. Either you like it or not. No time wasted arguing as to what might look better in your eyes. In the end its all about taste.

If we're speaking about calibrated true-to-life content you'll use RAW, Photoshop and over. There's no inbetween - not even the Pixel and iPhones produce that. Not even close. That would be boring as ****.

 

[jit-010101]

I received my Mi Note 10 and took a few shots. Overall, disappointing images, compared to my Pixel 3XL.

Main camera: The dynamic range of the main camera is not nearly as good as that on the Pixel. Even forcing HDR on the Mi Note 10 doesn't help much, as the Pixel shows more detail in both sun-lit and shadow areas. Strangely, given the higher resolution of the Mi Note, the definition of blades of grass in a landscape shot is noticeably better on the Pixel. Also, the colors are kind of "electric" on the Mi Note 10, not natural.

Portrait mode is poor in less than bright conditions.

In Wide mode, the dynamic range is also pretty poor.

Night city light shots from the Mi Note 10 are not as good as the Pixel, although in Night Shot mode the Mi Note 10 improves noticeably. But it still suffers from poor dynamic range.

The only shot where the Mi Note did better the Pixel was at 10x zoom. The Pixel 3 does it all with just one lens, and at its maximum 7x it had somewhat less detail than the Mi Note 10.

Sadly, the Mi Note feels like a second rate phone on the photography front. Funny enough, I don't have any issues with the rest of the phone. The fingerprint unlock is not fast, but I can live with it. I don't have touch issues on the edges. But the main reason I bought it was for the camera, which in my experience so far, is just not very good.

I am wondering what DXOMARK was testing and how they came up with their conclusions, which are so different than mine?

Have you managed to find a GCam that suits your needs yet or did they fix it with any update for you?

I just ordered a Mi Note 10 to see if its a worthy successor to my Pixel 3a on pure pixel count and RAW capabilities, knowing Stock Cam lacks DR (it seems like it varies from device to device). I was impressed how much they've made out of the Mi 9T after all that time (initial photos were quite lackluster) so I'll give it some fair review myself after viewing many samples. That said - I have 30 days to return the device.

That said I have mixed feelings - I do know Xiaomis love always was with Mi series. Not sure how much love the Note series gets (previously only owned Redmi series and Mi A series happily) ...

I found this really good review here for a more photography side of review (something you'll rarely find nowadys with all the Tech Tubers):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWJPpPqbDiY

It also goes into detail regarding lens quality - so far it seems like the lack of saturation comes from the lenses or a lack of depth from what I understood. That's also what's happening on all phones likely, some are just better at post processing like Pixel / Apple. So they artifically remove the noise - guess like Xiaomi needs to catch up in that regard.

 

[MacGuy2006]

Have you managed to find a GCam that suits your needs yet or did they fix it with any update for you?

Yes Burial beta 6 finally works for me on the latest Global stock ROM. Check out the GCam thread here. Urnyx works well too.

I have pretty much stopped using the stock camera, as GCam now works seamlessly, for me. It has better color balance and it doesn't crush the highlights as the stock camera does. It's just as fast, plus you get a few more features, such as Astrophotography. I still find Apple doing the best job in terms of color balance, but the camera hardware packed in the Mi Note 10 is impressive.

The only shortfall of GCam I found is when there is an extremely contrasty scene, where GCam will blow the highlights, while the stock camera retains considerably better detail. These are rare occasions, though. You'll also see it discussed in the GCam thread here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/mi-note-10/themes/gcam-t4005605/page23

Overall, I am now happy with the phone and the camera. For the money, it's hard to beat. In fact, it's hard to beat at any price I find it a much better value than the regular Mi 10 and it's close enough to the Mi 10 Pro for me, as the camera is the main thing I care about these days.

 

[jit-010101]

Yes Burial beta 6 finally works for me on the latest Global stock ROM. Check out the GCam thread here. Urnyx works well too.

I have pretty much stopped using the stock camera, as GCam now works seamlessly, for me. It has better color balance and it doesn't crush the highlights as the stock camera does. It's just as fast, plus you get a few more features, such as Astrophotography. I still find Apple doing the best job in terms of color balance, but the camera hardware packed in the Mi Note 10 is impressive.

The only shortfall of GCam I found is when there is an extremely contrasty scene, where GCam will blow the highlights, while the stock camera retains considerably better detail. These are rare occasions, though. You'll also see it discussed in the GCam thread here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/mi-note-10/themes/gcam-t4005605/page23

Overall, I am now happy with the phone and the camera. For the money, it's hard to beat. In fact, it's hard to beat at any price I find it a much better value than the regular Mi 10 and it's close enough to the Mi 10 Pro for me, as the camera is the main thing I care about these days.

Thanks ... my Mi Note 10 will actually arrive tomorrow. I've seen some quite good profiles in the GCam thread that actually seem to be on par with Pixel Stock balance so I'm excited.

