[WT44]

In photography, shutter lag is the delay between triggering the shutter and when the photograph is actually recorded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutter_lag

I already talked shortly with smcv about this one time and said that it appears to be very slow.
I am wondering however about the experiences of CB members.
Are the factual numbers, reviews or videos that show the difference in shutter lag between various devices?

Day-light/outside conditions:
I find the shutter lag in good light conditions okay.

Artificial light/ evening/ indoor conditions:
Without Flash - Very long.
With Flash - Extremely long.

For example, I can never shoot proper photos of my dogs while they look at me.
They need to be looking at me for more than 2 full seconds for successful photo.

P.S. BlackBerry always had this shutter lag "issue" with all their camera's as far as I can remember,
but I find it pretty "embarrassing" (for lack of a better word), that my old 4 year old 3rd generation iPad of 2012 (no-flash obviously) shoots the same indoor/artificial light/evening photos INSTANTLY. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad_%283rd_generation%29

Please explain me why the cam of a 4 year old iPad does not have noticeable shutter lag?

I could be the case that on paper the measurements of the Priv's shutter lag times are way up there with any other high-end device, but in practice it almost never is unfortunately.

[smcv]

Conceivably something is wrong with your device. I'd be happy to debug further with you offline.
I have instrumented the camera app to measure the performance, and consistently get numbers in the 190-230ms range across several devices tested. For flash capture, Priv measures on par or even better than some of the competition in terms of shutter lag.

If you'd like to know the reason it is the way it is -- it's primarily due to the fact that we are using such a large camera sensor (far more pixels per second to push around). If we had gone with a zero-shutter-lag configuration, the preview framerate would have been limited to around 22fps, and autofocus would have been about 30-50% slower, less accurate, and generally frustrating (check out the preview in panorama mode to get a feel for this performance). Instead, we operate the preview at up to 40fps, providing a very smooth experience, 3x the light sensitivity, and much faster autofocus. If you put Priv side-by-side with a phone like the G4 and look at the fluidity of the viewfinder, it is night and day. Unfortunately as a result of this tradeoff, the sensor needs to be reconfigured for capture, which takes around 200ms. The competition does not have this reconfigure hurdle to deal with.
Other vendors are using sensors that are upwards of 25-40% smaller than the one we are using, and so are not up against the same constraints as the higher resolution cameras.

Take a look back at the BB10 cameras, and you will see how much focus performance has improved as a result of the unmatched framerate Priv operates at, especially in low light, which used to take multiple seconds to lock. BB10 devices were operating in a zero-shutter-lag configuration, and so as long as you had focused your shot, the lag was effectively zero (or as quick as you could mash the screen). As an aside -- many people confuse shutter lag with other operations, such as pre-capture focus. The best way to avoid that delay is to lock your focus point before taking your picture. Some other vendors (and how BB10 originally operated) do not try to focus before capture, so perform even faster, but produce out-of-focus photos instead. After much feedback, we switched this behaviour to focus-priority a couple of months after BB10 launch. Once again, it is all about tradeoffs.

We are still working at ways to reduce the shutter lag, and I'm confident we can take a further bite out of it in the coming weeks. It will not get to zero, but I'd like to get us at least 100ms closer.

As an aside, would you be willing to trade-off focus performance and accuracy for very low shutter lag? If so, perhaps we could consider offering a toggle switch in the future if timing is more important to you.

[deadcowboy]

A toggle switch for fast capture sounds like a good feature. I love seeing developer presence on the forum like this. Thankyou

[WT44]

[...]Unfortunately as a result of this tradeoff, the sensor needs to be reconfigured for capture, which takes around 200ms. The competition does not have this reconfigure hurdle to deal with.
Other vendors are using sensors that are upwards of 25-40% smaller than the one we are using, and so are not up against the same constraints as the higher resolution cameras.

Take a look back at the BB10 cameras, and you will see how much focus performance has improved as a result of the unmatched framerate Priv operates at, especially in low light, which used to take multiple seconds to lock. BB10 devices were operating in a zero-shutter-lag configuration, and so as long as you had focused your shot, the lag was effectively zero (or as quick as you could mash the screen). As an aside -- many people confuse shutter lag with other operations, such as pre-capture focus. The best way to avoid that delay is to lock your focus point before taking your picture. Some other vendors (and how BB10 originally operated) do not try to focus before capture, so perform even faster, but produce out-of-focus photos instead. After much feedback, we switched this behaviour to focus-priority a couple of months after BB10 launch. Once again, it is all about tradeoffs.

We are still working at ways to reduce the shutter lag, and I'm confident we can take a further bite out of it in the coming weeks. It will not get to zero, but I'd like to get us at least 100ms closer.

