While no where near the quality of a decent DSLR/mirrorless camera, it is quite amazing that mobile photography has come this far!

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah, given that it's the first mobile phone to actually have a dedicated astrophotography mode, I can't wait to see what the Google engineers can come up with after a few more iterations. It's already good enough for Instagram, so that will already make tons of people happy.

@cernavas

4 жыл бұрын

I assume the results shown from the pixel 4 where not shot in raw mode and later developed in lightroom. If they where they would be far sharper. The focus comments about the pixel 4 seem silly. The focus on the pixel 4 is far better than a DSLR just set it to infinity focus 3-second delay and tap the shutter button. If you want the best results from the pixel 4 go to the main camera app set raw and jpg, turn on 3-second delay and infinity focus, tap on the screen bring up the two sliders adjust the highlight slider all the way up, tap on the shutter button and wait 4 minutes. Find the resulting raw file under pictures raw and edit it in lightroom.

@Quoutub

4 жыл бұрын

stevecer Google applies noise reduction to the sky, that's one of the reasons why the stars are not so sharp. Raw files seem to be sharper, though they even apply some spatial noise reduction to the raw files

@chwah7504

4 жыл бұрын

@@LonelySpeck in night mode, you can set focus to far, so the stars will be focused

@Quoutub

4 жыл бұрын

Goob Goob I haven't tried Astro mode yet, but I know that some Pixel 3a phones have not been calibrated correctly. On some Pixel 3a phones the "far" setting doesn't work with far objects. So I wouldn't be surprised if some Pixel 4 units have the same issue.

finally, a real proper astro photo review for Google Pixel 4. good to see your video again

This guy is one of the most enthusiastic reviewer here on KZread

Thank you! I've been looking for good astro mode pictures from the pixel 4 camera with very little luck. I'm so glad you took the time to do this.

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

Our pleasure! It was a pretty cool experience using the Pixel 4 and I'm glad I remembered to try it out on the nights we went campervanning.

Happy to see this video come out. I just got my pixel 3a the other day and was sad to see the lack of control in the camera app. I went and found Camera PX, a mod on the XDA forums that gives some manual control to night sight specifically, which basically amounts to, at least on my phone, allowing me the ability to set the shutter speed (up to 12 seconds) and change focus. the number of images it takes in the stack is still automatic as well as the other photo taking functions, but it's a mod that doesn't require you to root your phone and it actually uses a copy-app so you don't even have to risk breaking your normal camera app, so it's totally worth trying and comparing results. Waiting for my next clear night in michigan but this state loves its clouds...

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

Cool. I love the smartphone developer community for things like this. The same thing is what made long exposures possible on the OnePlus One, way back in 2015.

@davidsargent2544

4 жыл бұрын

@@LonelySpeck Yes! I wish Google themselves would hand over some manual control to their users, but we can always count on someone out there to make things work. I actually just finished doing a short series of shots comparing image quality from night sight on the stock camera app to the night sight on Camera PX and, as expected, things look much cleaner with the modded version. Astro mode on stock allowed me 4 second exposures over a 60 second period. Camera PX allowed me 12 second exposures over a 3 (sometimes 4) minute period, obviously collecting more light and resulting in a far cleaner image. This right here is the type of computational photography I can get behind.

The summary is absolutely on point, it's main design is to make Astro photography accessible to the layman. And that it does in spades.

Impressive for a phine, and certainly good enough for Instagram. Great to have you back. Missed your vids

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

Yes, definitely good enough for instagram. Glad to be making more videos!

Wow,those shots were really cool. I'm having my pixel 4 soon. Thank you for the review

With the push for larger sensors on phones, and the ever improving computational photography of Google and Apple, these modes will only continue to get better. Very impressive shots.

Thanks man i been waiting for an actual review of this feature instead of KZreadrs repeating marketing jargon.

Thank you for your honesty. Really appreciate it.

It's cool to see your take on the Pixel 4 with the Astrophotography Mode!

