Exposure bracket / HDR bug after updating to Android 11
Camera app for Android.
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mark-h
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Have noticed a bug since updating 2 test devices to Android 11, specifically Samsung S20 and S20 FE.
When using the Bracket or HDR modes the camera takes 3 images but 2 of the exposures are the same. It achieves the standard and stopped up exposure but not the stopped down.
No other setting have been altered since the update to android 11 and I cant find anything to fix this so far.
Any help you could provide would be amazing as we will be heavily reliant on these devices but unable to roll them back to Android 10
J
Thanks for the info - have just got the Android 11 update on my Galaxy S10e and can reproduce the problem here too. Seems that the first shot of any burst is ignoring the manually adjusted exposure.
Unclear if this is an Open Camera bug or a Samsung Camera2 API bug, or if the latter if I can work around it, I will take a look.
Thank you Mark, I can confirm that the issue is apparent with the Camera2 API on and off but also present using another opencamera based app Hedgecam2.
seems to me, samdung are launching counter measures against other app devs. good luck 🤞
Hi @mark-h any luck/updates with the bug here? Having to keep our company phones locked down to Android 10 for the time being, fearing someone will accidently update
It's still present in the latest Samsung updates (on my Galaxy S10e at least) unfortunately. I took a look at what's happening and it seems the manual exposure is just being ignored by the device for the first image in a burst. This also affects non-burst modes when requesting a different manual exposure (e.g., for exposure time longer than 1/12s, this will no longer work - but if you do that in fast burst mode, it works for all but the first image).
I can reproduce the problem with exposure bracketing in Manual Camera and Freedcam, suggesting that this is a general problem.
I don't know if you have any non-Samsung Android 11 devices, and if so are they affected? Unfortunately I don't have any other Android 11 devices, although I can test in the emulator Android. If it's Samsung only, I can try reporting as a Samsung bug.
Hi Mark, no unfortunately not we currently only have these 2 Samsung's on Android 11. We have managed to roll back one device to Android 10 and it removed the bug so this must be the root.
Our biggest issue is we are currently using Galaxy S20s that ship with Android 10 but these phones have been discontinued already! Forcing us to upgrade in future to the S21 that ships with Android 11 as standard.
Also see https://sourceforge.net/p/opencamera/tickets/819/ .
I had the same problem and have found 2 possible solutions.
The first option works best for me.
Testing this on an S21 (via Samsung RTL) shows the bug still occurs on Android 11, but works correctly with Android 12, so there is some hope. So I guess try this again if/when you get the Android 12 update.
...clearly I spoke to soon, the bug unfortunately still occurs on my Galaxy S10e with Android 12. So seems to depend on device.
Think that this bug also effects HDR. So you miss the darker image, as you get 2 normal and 1 brighter. Wouldn't be a workaround to take one more picture and skip first instead?
I have some knowledge about sensor chips (not this particular). But some are not able to change exposure right away, only in the next. I do work around these sensors by doing a "dummy trigger".
(see also HDR bug https://sourceforge.net/p/opencamera/discussion/general/thread/90e731b759/)
Last edit: starnavi 2022-01-29
Indeed yes, it affects anything where the exposure time for the photo is different to what it was for the preview. I don't want to slow things down for devices that work fine, but I'll see if I can add something like that as a debug option.
Great! As you own a S10e too, you also will benefit ;)
The next version of Open Camera will feature a debug option Settings/Photo settings/"Enable dummy capture HDR/expo fix". Enabling this should fix this problem on Samsung devices (as long as the separate option "Enable fast HDR/expo burst" remains enabled).
Xiaomi Redmi Note 9T, running Android 11, does both the EXPO and the HDR properly.
Thanks for the info - good that it's not affecting all Android 11 devices.
Curiously I noted that the Pixel 6 Pro also has a similar problem - the first image comes out without dark exposure, and in fact has the Pixel's HDR+ effect applied (but only to the first image, and it shouldn't be applied at all when using expo or HDR).
The good news is I have a fix for that for the next version (without needing to insert a "dummy" capture as noted above). But that fix still doesn't fix the problem on my Galaxy S10e, so the debug switch will still be needed for Galaxy devices.