As an aside, would you be willing to trade-off focus performance and accuracy for very low shutter lag? If so, perhaps we could consider offering a toggle switch in the future if timing is more important to you.

Thanks for your extensive reply again. I appreciate it.
I guess that now I understand why other vendors are using smaller sensors then.
They are up to 40% faster like you said.
Personally, and I think I speak on behalf of the majority, the "slowness" to take photos would have been more bearable, IF the Privs photo quality would actually be 40% better than the competition. Especially in low-light/indoor situations, where a bigger sensor like on the Priv would make a layman think that it would destroy the competition in that respect at least. But that just isn't the case unfortunately, as you get 18mp photos that often get this paint-y look in indoor/low-lighted situations and are also slower to capture. So in practice you basically do not have the best of both worlds combined in one device but the trade-off resulted - for now at least- that you have an on paper superior bigger sensor (which should have brought better results to the table compared to phones with smaller sensors) that even work up to 40% slower. That said, if it would be possible to balance that out by introducing some kind of toggle like you said then that would indeed be awesome. Options are always welcome.

Auto focus & shutter lag seem to go hand in hand: both are responsible for slow photography.
I trust in you guys that with an introduction of that toggle that you will still find a way to reduce shutter lag without as a result a (much) slower auto focus with an end result that you remain in the current status quo; meaning still not being able to shoot faster moving objects.

I really hope this toggle for fast shooting will make taking photos faster. Maybe even reducing the "fast option" to a max 12 mp photos if that would have an influence to how fast the chip can take a photo and stash it????

I just like to take indoor photograps of my dogs, the little ones in the family, and at speedboat, cycling, ice skating events without the need to bring along other devices, like a dslr or that old 2012 iPad. Looks stupid too, taking photos or video with such a big a$$ device lol. I always get funny faces using the iPad, but at least it get's the job done since it's fast enough to capture moving objects.

[deadcowboy]

On the previous poster's comment about the "painty" look in low light. That would be a result of noise removal, and really, noise isn't such a bad thing. The water-colour effect added during noise removal is by far one of the most egregious choices a processor could make.

So if BlackBerry is listening, try to be the company that applies the least about of noise removal. You will be appreciated for compressing your photos less and altering your photos less. Give us options to disable if you need to market toward non-photographers or those who don't understand these things.

[WT44]

Conceivably something is wrong with your device. I'd be happy to debug further with you offline.
I have instrumented the camera app to measure the performance, and consistently get numbers in the 190-230ms range across several devices tested. For flash capture, Priv measures on par or even better than some of the competition in terms of shutter lag.

[...]

We are still working at ways to reduce the shutter lag, and I'm confident we can take a further bite out of it in the coming weeks. It will not get to zero, but I'd like to get us at least 100ms closer.

As an aside, would you be willing to trade-off focus performance and accuracy for very low shutter lag? If so, perhaps we could consider offering a toggle switch in the future if timing is more important to you.

Smcv, you should ask your boss(es) for a raise!!!! WOW!!!!

With the latest cam update, you (and your Cam team @ BB) significantly improved how fast the Camera is able to shoot photos!!! Especially without flash (even indoors) it doesn't feel any less fast than other flagship models from other brands. More than with previous updates, I have the feeling that now the "curse" of the slow shutter of Blackberry cameras is something of the past.

What are the numbers now? Close to where you guys wanted them? Or do you still somehow think that there is even more room for improvement re: the subject-matter of this thread (for example re: flash fired photos)?

Toggle switch you mentioned seems superfluous now, now that the manual settings have been introduced.....

Anyways, whatever the test measurements now are, at least it feels blazing fast now with the latest cam update. I always look forward to your updates the most of all of BB's apps.
Congrats to you and the cam team!

[Uzi]

Smcv, you should ask your boss(es) for a raise!!!! WOW!!!!

With the latest cam update, you (and your Cam team @ BB) significantly improved how fast the Camera is able to shoot photos!!! Especially without flash (even indoors) it doesn't feel any less fast than other flagship models from other brands. More than with previous updates, I have the feeling that now the "curse" of the slow shutter of Blackberry cameras is something of the past.

What are the numbers now? Close to where you guys wanted them? Or do you still somehow think that there is even more room for improvement re: the subject-matter of this thread (for example re: flash fired photos)? The toggle switch you mentioned being superfluous now that the manual settings have been introduced.....

Whatever the test measurements now are, at least it feels blazing fast now with the latest cam update. I always look forward to your updates the most of all of BB's apps.
Congrats to you and the cam team! https://abload.de/img/big_bandu9xa0.gif

Indeed feels like on par with S7 now , great job Sean!

