Google have released two things in the past little while.
They are related and somewhat important (for geeks).
First up, they have released some new camera software.
http://petapixel.com/2014/10/30/look-googles-impressive-hdr-feature-latest-nexus-phone-cameras/
For low-light shots, instead of capturing one photo with a longer exposure time (which causes noise), the feature captures a burst of shots with short exposure times over the course of 1/3 to 1 second. It then chooses the sharpest shot from the series as the “base image,” and aligns all the other shots according to that image.
By replacing each pixel in the resulting image with the average color at that pixel across all the photos, the feature products a better low-light image with drastically less noise.
[Note, its about photos, you really need to follow the link and look at them].
Its crazy good.
The amount of noise reduction they achieved in the girls face just caused my jaw to hit the desk…. I have been trying to get those sorts of results from my high end camera for years.
Here, Google does it with a software upgrade.
Wow.
Second thing to note. The software update is only available on their newly released Nexus 6 phablet. (at 6 inches, its too big to be called a phone and too small to be called a tablet, so someone came up with the word phabet. Its a word, its a real thing – get over it and move on).
The fact that the two are related are not a mistake.
The amount of processing power they are talking about in the camera software to pull off that sort of pixel comparison and swapping is huge.
Its little wonder then that perhaps they were waiting for the phablet hardware to catch up with their software.
Well, in the Nexus 6. It did.
Big time.
http://gizmodo.com/nexus-9-benchmarked-as-powerful-as-a-2012-mac-pro-1647454837
Did you get that?
The 6 inch phablet has as much grunt as a laptop….!!! (From 2 years back).
Shut up and take my money.
(No, Im not getting one).
So, now it fits.
The camera software can do what it can do because the hardware has so much processing power.
Cant wait for this sort of tech to trickle over into more stuff.
