During the launch of Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro (which we remember being exclusive to China) e My 11 Ultra, Lei Jun also showed the capabilities of the devices. There is no doubt that the strong point of these smartphones is the photo gallery. To make them TOPs there is not only the sensor SamsungGN2, that is, the largest at the moment, but also a new one mode for night shots. This has been dramatically boosted and the brand has decided to explain us how he developed it. It is in fact a self-produced algorithm called "Night Owl"(Translated from Chinese).
What is "Night Owl" and how does it work? This is a proprietary algorithm developed by Xiaomi to allow you to take absolutely exceptional night photos
According to a statement from Xiaomi, the idea of this new algorithm was born from the need to make dark photos more “normal”. In essence, the brand realized that there was a need for a solution to the problem of night photography. Ultra Night Mode, so we call one of the best features in this field, it is not enough. The "Night Owl”Is a night mode to the nth degree. When the enlightenment is less than 0.1 Lux lhuman eye cannot perceive colors and shapes distinctly. But lighting is not the only problem. Xiaomi explains that there are others four difficulties:
- low brightness corresponds to higher image noise and even with adequate deep learning, reducing noise is difficult
- the "traditional" algorithms do nothing but overlap several frames to create an average that is as close as possible to the real result but it is difficult to restore a detail eliminated through these operations
- the third problem is the blur that increases when the user shoots handheld
- the algorithm we normally use provides a mechanism for lightening the images, which however lose chromatic precision of the color (white balance)
To solve the above problems, Xiaomi's self-developed "Night Owl" algorithm takes eight photos correctly exposed to which corrections are added before arriving at the final result. What are these fixes?
- the exposure is corrected automatically
- the images are aligned and reconstructed by increasing the details if these have been eliminated during the cropping phase
- the color is corrected and, thanks to artificial intelligence, the contrast is increased or decreased as needed
- the brightness is adjusted in the same way
In all this, however, the greater difficulty lies in reducing the noise of the photographs, which is the random variation of brightness or color information in images. Even with an operation denoising the result is often poor and of low quality: in fact, valuable information is lost that could further improve the photos instead of making them lose quality. Xiaomi's "Night Owl" denoising algorithm combines multi-frame EV0 RAW image information to perform image alignment and reduce the negative impact.
Recall that the largest sensor within this module is the SamsungGN2, an optic of absolute quality which, however, does not count much on the number of pixels, but on autofocus speed. During teardown which came out just a few days ago shots are also presented that put a discussion panel this smartphone with Huawei P40 Plus e iPhone 12 Pro Max. These are two other sacred monsters of photography which, however, do not stand up to comparison. For the sake of completeness, we remind you that the cameras of this smartphone are:
- main sensor with a resolution of 50 megapixel
- wide-angle sensor with a resolution of 48 megapixel
- periscope telephoto lens with a resolution of 48 megapixel
To complete the speech, the brand stated that this particular algorithm is present on both the Pro and Ultra variant. The first, however, as we know, will never arrive in Europe.
What a show. This time Xiaomi has really outdone itself