[chuckiev79]

Excited to try the camera with this new update! I'm on vacation now. Just finishing up Scotland and going to London tomorrow!

[yvpan1]

Yeah just updated mine too. The shutter speed and the focus lock up are such great improvements! It's such a pity that PRIV doesn't have a good front shooter unlike its sibling, the DTEK but i hope all DTEK users out there will also enjoy a better selfie.

Thanks Sean and the team!

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

[smcv]

With the latest cam update, you (and your Cam team @ BB) significantly improved how fast the Camera is able to shoot photos!!! Especially without flash (even indoors) it doesn't feel any less fast than other flagship models from other brands. More than with previous updates, I have the feeling that now the "curse" of the slow shutter of Blackberry cameras is something of the past.

What are the numbers now? Close to where you guys wanted them? Or do you still somehow think that there is even more room for improvement re: the subject-matter of this thread (for example re: flash fired photos)?

Toggle switch you mentioned seems superfluous now, now that the manual settings have been introduced.....

Anyways, whatever the test measurements now are, at least it feels blazing fast now with the latest cam update. I always look forward to your updates the most of all of BB's apps.
Congrats to you and the cam team! https://abload.de/img/big_bandu9xa0.gif

Thanks
Yah, this is an improvement we've been talking about for months and finally managed to schedule it into release. It should be 200ms faster on average now, and more or less on-par with other devices from late 2015. There is one more speed-up I'd like to see, but we're pretty much at the limit of what we can do with the hardware now

Enjoy!

[tickerguy]

The improvement in shutter speed is VERY noticeable -- that's not 200ms, it's more like double that for many typical instances....

[AmritD]

Thanks
Yah, this is an improvement we've been talking about for months and finally managed to schedule it into release. It should be 200ms faster on average now, and more or less on-par with other devices from late 2015. There is one more speed-up I'd like to see, but we're pretty much at the limit of what we can do with the hardware now

Enjoy!

So just out of curiosity, the priv cannot be made any faster because of the Hardware?

Z30STA100-2/10.3.2.2876

[smcv]

So just out of curiosity, the priv cannot be made any faster because of the Hardware?

More or less. We made the decision up front to improve our focus performance, and that came at the expense of shutter lag. (our viewfinder runs up over 40fps rather than in the low 20's that it would have been with that particular high-res camera sensor hardware).

[AmritD]

More or less. We made the decision up front to improve our focus performance, and that came at the expense of shutter lag. (our viewfinder runs up over 40fps rather than in the low 20's that it would have been with that particular high-res camera sensor hardware).

Thanks for your reply
Appreciate it

Z30STA100-2/10.3.2.2876

[Spinal]

More or less. We made the decision up front to improve our focus performance, and that came at the expense of shutter lag. (our viewfinder runs up over 40fps rather than in the low 20's that it would have been with that particular high-res camera sensor hardware).

Is this a contributing factor as to why we see lower megapixel count on other phones just with bigger pixels?

[Suraj Jadhav]

Conceivably something is wrong with your device. I'd be happy to debug further with you offline.
I have instrumented the camera app to measure the performance, and consistently get numbers in the 190-230ms range across several devices tested. For flash capture, Priv measures on par or even better than some of the competition in terms of shutter lag.

If you'd like to know the reason it is the way it is -- it's primarily due to the fact that we are using such a large camera sensor (far more pixels per second to push around). If we had gone with a zero-shutter-lag configuration, the preview framerate would have been limited to around 22fps, and autofocus would have been about 30-50% slower, less accurate, and generally frustrating (check out the preview in panorama mode to get a feel for this performance). Instead, we operate the preview at up to 40fps, providing a very smooth experience, 3x the light sensitivity, and much faster autofocus. If you put Priv side-by-side with a phone like the G4 and look at the fluidity of the viewfinder, it is night and day. Unfortunately as a result of this tradeoff, the sensor needs to be reconfigured for capture, which takes around 200ms. The competition does not have this reconfigure hurdle to deal with.
Other vendors are using sensors that are upwards of 25-40% smaller than the one we are using, and so are not up against the same constraints as the higher resolution cameras.

Take a look back at the BB10 cameras, and you will see how much focus performance has improved as a result of the unmatched framerate Priv operates at, especially in low light, which used to take multiple seconds to lock. BB10 devices were operating in a zero-shutter-lag configuration, and so as long as you had focused your shot, the lag was effectively zero (or as quick as you could mash the screen). As an aside -- many people confuse shutter lag with other operations, such as pre-capture focus. The best way to avoid that delay is to lock your focus point before taking your picture. Some other vendors (and how BB10 originally operated) do not try to focus before capture, so perform even faster, but produce out-of-focus photos instead. After much feedback, we switched this behaviour to focus-priority a couple of months after BB10 launch. Once again, it is all about tradeoffs.