The thing with the highlights seems to be related to the optics - lenses. Maybe that is the difference to the Pro - not just one more lens but better quality/finish that reduces the glare in difficult situations (I'm not to deep into photography to know this). Maybe a lens protection does help migrate as well - as I have it on my Pixel 3a. Pocophone F2 Pro which is the Redmi K30 Pro seems to have a lower res camera with better depth / sharpness out of the box. I guess the optics do play a role here. Either that or quality control lottery as always (hopefully not because I'm always unlucky in these lotterys when there was one, that's why I got the Pixel series to begin with).

 

[MacGuy2006]

... The thing with the highlights seems to be related to the optics - lenses. Maybe that is the difference to the Pro - not just one more lens but better quality/finish that reduces the glare in difficult situations (I'm not to deep into photography to know this). ...

It actually doesn't seem to have much to do with lenses, since the stock camera can deal with such scenarios, plus nobody has found any measurable difference between the two lens configurations, as far as I am aware.

The most likely reason is that Google doesn't use binning sensors and thus doesn't support HDR binning in GCam, while the stock camera leverages binning for HDR. See the GCam thread I posted earlier for more detailed explanations by others.

 

[MacGuy2006]

I just wanted to ***** that Xiaomi has done absolutely nothing to try and improve the glaring shortcomings in the stock camera app.

It's crazy that they stick grat hardware in the phone, get the accolades for it and then effectively abandoned the camera app. I was just comparing some shots I took yesterday with the stock camera just for the heck of, with similar shots on the iPhone 11. The balance on the iPhone is so much better, the Xiaomi camera app made the golden light around sunset look like a velvet painting.

I totally appreciate the hard work all the developers put in GCAm, but we shouldn't be relying on people stripping off Google's camera protection and modding it to make this phone's hardware usable. GCam doesn't take advantage of pixel binning for HDR, so despite the mod's efforts, it's not perfect in this case.

Does Xiaomi just assemble parts? Looking through the Mi 10 Pro forum, it sounds like the MiUI 12 update does nothing on the camera app front and it might just make the image quality worse

 

[asvaberg]

Is the imagequality so bad using stock app?
In this test from a Norwegian tech magazine, the phone's camera (and app) really competes with Huawei P30 and Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra:
(Use translate tools)
https://itavisen.no/2020/04/07/vi-h...tra-og-mi-note-10-gar-i-strupen-pa-hverandre/

 

[MacGuy2006]

I actually like Samsung's balance a bit better than what I've seen from Huawei, but I find both noticeably inferior to either Google's or Apple's computational photography, so it's not saying much.

The stock camera is OK in many situations, but where it fails is when there is foliage or grass, and it crushes the highlights in more extreme conditions. In certain situations, it gives a certain dayglo look to the images, about as natural as a velvet painting.

It also overprocesses, a lot compared to GCAM (Huawei is a worse offender in this respect) and it smudges and loses detail if you pixel peep. The 3.7x zoom on GCam is also far superior to the fake 5x zoom on the stock app.

 

[jit-010101]

By the way - the Android 9 to 10 update improved quality quite a bit by providing better / accurate pictures in terms of focus.

Maybe the focus wasn't working correctly before? It would explain the mixed results - when some people are still on Android 9.

I had two Mi Note 10 here, one came with Android 10 out of the box and one with Android 9 - and the quality did significantly improve for me after the update (to be in line with second unit), to the point of me using the Stockcam way more often now. The processing is there - but with correct focus the details of the subjects aren't lost as much as before.

And I'm usually really picky when it comes to overprocessed pictures - and also know first-hand how bad the old Xiaomi Camera Apps were in terms of overprocessing. They've improved so much in the last year that I can only commend them (owning a Pixel 3a as well) - but maybe that's also due to the gigantic sensor-size in the Mi Note 10.

@MacGuy2006:

Apple is only good with it because their Screens are also properly calibrated and they have a fixed supply of parts for a single vendor with not variation. Not only do they spent a fortune on it in regards of the supply chain but also a ton of resources in term of QA and calibration. That's also why their devices cost more then twice as much.

The only way around is trough software algorithms - Marc Levoy has shown us just how much is possible with GCam (the man behind HDR+).

And it's likely also why he has left Google now, after being unhappy with the Pixel 4 and how the company evolves.

Xiaomi and everyone else uses different sensors, screens, suppliers - whatever they are able to get (to offer the prices they can). Xiaomi has improved a lot in handling all different vendors properly, for example way better screen calibration out of the box for the Mi Note 10 then previous generations, including the ability to finetune the calibration yourself (more then many others e.g. Samsung, at least in the past).

