When we buy a smartphone, we tend to look for it to be inexpensive (different for everyone) and offer decent performance. Even if a person has money for the top-end flagship, he still has to find a compromise. Naturally, when buying an inexpensive smartphone, it is much more difficult to find a compromise between price and technical capabilities. First of all, you have to give up a good camera, but now Google is ready to offer something that will make the search for such a compromise pointless. You just buy an inexpensive phone and software will make the camera much better.
Why the phone does not shoot well
Now, when even inexpensive devices have become very productive, and new processors further blur the line between flagships and the middle segment, it is the camera that remains what the manufacturer is primarily trying to simplify while reducing cost.
Indeed, not everyone plays games, it is not difficult to charge the battery, the concept of a “beautiful smartphone” is very relative and only the camera really makes users equal, because almost everyone takes pictures. Naturally, by limiting the capabilities of the photo module, it is much easier to make the buyer pay attention to a more expensive model.
To the delight of users, this is beginning to change thanks to applications such as Google Camera Go, which now allow users to shoot HDR photos on low-cost smartphones.
What is Google Camera
Basically, Google Camera Go is a redesigned version of the Pixel Google Camera app, but for those with smartphones that are unlikely to ever win any awards in the field of mobile photography . In recent months, we have witnessed how the application is becoming more and more popular and tends to be massive. It enables budget devices to take long exposure photos in night mode and even in HDR.
All this once again confirms that it is not so important which camera is in the smartphone, as how well the electronics will work out the information received on the matrix. This explains the fact that devices with the same camera module model shoot in completely different ways. And given that Google is at least one of the leaders in photo processing , the demand and importance of its applications becomes difficult to overestimate.
Since the app is aimed directly at devices that often come with a universal camera app, the new features really bring new possibilities. This is especially pleasant when you realize that the manufacturer of your smartphone did not think much about making the camera good at all.
Google Camera with HDR
Google confirmed on Twitter that HDR photography support is now rolling out to Google Camera Go, allowing some of the cheapest Android phones to take photos “with sharper details and richer colors at any time of the day.”
In order to take an HDR photo with a smartphone or any other camera, the system needs to acquire multiple images. In ordinary photography, they are processed by a photographer or special software for a computer. In mobile photography, everything is done automatically, but also based on several captured images.
Moreover, they do not even have to match each other pixel by pixel. Modern cameras can take one shot from several photos with a slight offset relative to each other. It is enough for the software to understand in which area of the image you need to make adjustments, and which part is better to take from another picture. This allows you to shoot HDR handheld and still get the result that previously needed a perfectly static scene and a stable tripod.
What you need for good shots
Naturally, to implement this function, you need to develop software for the camera with the necessary algorithms or buy it from a larger manufacturer. All this leads to the fact that small companies save money, and users do not get what they should. At the same time, the power of iron even the most budgetary devices allows you to do such processing. Again, if there is software. And now he will be!
The presence of HDR will never be superfluous, and having installed such an application, the user chooses whether he needs it or not. But sometimes it allows you to take great photos that simply would not exist without HDR.
But there is also a minus in everything that I told above. Officially, the Google Camera Go app can only be installed on a few devices , which limits its use. But many models support the ability to install the application without even entering the “gold pool”. And every month there are more and more such smartphones.
