How to use realme X3 SuperZoom Starry Mode

by Adeel Younas

The realme X3 SuperZoom high-end hardware underneath the hood, all at an attractive price point). As its name suggests, the realme X3 SuperZoom has allowed photography to play a prominent role in the device. Apart from boasting of a 60x superzoom, there is also a 64-megapixel giant sensor from Samsung, in addition to the ultra-wide-angle camera and the macro camera lens. We will look at all of them in starry Mode of phone.

realme Starry Mode’s astrophotography mode. The company says it uses AI algorithms and multi-frame image processing to produce shots of the night sky. More specifically, it uses over ten exposures, with the total “exposure” time lasting for up to four minutes it offers a Nightscape Pro mode, giving you the multi-frame HDR and noise reduction goodness while still letting you tweak ISO, shutter speed, and other features. There’s also an Ultra Nightscape Mode in addition to the standard Nightscape mode, with the new mode being designed for extreme low-light snaps.

For information, Starry Mode is designed exclusively on the SuperZoom X3 which allows users to capture the starry night sky. This is because a number of young people are considered to like exploring and exploring beyond the limits in mobile photography and they always want to be able to capture the beautiful starry night sky.

The testing team from Realme researched in an environment far from the city, in an extreme environment day to night. Until the 6,000-hour test effort with dozens of photo versions, they finally brought the amazing Starry Mode to the X3 SuperZoom. Following is a complete guideline to shoot in Starry Mode.

Why does realme develop Starry Mode in realme X3 SuperZoom?

Starlight, emitted by stars light-years away from earth, travels a long way to appear in the night sky, becoming the infinite dream of humans.

To record these twinkling moments, realme camera team started R&D of Starry Mode in 250 days ago and established a 50-person special team. In the past few months, the team traveled all over the world, tested Starry Mode in the deserts and prairies, left their footprints in New Zealand, Iceland, Siberia, and China. The R&D of the Starry Mode involves four camera teams: product team, hardware team, algorithm team, and test team. The test team always worked in the wild far from the city, working in the extreme environment day and night, cooperated closely with the product team, algorithm team, and hardware team thousands of kilometers away to efficiently debug and improve Starry Mode. After 6,000 hours of efforts and dozens of versions, they finally brought the astonishing Starry Mode.

Starry Mode solves the two biggest challenges of shooting starry sky by smartphone. First, the moving track of the stars. Due to the fast move of stars and multi-frame long exposure algorithms, moving tracks will appear in photos. The starry mode could control the exposure time and the AI algorithm would align stars in different frames to keep the stars crystal clear. Second, the defect dots. Even professional cameras will produce irregular defect dots in a long-exposure photo. To solve problems, a well-trained AI algorithm is applied in starry mode to eliminate defect dots, eventually make the starry sky purer and brighter.

How does Starry Mode work?

In terms of algorithm, after many tests and sample photo analysis, realme selected special combination of four major photography parameters: shutter time, ISO sensitivity, focusing distance, a white balance which can help you shoot amazing starry sky in most cases.

First, Autofocus can automatically focus on a farthest starry night. Then it will take more than 10 ultra-long exposure photos and then comes to multi-frame synthesis to perfectly reproduce every detail of starry night with balanced brightness and less noise. There are three major steps in the multi-frame synthesis algorithm.

The first step is to brighten the dark stars that were originally invisible to the naked eye and make the galaxy even brighter to achieve gorgeous and colorful starry sky photos. The second step is intelligent alignment, which automatically aligns multiple photos through the AI, automatically eliminating ghosting and unnecessary moving track of stars in long exposure. It greatly improves the clarity of stars. The third step is intelligent multi-frame noise reduction to improve the purity of dark parts in the sky.

Starry Mode supports both 64MP primary camera and 5x Periscope Lens*. The primary camera is the best to shoot the wide starry sky and milky way, and 5x Periscope Lens is more convenient to zoom in to constellations such as the Big Dipper and Lyra.

How to shoot an excellent starry shot by Starry Mode?

Firstly Prepare for Shooting

  1. Tripod: a tripod or similar phone mount must be used to keep X3 SuperZoom stable. The shooting time of Starry Mode is about 4 minutes for the 64MP primary camera and 1 minute for the periscope lens.
  2. A cloudless night:
    1. Avoid nights with a full moon and a bright moon.
    2. Avoid cloudy and rainy weather.
    3. If you want to take the Milky Way, you need to use a professional weather app to check the detailed weather conditions.
  1. Location: Please avoid large cities with light pollution. The ideal location to take the Milky Way and stars is somewhere without strong lights and at least 100 km away from light-polluted cities.
  2. Safety equipment: flashlights, clothes to keep warm, insect repellant, etc.
  3. Don’t forget the realme X3 SuperZoom!

p.s. You can use some astronomy apps to check stars and the Milky Way you want to take photos.

Second, activate Starry mode

  1. Open “Camera”
  2. Click “NIGHT” on the left;
  3. Click “Starry Mode” on the top

starry mode

Thirdly, follow these useful rules

  1. Keep your phone stable.
  2. Do not exit the camera in processing. The rotating shutter button means the starry photo is still under processing.
  3. In the darkness, if you want to preview the layout, you could switch to Ultra Nightscape Mode to take a draft photo.How to use realme X3 SuperZoom Starry Mode
  4. During the process of taking photos, please avoid a strong light shoot to the camera.
  5. Please avoid complex objects and light in the foreground.
  6. The Milky Way would be the highest brightness when it comes to the highest position in the sky. It’s the best time to shoot the Milky Way.

In the last, simply processes the picture

Take an example by using Snapseed.

  1. Appropriately turn up exposure, contrast, saturation, ambiance, highlights.
  2. Appropriately turn down shadows, color temperature to make stars stand out and colors look better.
  3. Appropriately turn up the structure and sharpening to enhance clarity.
  4. Add a vignette to highlight the center of the starry sky.

How to use realme X3 SuperZoom Starry Mode

Results pre-processing and post-processing:

starry mode realme X3 superzoomstarry mode realme X3 superzoom

I’ll record and post my images on Instagram so stay tuned and don’t forget to follow @techwafer on Instagram. If you’ve got any query let me know in comment section below!

You may also like

1 comment

AndrySS December 12, 2020 - 12:33 pm

can you share full resolution images of stars to see the quality?

Reply

Leave a Comment

Adblock Detected

Please support us by disabling your AdBlocker extension from your browsers for our website.