Not only that, but also AMOLED itself is quite hard to calibrate / show natural colors out of the box as well due to its nature. Guess why there are little to none professional monitors delivering it yet? Not only because they're expensive to produce but also because they're still hard to handle. Short summary long - getting color balance right will still take quite a few iterations if you ask me - phones not just software. If we're lucky we'll get those later as well trough QoL-Improvements but really I wouldn't bet on it. Especially since its something not a lot of people look after (with their ****ty screens).

If you're bothered by it use a GCam port that you'll adjust to your liking and get over with it.

----

All that said - if there's one thing not calibrated in your chain all that resources and time spend was completely wasted anyway. Colors are not to be undestimated, and in the end are always ever subjective, there's no thing as an truly objective color.

You can't just expect them to bend reality to your will. It's a lot easier to invest that time to do something productive, instead of being angry about things you can't change.

Also in terms of GCam - I find Pitbulls GCam more consistent and reliable out of the box for handing different situations with both HDR and HDR Enhanced so far from my short testing.

However I've also shared a profile for burial v7 which is closer to Stock in the GCam thread in terms of exposure and brightness, with a little bit more detail, especially in the situations Stock cam falls flat, e.g. low light fast pictures (sadly also the popping colors, I'd like to tune that down - Non AI-Mode).

Have a look (but don't blame it when you don't like it - I didn't work on it that much yet - besides with my eyes compared to what I see both in reality and on my Pixel 3a).

 

[MacGuy2006]

I installed mamy gcams, any of them can takie 27 mpix photo. Any good version to download?

Burial works well.

The Sock Camera in MIUI 12 is even worse than before. It's virtually unusable in 50% of the shots. Crushed highlights, weird electric colors, overexposing, it's just a tacky mess. If it wasn't for GCam, I would have gotten rid of this phone. It's inexcusable that Xiaomi is so bad.

Here are crops of the same scene, shot with the stock cam and with GCam, using Burial beta 8.

 

[Jogg3r]

Burial works well.

The Sock Camera in MIUI 12 is even worse than before. It's virtually unusable in 50% of the shots. Crushed highlights, weird electric colors, overexposing, it's just a tacky mess. If it wasn't for GCam, I would have gotten rid of this phone. It's inexcusable that Xiaomi is so bad.

Here are crops of the same scene, shot with the stock cam and with GCam, using Burial beta 8.

Looks like hdr wasn't enabled on stock? I can't complain about Miui 12s stock cam. Pretty solid. Especially with a lot of different light sources (than better as GCam). But in all other scenarios I prefer GCam. Have you done a factory reset after upgrading? Maybe it cpold help bc like I said. No problems here.

 

[MacGuy2006]

I haven't done a factory reset, but I have a friend with Mi Note 10 and the stock cam is the same. Even with HDR forced, the grass looks unnatural and pointilized, without realistic texture. The green and yellow bright highlights are crushed and have too much blue in them. Black tile surfaces also have a blue hue. And the over-processing is terrible at 100%. The whole thing seems to be geared to posting to social media, but why bother with the hardware if that's the focus?

Since GCam doesn't do pixel-binning, it blow bright ighlights, but the general balance is much better.

I also compared to an iPhone 10 yesterday and it's still so much better balanced than Xiaomi, even if it doesn't have the resolution.

 

[bo6o]

There's a problem with the 108mp sensor - a big part of the lower down-left corner is full of burned pixels, which start to appear after iso 800, 16 sec exposure, which makes it impossible to use for shots of the milky way or something needing such settings. In this image I managed to mask it, but it's brutal. Attached is the original image also.
Unfortunately, I don't think the warranty will not cover such issue
The UW is no good for milky way - too dark lense and low maximum iso...

 

[asvaberg]

Why shouldn't the warranty cover such obvious hardware error?

 

[MacGuy2006]

There's a problem with the 108mp sensor - a big part of the lower down-left corner is full of burned pixels, which start to appear after iso 800, 16 sec exposure, which makes it impossible to use for shots of the milky way or something needing such settings. In this image I managed to mask it, but it's brutal. Attached is the original image also.
Unfortunately, I don't think the warranty will not cover such issue
The UW is no good for milky way - too dark lense and low maximum iso...

Yeah, this should be covered by warranty. Have you reached out to Xiaomi?

But this is a good shot and great Photoshop work Did you use the stock camera or GCam, and at what settings?

 

[bo6o]

Yeah, this should be covered by warranty. Have you reached out to Xiaomi?

But this is a good shot and great Photoshop work Did you use the stock camera or GCam, and at what settings?

I bought the phone from a local online shop. I might try to use the warranty, but I doubt it'll pass (have to install original rom and lock bootloader).
For such shots you should use only manual settings, because you can't see anything on the screen (pure darkness) - focus on infinity, 32sec, 3200 iso, raw format. Gcam wouldn't be any good in this situation. I used lightroom on the phone for editing.

 

[csjneek]

taken with gcam on mn10pro