So... I'm asking for too much from this thing, I'm sure of it, but I figured out how to get astrophotography mode to work on my XL and, I'm disappointed, maybe because I have a bit of experience with the hobby, or my skies are trash and I have a bit of an idea on how to circumvent some of the light pollution, but I was curious about this mode.
Well, last night err... Early this morning if cleared up some so I figured I'd pull out a tripod, clamp the pixel to it, and try it out thinking, I'd get a little bit more stars in the frame seeing as I was pointing to near the core of the galaxy.
A 3 and a half minute exposure gave me this...
What really got me was the stars that where picked up where out of focus! If it's in astrophotography mode I'd expect it to automatically lock at infinity and these are pretty small sensors anyway.
I think for about the same price, I could have gotten a DSLR, cheap lens, tripod and taken a shorter exposure and got more out of it with a quick edit. Normally a camera will do better picking out more stars then one can see. It probably noise reduced them out.
Probably asking too much but when they push this mode as a feature...
Skies should have been darker. Should have used a tracking mode. 😒
Edit: just wanted to share my first experience with astro mode on this thing. Definitely don't seem good for my overly bright skies. And I know I am asking too much of it. Still a decent day camera though 😉
) hardware, I think Google would see so much more success if they just focused on their ‘A’ plaform and make that the default ‘Pixel’. People consider the Pixels great because of their camera and tight user experience, things found on all of their A models. Put everything into properly developing those phones, market them accordingly, make them far more widely available and Google may actually see success with their smart phones.
