Equipment Spotlight: Google Pixel Really Blue [Color]

The pictures are improving, my editing skills are improving, and the results are joyful, but in case you haven’t noticed yet, my camera of choice is my Google Pixel Really Blue Phone.  I use this everyday for, well, phone calls, texts and email.  So as you can see it earned character in scratches and cracks as a result.  Yes if you’re wondering, I do also have an iPhone.  It’s a work phone that I don’t have too many positive things to say and the world has already compared the two phones with nauseating persistence.

Why Google Pixel

You’re reading this to understand why it’s my camera of choice at this stage in my young astrophotography career.  It’s simple, I love a challenge, and I don’t see many people using this phone for this purpose.  In addition, all over Twitter and Facebook I see the work of Samsung and Apple phones proudly displayed.

More importantly, I get that Google limits the Pixel shutter opening time to 0.6 seconds max.  You can’t get great shots with that short an opening time.  This coupled with, light pollution, is a significant difference between seeing more nebulosity in a nebula or just a bright star.  Again, I take photos from my yard in Hampton Roads Virginia, so light pollution is a problem.

Smartphone Details

All smartphones have one thing in common, the stock camera app leaves out all the bells and whistles needed to capture a decent astrophotography photo.  Therefore an app like Camera FV-5 is downloaded and the user becomes hooked.  This app is nice.  You can adjust ISO, Shutter Speed, and even use it as an intervalometer.  Great for most smartphones except the Pixel.  Yep, Google limits the shutter speed in the hardware not the software like everyone else.  I have a fix for that, but that’ll be in my next post.

Reflection Astrophotography & Google Pixel

Let’s discuss this awesome camera on the Pixel that everyone raved about.  I too am raving about it.  The system they’ve implemented takes a number of pictures and stacks them for you.

If you’re not aware of stacking pictures, I’ll discuss in another post.  Anyway their camera produces great low light photos and most other types of photos are great, except photos through my telescope.  Taking a picture of the reflection leads to, well, reflections. Here is the result.

At the bottom center are two purple smudges.  They are coming from the camera sensor on the Pixel.  It turns out the pixel uses reflected light to measure the light conditions.  Needless to say it reflects off the telescope eyepiece and becomes part of the picture noise.  It’s also very difficult to eliminate from the picture.

Yet after some trial and error I was able to eliminate this defect from the pictures and achieve results like this Orion Nebula photo.  The choice of camera is yours and of course there are many options to choose.  Just at there is with software to edit your photos.  Even with the Google Pixel, and any other camera for that matter, you have to edit the photos to get the desired result. I enjoy the results of my efforts and will share more in additional posts on how you can improve your smartphone astrophotography.  Keep trying new things and clear skies to you!