We are still working at ways to reduce the shutter lag, and I'm confident we can take a further bite out of it in the coming weeks. It will not get to zero, but I'd like to get us at least 100ms closer.

As an aside, would you be willing to trade-off focus performance and accuracy for very low shutter lag? If so, perhaps we could consider offering a toggle switch in the future if timing is more important to you.

This is good explanation of what is going on. Do we also know what's going with / Nexus 5X Camera software as they are fast and mostly in focus?

[Sigewif]

Thanks
Yah, this is an improvement we've been talking about for months and finally managed to schedule it into release. It should be 200ms faster on average now, and more or less on-par with other devices from late 2015. There is one more speed-up I'd like to see, but we're pretty much at the limit of what we can do with the hardware now

Enjoy!

Yes, I do enjoy and will continue to enjoy the Priv camera. Thank you and the team for the work you have been doing on the camera to improve it, which is among the things somethning that really makes this phone such a fun device, besides its being very functional. I also noticed that the icon for the filters has been changed to an ingenuous circle with nobs inside it that becomes multicolored if one of the filters is in use. The name of which filter is in use is written underneath. This is a helpful touch. I like using Vivid and have also used Havana quite a bit. The feature that was added with the last update (flashlight can be used instead of flash) has turned out to be quite useful. I wanted to take a picture of something recently that had light behind it, with a shadow in front and just flicked on the light instead of the flash and got a much more natural looking picture.

[Suraj Jadhav]

This is good explanation of what is going on. Do we also know what's going with / Nexus 5X Camera software as they are fast and mostly in focus?

This is what one gets in the name of better focus priority - beautiful moment lost in blur.

[smcv]

Is this a contributing factor as to why we see lower megapixel count on other phones just with bigger pixels?

Yup. This is why there are a lot of 13-ish MP cameras out there these days.

[smcv]

I like using Vivid and have also used Havana quite a bit.

Thanks! I had a fun time coding all those filters

[Sigewif]

This is what one gets in the name of better focus priority - beautiful moment lost in blur.

Just a suggestion (from someone who is in no way a professional photographer but who has had the Priv camera for several months). Have you tried darkening the contrast when there is so much light on your subject? In cases where there is a lot of light I darken the contrast (by this I mean allowing less light in) somewhat and then lighten it manually afterwards if it is darker than I want it. Darkening the contrast is done by sliding right before you take the picture.
Then I sometimes also use "pop" afterwards and carefully adjust it. This can help bring out detail.

[tickerguy]

That's not the contrast you're adjusting, it's the exposure.

Deliberate underexposure loses shadow detail. Deliberate overexposure loses highlights. Once lost you can never get them back. If the dynamic range exceeds the sensor's ability then you have the choice of either HDR (to try to widen the range, which works to a limited degree) or picking which you want to throw away, and which is the correct choice is something that is situational and (in most cases) a function of composition and what you're trying to achieve with the image (which the camera cannot know since it's not in your head.)

Post-processing (anything you do to the image after it's captured) can only work with what is there; you can't create that which has not been captured first.

[evodevo69]

How is the focus performance now though?

#qwerty #glassweave #darkhorse

[smcv]

How is the focus performance now though?

Last time I benchmarked it (back in December?) Priv took on average 626ms in bright light and 876ms in dim light. PDAF is of course quicker.
I measured the LG G4 in the same conditions and got 796ms and 1862ms. Samsung GS6 clocked in at 1009ms and 1138ms. So we did good on AF speed compared to the devices we were comparing against.

[Sigewif]

That's not the contrast you're adjusting, it's the exposure.

Deliberate underexposure loses shadow detail. Deliberate overexposure loses highlights. Once lost you can never get them back. If the dynamic range exceeds the sensor's ability then you have the choice of either HDR (to try to widen the range, which works to a limited degree) or picking which you want to throw away, and which is the correct choice is something that is situational and (in most cases) a function of composition and what you're trying to achieve with the image (which the camera cannot know since it's not in your head.)

Post-processing (anything you do to the image after it's captured) can only work with what is there; you can't create that which has not been captured first.

Right. I used the incorrect word. The picture in question that was given as an example looked overexposed, to use the correct word. It seemed to me that the lighting was more of an issue than the focus. Personally, if I am careful with that exposure adjustment, I have been surprised at how much detail I discover is not lost when carefully re-adjusting after taking the picture where I have lessened the exposure. Lightening it, maybe not so much. I generally use HDR as well. It isn't about adjusting it to the extreme one way or the other, which loses highlights, but compensating for the situation, carefully.