How to make images taken with with a phone's wide angle lens curved?

I recently uploaded some images taken with a wide angle lens, but they’re still completely flat. How is it possible to curve them like this: https://mapillary.com/map/im/181368563761988

You do not curve them. It takes some time for 3D reconstruction to figure out the lens/projection parameters. Just give it some time and wait patiently.

1 Like

Thank you! Do you happen to know if this also works with external camera apps? The Mapillary app (Android) doesn’t recognize my phones wide angle lens so I captured the images with Open camera. It includes the lens information in the exif metadata though.

Did you update to the latest version?
CC @Yaro

1 Like

Yes, I did. I’m on version 2026.03.16-6.12.76 right now.

1 Like

Good. Lens selection should work in the latest app. @Yaro is going to look into why it does not work for you.

Generally, the platform works with every lens automatically. Focal length Exif data is no longer used for 3D reconstruction’s initial spatial setup. Though, for best (and quickest) results subsequent images should view overlap.

Thank you for the ping.

Regarding wide-angle, it should work across all devices. The only exception I saw was, I think, one Samsung phone which didn’t expose access through the standard API, and that phone wasn’t their latest model (they have exposed access in newer models). @ArnoArska , if you are comfortable with sharing your phone model (here or in DM), I will try to find it and take a look at this specific issue.


BR, Yaro

1 Like

I use a Sony Xperia 1 III with LineageOS 23.2. The support varies with different apps, but the extra lenses should be available via camera2api. Device Info HV from Play Store tells that the api is limited on the wide angle lens though. I wonder if this matters. Some apps can use all lenses with it still though.

All open source Android implementations usually must rely on some sort of proprietary firmware when accessing peripheral devices, may it be for the GPU, camera, Wi-Fi, GPS etc. Hence, some Camera 2 API features are probably limited on your phone because even though a complete camera firmware may be on the phone, your specific Android/phone/firmware/camera combo probably still requires some additional Android coding and engineering to get all camera features up and running. Some apps fall back to Camera (1) API or make transparent dual use of Camera (1) and Camera 2 API features, hence the inconsistent per app behavior.

Android is not “plug & play” at all. It is more like “distilled for one and only”. But, like you have found out yourself; at least you have a workaround via other apps. :wink:

1 Like

@ArnoArska - do you have links to the images you uploaded on Mapillary?

Yes I do. For example this: https://mapillary.com/map/im/941877212028533

Thank you for the details. We really do use Camera 2 API, as mentioned by @GITNE. Most probably, the Sony Xperia 1 III on LineageOS likely reports CONTROL_ZOOM_RATIO_RANGE starting at 1.0 on the logical camera, hiding the wide-angle.


BR, Yaro

1 Like

:face_with_hand_over_mouth: From all the captures you made, you have picked the linear lens one.

As you can see here, 3D reconstruction has just begun to figure out projection parameters, which results in already deformed images. However, they are not perfect yet, which one can tell by looking at the corners.
Hence, patience is a virtue.

The above example also shows that potentially due to the non original OS software the phone’s camera may have lost its rolling shutter compensation capability.

Did you enable HDR for your captures? Your latest images look incredibly grainy in shadowed areas but fine in lit areas. Because although the Sony Xperia 1 III boasts HDR capability its pictures look rather mediocre at best (at least when captured in motion). Maybe the awful grain is caused by down-sampling to SDR only capable JPEG? But, I do not think so. Neither Mapillary currently nor JPEG support HDR. Try to switch to SDR.