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks Tom!

I camped in the same spot years ago. My friends wife was a park ranger there & reserved that spot for us.

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

Nicest spot in the campground.

Nice job Ian and great to see this simplicity. Would be great to see a pano option be built in. From an iPhone guy.

Thanks dude for the video and really appreciate your work. Keep it up

Super cool. I do astrophotography using a telescope and an equatorial mount. My first AP pics were with a phone. Now I do KZread videos that show time lapses using a sony a6400, but this would be a cool choice is someone didn’t have that option for night sky time lapses!

Can't wait to try it out. Waiting for spring 😅

Great video! I own the Google Pixel 3a, and even with a max exposure time of 56seconds I've managed to capture the nebula inside of Orion's belt, and numerous constellations with my sub $400 phone. Would love to see a P3a astro review!

@nanarocxie

4 жыл бұрын

Do you have any photos? I'd love to see them

@Imdb007

4 жыл бұрын

@@nanarocxie hehe me too!

Can u share the image ?

Hi Ian, your first post in 2015 inspired me to explore seriously using mobiles on long hiking trips where a real camera is a burden. I found the latest large(relatively) sensor camera phones to perform even better than the Pixel 4 using traditional shooting methods. Hope you'll explore that too esp with the new Samsung 1/1.33" sensor.

How to use this mode?

Can the basic s21 do these astro photography as well?

how to process Rho Ophiuchi please.

FYI, Camera PX (on XDA) has astrophotography settings enabled. It's much more intuitive and gives better photos. I take some astro shots with my old t3i and it's quite comparable. Though it's probably different for you with a newer and better body and lens, it would still be interesting to see a comparison between your camera and Camera PX!

Really useful review. I didn't realise the astrophotography mode was essentially automatic. I'd be very interested in seeing a review of this mode on the Pixel 4XL Vs the Samsung S20 Ultra

I’d be interested in seeing what you can come up with by editing the computational RAWs that the Pixel produces since they still benefit from the noise reduction of the multiple exposures, but have all the advantages of the RAW format.

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

The raws are pretty nice to have, but I'm still trying to learn how to really work with them successfully. They don't have some of the qualities that make the jpegs look so smoothed and clean, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. The one thing the raw files have going for them is more natural (i.e. warm) colors, and some more pliability when it come to editing. They do, however, lack some of the color enhancements that the Night Sight AI uses to make astrophotos look more pleasing to the average observer. The first is a sky darkening and cooling adjustment and the second is some heavy handed noise reduction. The shot shown a 2:53 is actually edited from a raw in Lightroom and it has neither of those qualities found on the jpegs, but also looks less impressive on first glance. Making a successful edit with one of these raws has been harder than I anticipated, and might warrant a separate post of video.

@danielkeck8363

4 жыл бұрын

@@LonelySpeck Thanks for the detailed reply! I'd love to see a follow up video on editing the raws as I have had a similar experience with having trouble editing them satisfactorily.

@Quoutub

4 жыл бұрын

In my opinion using Lightroom's texture slider (in the opposite direction) is useful for noise reduction. By the way, even though Google's raw files have less noise reduction than the jpgs, the raw files usually still have some artificial noise reduction. On a Pixel 3a the raw files have less artificial noise reduction when you use digital zoom. Averaging multiple frames manually would lead to noisier raw files, but probably sharper (if nothing is moving).

The raw files that you can get out of the pixel 4 astrophotography mode with the right edits already take another step closer to apsc and full frame cameras.

This is a real photography video. Satisfied.

brent Hall has done astrophotography with the S20 ultra (Manual mode )and that is just legit awesome, you can do a comparison with the pixel 4 and the note 20 ultra though which has a more refined focus and greater controls to get that pro shot from a mobile

Hello Ian, would be interesting if you could make a video about editing other people's raw night skies photos? I mean, it would help. You've got great photos! Thank you!

