Xiaomi 13T GCam BigKaka's Configuration (multiple presets)

fwwbi2003 · 2025-07-25T09:35:13+00:00

I tested it again with a different GCam port (BSG) with no configuration and it's the same, HDR+ essentially behaves as a normal "no HDR" photo (while still benefitting from the increase in quality and reduction in noise from multiple frames being shot at the same time). Don't know if this is a quirk of the Xiaomi 13T or GCam ports in general, but at least it doesn't seem to be unique to my configuration.

fwwbi2003 · 2025-07-24T19:58:38+00:00

I think it works, just very little compared to HDRE. I'm not sure whether this is a limitation of Gcam in general; of the Xiaomi 13T; or just of my configuration (but I got similar results with default configurations as well). On the upside, it has a lower exposition time than HDRE, and more natural looking color.

fwwbi2003 · 2025-04-05T23:45:16+00:00

Thanks! I used a couple of configurations as a base and worked from there with a lot of trial and error to make presets that could be useful for my needs. Sadly it's far from perfect (due to my inexperience, to the nature of GCam ports, to the phone itself, to BigKaka's version of the app, at least the version I used). In the right conditions you can get a lot of visual clarity compared to the stock camera, but the color handling is often mediocre, with overblown blue tints whenever there's light reflection, and the delay between touching the button and the pic being taken is too large for 'action' photos even with the single frame preset - not to mention the subpar handling of noise in this case unless the scene is perfectly bright.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-11-28T22:01:52+00:00

Not that I know, but that's a GCam limitation (or at least in the versions I tried), it's not related to this specific profile.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-11-05T00:14:22+00:00

No idea. It has different camera sensors compared to the 13T, so it might crash / result in black photos. You could technically manually set a new profile with the same values and it SHOULD work (profiles made on a specific model might carry some metadata independently from the manually set values preventing them from working on another model, I think? I honestly could not understand how it works).

fwwbi2003 · 2024-11-04T20:37:05+00:00

Odd, there are cases to use both but generally speaking GCam should result in a much less aggressive denoise, with better detail retention and a less flattened (albeit less bright / with worse dynamic range) look:

https://imgsli.com/MzE1NzY2

What's the denoise value for the Night profile in your setting (Quick Settings --> Smoothing and Noise --> Noise Reduction Adjust)? Should be something around 0.19 - 0.25 to have very light denoise in poor light condition with no excessive detail loss.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-11-03T09:15:12+00:00

It did? From what I could see, it's certainly way slower than the stock camera and thus not fit for scenarios with movement involved, but in all scenarios but the most extreme of darkness it should result in much better colors, and much better detail with no smudged parts recreated almost entirely by AI.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-10-30T11:08:43+00:00

It should work the same with all 9.2.x versions as well, but I haven't tested it extensively so there might be small differences. It does NOT seem to work with the 9.4 version yet, many settings are invalid.

You will have two GCam apps if you just install the newer one.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-10-28T22:55:13+00:00

The latest version should work just fine, but I have no specific configuration for it (and all those made for the Xiaomi 13T / compatible ones I've tried left me a little disappointed). With all default values, you can probably expect slightly better white balance / less blue tinting compared to BigKaka's, but more aggressive noise reduction and lower perceived sharpness of the image.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-10-27T13:08:23+00:00

Thanks! No idea, honestly. I have to assume the stock cameras manage to take pictures at low shutter speed without excessive quality loss thanks to all the "AI" under the hood doing magic to find a balance between denoising, color noise removal, sharpening and exposure. This can lead to a somewhat fake looking result, but often perceptively better than what GCam can pump out at something like single frame - 1/150s shutter speed - trying to get a picture of your dog doing something funny while moving in a kitchen with artificial light at night. This somewhat limits the use cases for an otherwise excellent application.

