Camera Fix and it works

[joegrind]

Correction, its a 24.5 DAY cycle error. I havent tried to set the date back a few days either, it wasn't mentioned if that would "fix" the auto focus error the droid has or not, but we are good for about a month, and motorola thinks a fix will be out before then.

I was told its a rounding error bug in the camera's driver autofocus routine(which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly.

Mike

fyi...this was mentioned and tried about 3 hours ago...if you care to read the previous threads...

 

[windstrings]

A virus is a hell of a lot different from a coding error. The problem with the camera is a software bug, not a virus.

maybe I just don't understand enough about programming "as I don't", I can't tie the relationship between a clock, date, time or any such thing as having to do anything at all with the focus of a camera?

What am I missing?

 

[Stigy]

It seems that each auto-focus routine has a timestamp associated with it. The timestamp was being rounded incorrectly causing the auto-focus routing to fail.

That is what it sounds like to me basically.

 

[windstrings]

I was told its a rounding error bug in the camera's driver autofocus routine(which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly.
Mike

Ok.... I can maybe see how the camera wants to know when the picture was takes so it can timestamp the pic... but how in the world do you get a revolving error like that?

Does that mean when it messes up again we could turn our clocks back to now and take good pics again?

I guess that won't matter if this issue is fixed Dec11th.

 

[mth04]

I was told its a rounding error bug in the camera's driver autofocus routine(which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly.
Mike

Ok.... I can maybe see how the camera wants to know when the picture was takes so it can timestamp the pic... but how in the world do you get a revolving error like that?

Does that mean when it messes up again we could turn our clocks back to now and take good pics again?

I guess that won't matter if this issue is fixed Dec11th.

In theory yes. If that is the correct fix .

 

[brubakes]

Sure did make an improvement.

 

[metalmenance]

Calls in the middle of the night, texting random people at odd hours, cameras suddenly working......

This device is operating independent of us.

I'm not going with a silent update. I think they have created something they thought they could control. It's an experiment gone wrong.

Look at the commercials, it's all right there. To think I thought it was just slick marketing. Wow.

:greendroid:It would/will be very freakin cool to be true!!!!!!!! LOL :icon_ devil:
Whichever/Whatever i dont care, this :motdroidvert: is a cool slick fast device that I am enjoying very much over past smartphones ive owned and if this one is a true *smartphone* then albiet and if it leads to the destruction of man kind then oh well, we built them and there is no turning back now, I myself will befriend them and maybe they wont git rid of us all!!! :reddroid: LMFAO
:motdroidhoriz:

 

[CharmPeddler]

Its a Mericale !!!

 

[Ridley]

I cleaned mine after I noticed the first pics I took had halos around the bright white parts, cleaning took care of that and the focus issues, but did nothing for the graininess

 

[SoCal65]

Note to Droid owners: the surprise focus fix is a date-related camera bug self-correcting as of the 17th, not a silent update.

Dan Morrill (morrildl) on Twitter

 

[PridgNYC]

A virus is a hell of a lot different from a coding error. The problem with the camera is a software bug, not a virus.

maybe I just don't understand enough about programming "as I don't", I can't tie the relationship between a clock, date, time or any such thing as having to do anything at all with the focus of a camera?

What am I missing?

The most simple reason is that it uses time to track the focus postion of the lens. This is easier and less mechanically complicated than having position sensors built into the lens assembly. With a fixed speed drive mechanism, you will always end up at the same place if you drive the focus motor (starting from a set position) a certain number of milliseconds.

 

[BigTex71]

Yes, it is a date related issue with the timestamp. The 17th of November started a new 24.5 day 'window' for the autofocus to work properly. I don't think it is a coincidence that the big update is coming on December 11th - that is 24 days from November 17th! The powers that be apparently knew about this issue (which is a good thing) but why didn't they just mention that it would start working on the 17th of November and why? Kudos for them knowing and getting a patch ready, but jeers to them for not communicating the issue to us users.

 

[hazydave]

BTW: Dows this camera have zoom? I installed another camera app, and it doesn't zoom at all. And the zoom on the original camera app looks like it is just digital zoom?

Most cheap cameras (cellphone, "Flip" style video cameras, etc) have no zoom. Real zoom greatly complicates lens design, meaning you need lots more room for a lens, more elements, corrective elements to deal with chromatic abberations, all kinds of things. Easy enough, given today's CAD tools, but not likely to fit in devices of this class.

The common alternative is "digital zoom"... in short, just use some of the pixels in the center of the lens, not all of them. For digital stills, this makes very little sense, unless you need to ship off the "blowup" via photo message or something. You can always process it later for the same effect, in Photoshop or any other photo editor.

For video, it's not a bad idea... you're downrezzing the 5Mpixel image to 1/3Mpixel in normal DROID shooting. Cropping to something less won't have a huge effect on the video quality. Maybe a bit.. the downrezzing tends to eliminate some of the noise we see... for whatever reasons, the DROID camera seems noisier than one would expect these days.

I'm not sure why. This is supposedly a 1/4" Kodak sensor.. 1/4" is small, but not crazy small.. plenty of much better cameras use sensors of that size. Many cheaper consumer video cameras are down to 1/6" or 1/8" sensors, even. And Kodak makes pretty decent sensor chips, too. It might just be that they're doing the usual amount of noise-reduction image processing that you find in a modern low-end P&S camera. That's a thing to hope for, since it can be fixed.

 

[Zippster]

Not raining on anyones parade either, but my camera has been a real POS since day one, earlier today I noticed another Shopsavvy update and tried to scan some things and ALL went real fast, decided to snap some pics and ALL went to green corners and I could NEVER get them, only red. All of this done on a job site without ever cleaning my lens or even knowing about this thread, so something was done. :icon_ banana:

 

[Zippster]

Scanning QR pics though via barcode scanner doesnt seem to have improved much for me. :icon_evil: