camera totally useless in dark tell me something new

[wuyanks]

i did a test during the snowstorm and posted the pics... i did a day/night comparison, and found the same problems as the rest of you. i heard if you change the focus setting to "infinity", it works better, but i haven't tried

 

[angelman]

I do wonder if here is a bug at least in some cameras. the. fact that I can fool the camera into exposing correctly by pointing at a bright light source and then moving it back indicates enough light is getting to the sensor. there is just no way I can take any photo in anything but perfect regardless of the setting and the fact hat nightingale mode does nothing, I would expect it to slow shutter speed down, indicates there is just a bug in the software. maybe that doesn't affect all cameras hence some people Sagittarius they an get good images in dark lighting

 

[Bostonsfavson]

my wife's cousin was over for christmas eve with his new eris. he took a couple of pics that simply looked great. I didn't dare try to take any with my droid. 'nuff said.

Agree! My girlfriend's Eris takes very nice pictures. My Droid? Not so much. I snap pics quite a bit, and even with 3rd party apps the quality is very low. Hopefully 2.1 improves the camera, or someone comes out with an app that fundamentally improves the camera (not sure that's even possible, though).

 

[Martin030908]

Common problem most people don't think of is this... the fact that the Droid camera is a little slow gives a larger window of error for people to 'move' the camera while the photo is being taken.

 

[magdream]

I'm sure that's a factor, but even when the pic is in focus it's still dull and grainy. Outdoor shots look fine and video even better.

 

[magdream]

Btw, my flash is no longer working. I think it has something to do with the mototorch app I downloaded. No biggie since the flash was useless. I'd rather use it as a flashlight anyway. Otherwise I'm loving the droid.

 

[NPC]

It sucks big time. In rooms that are not that well lit, i see nothing but darkness on screen. I can't even see the picture i am about to take.

And just how do you propose they add light to a scene that doesn't have sufficient light to illuminate the scene on the screen? Until the flash fires, in a dark location, the screen can only show what it sees. That is true of any camera.

The issue is that the screen goes dark if the room or subject is not brightly lit. You can't see what you are trying to take a picture of on the screen. The room definitely has enough light for this. Something is wrong with the camera. My wife has an Eris and the screen on the Eris is very bright, while the Motorola Droid screen is dark. I should try and take a picture of the two screens side by side and upload them.

I'm considering trading the phone in for an Eris. I've only had it for a week, but this flaw in the camera is really bad.

 

[angelman]

There is definately a problem with the camera in this regard. I am not talking about how incredibly slow it is, nor grainy images etc. all of these are to be expected with a phone camera (well maybe not the slowness but certainly grainy images in poorly lit scenes), I am talking about flaw in the way the camera is exposing images with high contrast. If you have a darkly lit room with some bright areas it seems to exposure for the bright areas of light not the dark. It is definately capable of exposing for the dark areas but it does not.
Has anyone tried bringing this up in a motorola tech forum?
I assume this is a motorola problem not an android one since the same camera software appears to work fine in other android phones. I can't believe they havent looked at fixing this. Can Motorola send an OTA update to fix the camera libraries. I imagine Motorola provides some sort of library for it's camera which Android references. If this library has bugs in the exposure then no changes to android unless they are Droid specific will do much.. or am I talking utter nonsense?

It sucks big time. In rooms that are not that well lit, i see nothing but darkness on screen. I can't even see the picture i am about to take.

And just how do you propose they add light to a scene that doesn't have sufficient light to illuminate the scene on the screen? Until the flash fires, in a dark location, the screen can only show what it sees. That is true of any camera.

The issue is that the screen goes dark if the room or subject is not brightly lit. You can't see what you are trying to take a picture of on the screen. The room definitely has enough light for this. Something is wrong with the camera. My wife has an Eris and the screen on the Eris is very bright, while the Motorola Droid screen is dark. I should try and take a picture of the two screens side by side and upload them.

I'm considering trading the phone in for an Eris. I've only had it for a week, but this flaw in the camera is really bad.

 

[angelman]

It's definitely an exposure issue. I just took some video of my office. I point the camera to the dim but evenly illuminated wall and you can see it open up the shutter to exposure that correctly. Then moving the camera to point at the unlit with just a christmas tree (and lights on it) you can see the image get much darker as it is trying to exposure for the christmas lights rather than the surrounding area. I think the problem is that since the surrounding area is quite dark it is below a threshold and so it just assumes it's black and thus not worth trying to expose for. Moving the camera back to the wall the image is dark (from the exposure for the christmas tree) before quickly getting brigher as it readjusts the exposure for the wall. This surely is a software problem. Either the exposure is not being calculated correctly or there is some sort of brightness threshold that is too aggressive

 

[racklefratz]

I point the camera to the dim but evenly illuminated wall and you can see it open up the shutter to exposure that correctly. Then moving the camera to point at the unlit with just a christmas tree (and lights on it) you can see the image get much darker as it is trying to exposure for the christmas lights rather than the surrounding area..... Moving the camera back to the wall the image is dark (from the exposure for the christmas tree) before quickly getting brigher as it readjusts the exposure for the wall. This surely is a software problem. Either the exposure is not being calculated correctly or there is some sort of brightness threshold that is too aggressive

I have not experimented with my Droid's camera to anything near the extent you are, but I think you might be on the right track analyzing what's going on, and it seems like something that could be addressed with firmware.