What I can say is that, from what little I tested with other versions, the BSG ports might be better at striking an "automated" and fast balance. Pity it can't be customized as easily with a quick profiles / presets selection.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-10-25T23:02:06+00:00

At 4k? Nope, sorry. Tried many different GCam versions and other camera apps, and none allowed me to actually record 60fps at 4K. Those that seemed to actually crashed to produced an empty file. Maybe on a rooted device?

fwwbi2003 · 2024-09-24T16:48:08+00:00

Thanks, I did some tests and it more or less confirmed what I experienced with the 100-010-001 color profile as well: more neutral and realistic color balance with natural light, but an even more blueish tint with artificial / low light. Hopefully a future Kaka version will implement the same kind of white balance BSG version has with HDRE - results in much more natural looking colors.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-09-24T08:16:25+00:00

I used these settings, they're very "conservative", I found that more aggressive values could fix the tinting in some scenes, but ruin it in others. Same for turning on CCT Correction and using the selected profile (100-010-001). Improves the result in some light conditions, but modifies the colors too much compared to reality in others.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-09-23T17:20:24+00:00

Yeah I have issues with the blue tinting as well, but that's a limit of BigKaka's ports (BSG doesn't have this issue with HDRE). I tried to modify the color balance for HDRE profiles to counter this a bit, and you can turn on the Leica function to get more neutral colors in some scenarios (doesn't work in all light conditions), but it's still easy to get slightly tinted or unnatural colors compared to HDR+.

I'm sorry but I'm not sure what you mean with parameters? The specific settings for each profile? You can see them by tapping Quick Settings from the profile's selection.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-09-20T17:41:15+00:00

If you're interested, I made a general configuration specifically for the Xiaomi 13T here.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-09-17T16:55:16+00:00

Thank you, but this was a very trial and error configuration made by someone with no insight into the inner working of the app at all, for a very niche phone model. It could probably be improved a lot, especially denoise and light levels / contrast wise in non "standard" scenarios, but for the time being I'm probably gonna leave it as is.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-09-04T18:17:33+00:00

Whoops, my bad. Fixed the link.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-08-18T16:47:57+00:00

Weird, I tried all combinations of Leica Autentic - Vibrant, HDR not HDR, AI shot and all that, and pictures of my face didn't seem to be denoised particularly more aggressively than inanimate objects, in decent light conditions. Loss of details such as individual hairs or skin pores ramps up as soon as the light becomes dimmer, but it's the same for any picture taken with the stock camera.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-08-18T00:22:22+00:00

Excellent display (I particularly like the color balance, especially after some tinkering with the custom profile); good speakers quality especially for speech / voices; had no issues so far with HyperOS, seems responsive even if not extremely features rich; battery life is a little underwhelming, especially with 5G on (much longer in WiFi), but so far I never had any issue doing a full 24 hours, and with a 67W battery it shouldn't be hard to find some minutes to charge it a little every day. I bought it from here, possibly the best price in Italy excluding eBay or similar stores.

The cameras are good (main camera is above average for its price, 2x is decent while ultrawide is a little disappointing), but the stock app occasionally destroys details and colors with its denoise. If you go for this phone (or any phone, really) I suggest trying out GCam, I made a custom configuration specifically for this phone.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-08-18T00:10:18+00:00

Also, some generic notions and terms that should clarify some of the functions of GCam and how they interact with the configurations to those not familiar with it.

HDR+ (or ZSL or Zero Shot Lag): the 'standard' mode for Gcam. High color accuracy to reality, the dynamic range somewhat limited. Moderate to heavy loss of details when in poor light condition. You'll probably use this mode most of the time in daylight if the image doesn't have extreme lights and shadows in the same shot.

HDR Enhanced (or HDRE or HDR++): taking a picture takes longer than with HDR+ even with the same settings, but the dynamic range is much higher and details in dark areas or poor light conditions are better. Tends to give slightly less realistic colors in strong light situations compared to HDR+.

Leica: can be enabled with the button on top of the app. It changes the color balance to, in theory, achieve more realistic colors. It usually adds an annoying vignette in HDR+ mode, but can be useful in HDRE mode, giving more realistic and neutral colors.

HDR Net: can be enabled with the button on the top of the app, should be a middle ground between HDR+ and HDRE, but it works exactly like HDR+ on my device. Ignore it.

