Why do DNG files from some Android phones look overexposed compared with the in-camera JPEG?
Asked 12/20/2015
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When I shoot RAW (DNG) on a Nexus phone, the DNG often looks much brighter or more overexposed in Lightroom than the phone’s JPEG from the same shot. This happens even in scenes that do not seem especially high in dynamic range. Is this because some phone cameras expose to the right, because of Android or a specific camera app, or because Lightroom is rendering the DNG differently from the phone’s own JPEG? Is there metadata in the DNG that tells a raw converter how to match the camera’s intended exposure and tone?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
2 Answers
6
I think you're under a misconception here. There's no evidence that the Android phone is doing anything but picking a middle exposure. The scene has a lot of dynamic range — it's a big difference between the shadows and the sky, but the camera is doing a great job keeping both (as you say, it looks like it activated the auto-HDR in camera).
Lightroom is just, for whatever reason, choosing to really pull up those shadows when you hit "auto". And, you can see that it is actually looking detail in the sky when doing so. The misconception is that Lightroom matches the camera's settings with "auto tone". This is very much not true. It's basically seeing all the largely-darker landscape and saying "let me fix that for you!" — even though it's probably better in a lower key. Lightroom is great software, but that particular feature tends to be unreliable and often extreme. (You don't have to take my word for it — see Is Lightroom Auto Tone very dodgy?).
Originally by user1943. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1943
10y ago
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Usually this is more about raw rendering than simple overexposure. The phone’s JPEG is heavily processed by the manufacturer, often with tone mapping, highlight protection, shadow shaping, and sometimes HDR. A DNG is much closer to sensor data, so Lightroom or another raw converter may interpret it very differently.
So: no, you can’t generalize that smartphones “expose to the right.” Some may bias exposure to protect highlights or maximize sensor performance, and HDR modes may also choose different base exposures, but behavior varies by device and mode.
Also, Lightroom’s Auto settings do not reproduce the camera JPEG look. They analyze the image and apply their own tonal adjustments, which can lift shadows and make the image appear overexposed even when highlight detail is still recoverable.
There may be metadata in the DNG that helps a raw converter, but matching the phone JPEG is not a simple fixed exposure correction. The camera maker’s JPEG pipeline uses proprietary processing that raw software may not duplicate exactly.
In practice, treat the DNG and JPEG as different renderings: lower exposure/highlights or adjust tone manually in Lightroom if needed.
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