If the exposure metering is set to evaluate only the light levels in the middle of the field of view, it's going to ignore what's happening outside of that little area. My Canon PowerShot SD770IS (and most capable digital cameras) can be set to three exposure metering modes: evaluative, in which it divides the image into several zones and considers various lighting parameters everywhere in the image, center-weighted average, which looks at lighting everywhere but gives emphasis on the center of the image, and Spot, which uses only the lighting in the center of the frame.

We're not discussing a camera, it's a phone, so I don't expect to ever see the Droid's camera be taken to that level of sophistication, but I'd think it definitely could be improved through firmware changes.

 

[brochaos]

yea, nobody is expecting canon quality here, we just want a camera that is at least on par with my cell phone cams from 7 years ago. it is not exposing the scene correctly. it is not exposing the scene correctly when the flash is enabled.

is the moto site the best way to let them know about something like this? it has to be fixable, like i've said, just about any cell cam in the last decade can take infinitely better lowlight pics than the droid. and with that bright DUAL LED flash, we should be able to turn it on and get some decent low light pics.

 

[brochaos]

and with that bright DUAL LED flash, we should be able to turn it on and get some decent low light pics.

Coulda'-woulda'-shoulda'......right. Whatever you say, bud.

If you have a direct link to the Moto dev group, go for it. I was just tellin' it like it is.

bud, it's a simple shutter setting. when you turn a flash on, it should be FIXED at 1/60th. it doesn't even really need to analyze the scene. max aperture and 1/60th shutter. it's simple. my LG flip phone with flash from 1998 could stop motion better than the droid, bud. we aren't asking for too much.

 

[MustangGT500]

hi. im a experiences photograph. on my work and in my freetime i make a lot pictures with my nikon d5000 slr. i use many professional apps to raise the image quality. for example i use neat image for noise reduction. i dont really need it on my slr but its useful for compact cams. i downloaded a lot of camera samples of the droid (mine will just arrive next week). and i think i know the mistake they done.

there is absolutely NO camera processing noise reduction. the images come without any software correction directly out of the chip to the flash memory. as i loaded some pics in neat image and applied noise reduction the pictures looks like they should look. so i hope moto is bringing a cam fix that make some internal noise reduction while taking pictures. greets.

 

[angelman]

I have been doing a little more research on this. It's true what some people have said (and I had not appreciated) that what you see on the screen is nothing like you get. Taking a photo in a dimly lit scene the screen will show almost black, when you take the photo then you will sometimes see more detail. I am guessing that for the "live" view it has a fixed aperture and shutter speed so in dark conditions the exposure is not correct and thus the "live" image looks very dark. This is borderline acceptable except my sony phone still has a better preview and you can see with the video how it actually reduces the exposure when you point it at a dark scene.
I have taken some stills and movies with the droid and my sony 810i at the same time and will post. All settings on auto, with and without flash. I hope maybe some of the moto people will wake up and sort this out. I am also posting on the motorola forums too just in case they take note there. It really can't be that hard. I would gladly pay for a camera app that sorted this nonsense out, even if I had to root the phone. Of course I should not have to.

 

[dnizzle555]

There's a difference between what you see and what you get, but that's not the real issue. The pictures are far too dark in florescent and incandescent light. It's better with the flash, but they're grainy and washed out, and still too dark. If you have lots of sunlight coming in through windows, it's not as much of a problem.

Every camera phone I've ever owned has taken much better pictures in dim environments without a flash. And they all had a feature that's missing on the Droid: a brightness control. Why are there no controls for brightness or exposure? I know this isn't a high end digital camera, but it's one of the best phones on the market, and I paid a decent amount of money for it, so I expect it to do better than my old flip phone. It's obvious that a simple software update could fix this, as others have noted that the exposure starts out ok, then the Droid quickly darkens it. At least they could install a brightness control.

I contacted Motorola through their email support on the website, but you know that's just going to a Tier 1 rep's inbox, and probably never will be seen by the right people. Sure wish there was a better way to get attention for this problem.

Otherwise love the Droid, hope they will fix this!