Betelgeuse is so bright in your photos! Much dimmer at the end of January.

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah, it was late December and it was already dimmer than typical. Crazy that it's still dimming.

@gerrucollen8752

4 жыл бұрын

@@LonelySpeck I wonder how long it will Dim. Hopefully it will collapse in our lifetime. That would be a show !

Last night I shot a pic of the Neowise Comet on my P4XL. WOW!

Does the Pixel output raw Astrophotography images for further stacking? Also, it would be fair to compare that phone with a similarly priced camera. As far as I see it, the Pixel 4 's optics and processing has the only coma-free astroimage I've ever seen in phones. Even my P30 Pro doesn't come close in terms of night mode quality.

For what you're paying, the convenience of a portable device instead of lugging around a camera, & taking away any guesswork - the trade-off vs DSLR in sharpness is one that most ppl and amateur photographers will gladly accept. Just being able to capture this level of photography was not possible even a few years ago without complex post processing and figuring out stacking and noise reduction. Now it's all automated and will only get better from here onwards

Would love to see something on the syrp genie mini with the pan tilt bracket for large format panoramas. Was thinking of getting it for a trip later this year.

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

The final still shot I show is actually a stitch of 6 (3 column, 2 row) photos. Tough to shoot panos though, because each shot takes 4 minutes... so that's a total of 24 minutes of shooting time.

@wingspan7763

4 жыл бұрын

Oh. No. I meant as gear you could do a future video on. Sorry.

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

@@wingspan7763 oh yeah, I'd love to try the Syrp Genie pan-tilt setup for sure. I'll see what I can do!

4 and 4xl camera are same?

Wow thanks for the video

A nice option. Quality leaves much to be desired, but in the end it's just a smartphone! I wonder how smartphones will surprise us in a few years!

When in night sight , swipe down from top , you will se mannual focus for infinity

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

I definitely tried the "far" focus setting multiple times with less success than "auto"

@mafiaboy4925

4 жыл бұрын

@@LonelySpeck try CameraPx by cstark it will give manual shutter control for night sight and also enable hdr+ enhanced for daylight photos , also gives you button for manualy enabling astro mode and another option that alow you to change how many photos should be captured for stacking by default i guess its 6 but you can go upto 45 frames , currently latest version is camera px 4.3

Would be interesting to see how these 4min exposures eat into battery life....

which apps did you show off around 0:49?

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

The first was my favorite planetarium app: Stellarium. The second was my favorite planning app: PhotoPills.

As far as I know you can stop the 4 minute exposure after approximately 16s, so that the total exposure time is only 16s

Google software with Samsung hardware would be amazing. Especially with the s20 ultra having one of the biggest camera sensors ever.

review huawei p30.

I not see, where here a night mode video. Where???

Pixel 4 vs iPhone 11 Pro Max. I have the iPhone. Gonna try and take some sample photos soon.

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

Check out Stan Moniz's video on the iPhone 11 Pro with astrophotography: kzread.info/dash/bejne/no2pmdtwZMW8lcY.html

@SalvageCitizen

4 жыл бұрын

I wish Apple would update ios to include an Astrophotography mode. I've a iPhone 11 Max Pro

@detectiveamevirus8

4 жыл бұрын

@@SalvageCitizen if you have telescope dobsonian or any telescope put phone adapter well better long exposure

I wonder whether Sony's multi frame noise reduction mode would cause star trails?

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

If it works as a median or mean stack, it would basically erase the stars.