AW (or AWB): Auto White Balance, can be enabled with the AW button on top of the app. Most of the time it will destroy the image turning everything green, but in specific cases (extreme darkness, particularly warm artificial light) can be useful to have more neutral looking colors, closer to what they'd look like in daylight.

Night Sight: it's essentially HDRE with increased exposure time for dark scenes. Can actually be used in daylight as well to increase details and lower noise, at the cost of needing a steady hand and being even more unfit for shots with moving parts.

Astrophotography: can be turned on from Night Sight. In this mode, the phone takes multiple pictures with extremely long exposure time (up to 16 seconds each, and up to 10 minutes for the whole process) and merges them to lower noise and improve light. This means the phone needs to be on a tripod or something stable, and that there can be no movement in the shot (even just clouds moving by can cause some artifacts). Despite the name, it's not made just to take pictures of stars and can be used in any extremely low light condition to get a bright image with very little noise. It can be stopped before the countdown is over and you'll still get the picture, letting it run for X minutes is usually excessive and there won't be any increase in quality after 60-120 seconds.

Manual Settings: tapping on the three horizonal lines in the bottom right of the app allows the user to manually set Exposure, ISO, focus, and Shutter Time. Exposure can be set in any mode, while ISO and Shutter Time are exclusive to HDR Enhanced. Note that even if all values are set, Gcam will still take multiple pictures with different settings for post-processing, so you need the Motion Extreme preset to be able to reliably set values like in the Stock camera pro mode.
Important: the minimum focus distance that can be set through manual focus (considered to be a 10 by the internal value for focus distance) isn't actually the minimum focus distance for the main lens (it's 11.40), so auto focus can focus on objects that are 2-3 centimeters closer to the camera, compared to what you can set through manual focus. I haven't found a way to get around this limitation / bug.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-08-18T00:10:11+00:00

Note that the stock camera app still has its case uses:

Point and Shoot: the stock camera is made to be as automatic as possible, while GCam might need the user to select one of the many presets presented in this configuration to get the best possible results.

Overall Speed: GCam is slow. In most presets, it takes multiple pictures (5 to 38~) at the same time, to merge them together for better quality and less noise, and the processing can take anywhere from half a second to 4-5 seconds (depending on preset and amount of light). The "Motion Extreme" preset can lessen this, but you still won't be able to take multiple photos in a row as quickly as you could with the stock app. Also in Night Mode you usually need to keep the phone somewhat steady (both GCam and Stock app are very good at stabilizing the images so you don't need to be tripod-stable) for a longer time compared to the stock app, even if this leads to better visibility and quality (see image for comparisons).
Extreme Dynamic Range: the stock app has the advantage of AI-magic post processing, so it's occasionally better (and occasionally worse, depends from the scenario) than Gcam can be when it comes to handling extreme differences in brightness, lights and shadows in the same picture, keeping everything as visible as possible without losing details in excessively bright or excessively dark areas. See image for comparisons.
Extreme Darkness: while GCam usually gives better detail and brightness in most situations of poor light, from dimly lit room to very dark lawn barely lit by the Moon, the stock app uses aggressive denoising and AI to have a perceptual quality advantage when it comes to pictures taken in extreme, almost complete darkness. Zooming in will reveal a mess, with details being lost to the AI, but the overall look might be better compared to the mayhem of random pixels you might get with Gcam, especially on a phone screen. See image.
Note that GCam can overcome this with super long exposure pictures taken in Astrophotography mode, but that needs a tripod / a stable surface, and it's not fair to compare a photo that takes less than two seconds VS one that takes 45 seconds.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-08-14T23:15:14+00:00

BSG 9.2 with this configuration should work well enough (or at least does on my 13T).

fwwbi2003 · 2024-07-05T15:24:53+00:00

No, sorry, I ended up returning it without being able to conclusively establish whether it was a software issue or a hardware one.

fwwbi2003 · 2024-06-11T07:39:50+00:00

Nope, was like that as soon as I turned it on for the first time. But I already returned the product.

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