Computational Photography, broken – Microsoft Pix Review

Well, where to begin. Version 1.0 was fast, hard on the battery. Later versions all got crashier and slower (using a snap timer rather than a frame timeout). Now a decent pic can take 30 to 45 seconds to snap a photo (whereas version 1.0 used a frame timeout of around 30 frames). Fairly useless for most photographers except as a shake reducer. Now onto the problems. Computational Photography is memory & CPU thrashing & battery draining. But in smartphones this is actually the optimal platform for this right now (GOOGLE PIXEL cameras being the prime example of competent optimization for functions of Computational Photography). However, aside from shake-reduction this Microsoft App is no longer optimally sharp or useful as the speed of version 1.0. The per-seconds clock-timeout is non-optimal for the decreasing value of this app. I don’t see “coded shutter technique” or even non-linear sensor refresh in play (instead of using a line-push CMOS racetrack refresh, a non-linear wave of coded push patterns create a coded pixel refresh image that is great for denoising & temporal sharpening as well as effectively doubling the image resolution on the refresh axis). Very disappointing medium-effort programming from a neglected gem of camera innovation without drastically changing the core hardware of the camera itself (GOOGLE PIXEL camera again showing how to properly polish a programmer’s gem of effort that Microsoft carelessly discards like a drunken slut at Christmas while greedily unwrapping more presents to almost immediately disregard to high value & effort invested in choosing them.) Unless I’m doing badly lit shots or night shots, a 30 second snap time on still images is absurd.
Review by Matrix29bear on Microsoft Pix.