That's interesting: At 1:49 the Pixel 4 crop actually captures 240s/15s x (4.38/1.73)² / (18/4)² = 5 times as much light as the Sony A7s crop. Nonetheless the result is worse, it could be the autofocus, but I know two other possible reasons: The first reason is that due to read noise, averaging multiple frames in extreme low-light conditions might not be always that effective as a single exposure of a large camera with a modern sensor. Also, Google's crop has approximately twice as many pixels, which makes read noise even more important. The second reason is that Google applies a lot of noise reduction to the sky. In the second comparison the Pixel captures only 2.5 times as much light as the Sony, but the Pixel competes better, it just uses too much noise reduction, one would need to see the dng file. The Sony doesn't have many more stars, there is more noise due to less noise reduction

@Quoutub

4 жыл бұрын

By the way, it's not clear whether a modern 18mm f/4 24 megapixel Aps-c camera would have achieved the same image quality because the Aps-c camera would have approximately 5 times as many pixels per object as the A7s crop. Though the sensor technology has improved.

@Quoutub

4 жыл бұрын

Lonely Speck No, we don't need sensor area because the physical focal lengths (4.38mm and 18mm) already imply that. Of course you can also calculate the sensor area of a crop, then you get the same result: 1/15 x 240/15 x (4/1.73)² ≈ 5 (actually the first factor needs to be 1/17 = (4.38/18)² instead of 1/15, the 1/15 factor is not as accurate)

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

@@Quoutub I was too hasty in my thinking as I forgot about angular field of view which is equal anyways with the sensor sizes. I stand corrected.

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

@@Quoutub We might also want to use 240/16 as a 15s exposure on the a7S is actually 16s long. Should we consider quantifying it by signal to noise since the result comparison might not be as simple as pure signal increase with exposure time? Since the Pixel Astro Mode is similar to an average stack, that makes the comparison of signal to noise a little different. Usually we can regard the SNR improvement for stacking to be proportional to the square of the number of stacked frames. The Pixel uses 16s subs so a 4 minute shot is likely a 15*16s stack. So the actual SNR improvement from exposure time maybe isn't as simple as 240/16 but more like √(15)=3.87. If that's a better gauge of SNR improvement, we could say that the pixel should have 3.87*(4.38/1.73)²/(18/4)²=1.22 SNR improvement, or within less than one stop of the APS-C crop. Let me know your thoughts.

@Quoutub

4 жыл бұрын

Lonely Speck If the sensors were 100% perfect, averaging multiple frames shouldn't have a different noise performance than a single long exposure as far as I know. The reality is that camera sensors are not perfect. For camera sensors that are not perfect, the difference between averaging multiple frames and using a single long exposure depends on the exposure and light conditions as far as I know. In good light conditions (bright image at a low Iso) without dark shadows there should be nearly no SNR difference as far as I know. In extremely bad light conditions (bright image only at a very high Iso), I guess, it could be approximately how you described it. The low megapixel count of the Sony 18mm crop could be an additional SNR advantage for the Sony sensor, so possibly it could outperform a 24 megapixel 18mm Aps-c camera, the technology is older though.

does astro mode shoot raw??

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

Yes, Astrophotography Mode will save a raw file if you have raw capture enabled in the camera app.

i can do that in my lg g6 manual mode

What about any other phone put on a tripod for 4 minutes ?

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

There aren't any other phones that can do 4 minutes of exposure.

@Quetzalcoatl0

4 жыл бұрын

@@LonelySpeck There aren't any custom camera apps that can do bulb mode ?

@Quoutub

4 жыл бұрын

Most phones can't do more than a single 30s exposure. Though theoretically you don't need 4 minutes. A Xiaomi Note 10 captures 3 times as much light per time as the Pixel 4, so theoretically a Xiaomi Note 10 and a 1 minute 20s exposure would give you approximately the same noise, but with star trails and possibly more hot pixels. Though theoretically you could simply average and align the sky manually for example seven 12s exposures with a Xiaomi Note 10. As far as I know Huawei has a star trails mode that can expose for hours(!) , but I don't know how the results are.

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

@@Quetzalcoatl0 most Bulb like apps use a lighten stack method that combines multiple shorter exposure for a result that more closely resembles a traditional single bulb exposure. The problem is that in 4 minutes, the stars will trail due to the Earth's rotation.

I hope you can also try this with Samsung S20 Ultra. 😊

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

We'll see what we can do...

@STVN20

4 жыл бұрын

@@LonelySpeck looking forward to watch it! 😊

0:45 which app was that?

@detectiveamevirus8

4 жыл бұрын

Star walk 2

@detectiveamevirus8

4 жыл бұрын

Or photopills?

@detectiveamevirus8

4 жыл бұрын

Stellarium for find milky way

I remember the time when i had to use rear camera for selfies😆

For me Pixel 4 is great for travelling alone cause some people cannot wait for 4 minutes to get good results.

Can you review the Canon EOS RP?

@LonelySpeck

4 жыл бұрын

Trying out the EOS Ra this month. Video forthcoming.

Would love to see your opinion on Xperia 1 II

If you’re gonna buy a phone just for Astrophotography, just get a damn DSLR like the D5300.

@huawafabe

4 жыл бұрын

you don't buy a pixel 4 just for astro photography, it's a pretty good phone. It even has a infrared camera that you can use to see infrared light :)

@FaZaFurhod

4 жыл бұрын

@@huawafabe I bought the pixel 4 for astrophotography.

@lecookie007

3 жыл бұрын

Pixel 4a has entered the chat

@deepcoolclear

3 жыл бұрын

Not many people want to carry around a heavy DSLR when the phone technology is so impressive.

You talking about photography and filming on 1080 really we using Samsung bro we need to put that 1440 display at work

I'm 10 times more likely to astro photog with a phone than a bulky camera, on my treks out. Then quick share from the phone.

Does Google pixel 4a 5g has astrophotography??

I’d choose ultra wide camera over this anyday

@FaZaFurhod

4 жыл бұрын

You shouldn't have choose. Google should have just included both

Thanks. I guess. Technology replaces learned skill. Again. Oh, well. On to something else a phone can't do. Yet. How about a video on Astro Video?

I have 11 pro and man it sucks.

astrophotography can be done with any phone with manual or pro mode. and you can adjust focus also. realme, redme huawei phone are good for astro. google pixel 4 is not special. but one thing you told us wrong. you said pixel4 image was comparable with dslr photo. this is totaly wrong. you dont know astrophotography. Tiny lens of cell phone cant gather light like dslr big 60mm aperture lens.

@LonelySpeck

3 жыл бұрын

You're both right and wrong. Yes, a smartphone's camera lens gathers less light per second. Smaller lens, less light. But that's why the Pixel utilizes multiple exposures: to capture more light. At a certain point, with enough exposures, the pixel can actually capture more light in its 4 minutes of exposures than a DSLR can capture in a single 20 second exposure. No DSLR or mirrorless camera can do a single 4 minute exposure without star trailing due to the Earth's rotation. That's where the Pixel's software capability allows it to compare with a DSLR. Where the Pixel falls short is in the fact that the small lens can only resolve so much detail and precise focus seems to be hit or miss. But ultimately, if you're just wanting to share your night photos with friends on facebook or insta, the Pixel is actually a pretty good way to get into astrophotography.

That is real 😳😳😳 ??

Your review is not as detailed as I expected to be.

My Huawei p20 pro takes better photos :)

the sony a7s beats the shit out of google pixel 4 in this comparison, but still impressive

Pixel 4 takes very sharp focused stars that I can get even in light pollution. It's software that makes your photos even better. Use the best software to get that sharp image of the stars. Not much difference between the two. DSLR photographers always says dslr is better but it's all down to the person. Why pay 4 thousand for a dslr when pixel 4 can do incredible astrophotos as good as dslr? I know an Astronomer who uses entry level dslr and gets incredible images of milky way and stars and even deep sky objects with the Canon 600d and he says why upgrade to full frame just for slightly better images. Pixel 4 will lead the new wave into astrophotography and in future dslrs will be replaced by future smartphones for photography.

western youtubers never get satisfied.....everyone pretends to be a scientist and try to be subtle! shit...what else can you expect from a phone cam dude