Droid Camera Fixes?

[mikeybruises]

My Motorola Droid takes lousy pics. 90 percent of the indoor pics have red-eye. Unless I am outdoors and it's sunny out, the pics aren't worth saving. They often come out grainy or dark. Is it my Droid or is everyone else experiencing the same problem? Does anyone know of any fixes for this? Love my Droid, hate the camera.

 

[natediddy1120]

Mess around with the camera settings....that's all I can tell you

The camera is a WELL known issue of the Droid (one of few really) and maybe it will be fixed with this next update

 

[KevinJ]

Red Eye is caused by the dilation of the pupils of the eye. If the room is dark and you take a photo with flash, the light enters the pupil before it has a chance to contract. You will see this more with people that have lighter colored eyes. Turn on more ambient light to try to remedy this.

It's not a problem with the phone's camera per se. You will get this with any real camera.

Otherwise what natediddy1120 said - mess with the settings.

You also need to understand that some stuff may not be able to be "fixed" with the camera in the phone. It obviously doesn't have the best lens, and not a large sensor for the system. Those two things are major drawbacks to quality. It's low-light qualities are quite lacking.

That being said, I've gotten some acceptable images as long as there's enough light. And if I really wanted to take photos, I'd use one of my real cameras I own - not a phone.

 

[jsh1120]

As a poster in another thread noted, the camera's performance can be improved significantly by reducing it's resolution from 5 megapixels to 3 megapixels. Photos are both taken and saved much more quickly, reducing the likelihood of camera shake and resultant focus problems. And the image quality does not suffer in the least unless you plan to crop the photo to a tiny portion of the original.

 

[natediddy1120]

Red Eye is caused by the dilation of the pupils of the eye. If the room is dark and you take a photo with flash, the light enters the pupil before it has a chance to contract. You will see this more with people that have lighter colored eyes. Turn on more ambient light to try to remedy this.

It's not a problem with the phone's camera per se. You will get this with any real camera.

Otherwise what natediddy1120 said - mess with the settings.

You also need to understand that some stuff may not be able to be "fixed" with the camera in the phone. It obviously doesn't have the best lens, and not a large sensor for the system. Those two things are major drawbacks to quality. It's low-light qualities are quite lacking.

That being said, I've gotten some acceptable images as long as there's enough light. And if I really wanted to take photos, I'd use one of my real cameras I own - not a phone.

Did not know that about the red-eye thing....learn something new every day!!!

And also, like you said about using your real camera, people need not be so disappointed with the Droid's camera I think....because in the end, it's a phone, know what I mean? It has a 5 megapixel camera, and that's about the highest on a phone in this day in time, so that's fine with me.....it does it's job for a camera that's on a phone is what I guess I'm trying to say...

 

[Scribble]

Did not know that about the red-eye thing....learn something new every day!!!

That's why most newer cameras seem like they flash multiple times. The first couple are just to get your pupils to react. The last is actually for the shot.

 

[mjs31]

Red Eye is caused by the dilation of the pupils of the eye. If the room is dark and you take a photo with flash, the light enters the pupil before it has a chance to contract. You will see this more with people that have lighter colored eyes. Turn on more ambient light to try to remedy this.

It's not a problem with the phone's camera per se. You will get this with any real camera.

Otherwise what natediddy1120 said - mess with the settings.

You also need to understand that some stuff may not be able to be "fixed" with the camera in the phone. It obviously doesn't have the best lens, and not a large sensor for the system. Those two things are major drawbacks to quality. It's low-light qualities are quite lacking.

That being said, I've gotten some acceptable images as long as there's enough light. And if I really wanted to take photos, I'd use one of my real cameras I own - not a phone.

Did not know that about the red-eye thing....learn something new every day!!!

And also, like you said about using your real camera, people need not be so disappointed with the Droid's camera I think....because in the end, it's a phone, know what I mean? It has a 5 megapixel camera, and that's about the highest on a phone in this day in time, so that's fine with me.....it does it's job for a camera that's on a phone is what I guess I'm trying to say...

Yep...the red eye issue can be seen on the very high level cameras if not done correctly. Best to use off camera flash if possible by using a flash mount, hand held etc.

 

[R1Lover]

Taking indoor pics with any camera requires a very good flash..... this is a phone... so go figure on that one.

Go outside it take pics close up.

 

[mikeybruises]

Thanks for the advice, but my wife and I stood side by with me and we snapped photos at the exact time, she with her blackberry curve and I with the Droid. We did side by side comparison and not one of her photos had red-eye her picture quailty was a lot clearer. Of course the Droid has 5MP compared to the 2MP Curve, one would think the Droid should win hands down, right?

 

[takeshi]

No. Again, a lot of people simply assume that "more MP" means "better quality". MP is only one factor that affects image quality. It's just a measure of resolution (number of pixels) -- that's it.

As mentioned above, the quality of the sensor (sensitivity, noise, etc etc) and the optics also play a major part. Software cannot compensate for limitations imposed by the sensor and optics.

I have a video camera that can shoot stills. It's SD and equivalent to,say, maybe 0.3MP. Yes, that's less than 1MP. However, it has 3 very good CCD's and very good optics and can outshine many other digital cameras in low light situations where resolution isn't the major concern.

Comparing cameras solely by MP is a lot like car shopping and only looking at HP. You have to consider more than just a single spec and that goes for a lot of products out there.

I do agree that my Curve 8310's camera did produce better images under the same conditions. I don't really think much can be done about the Droid's camera though. A clever camera app developer could probably better utilize the flash as it really washes out things in my experience with the stock camera app.

 

[hughesjr]

Red Eye is caused by the dilation of the pupils of the eye. If the room is dark and you take a photo with flash, the light enters the pupil before it has a chance to contract. You will see this more with people that have lighter colored eyes. Turn on more ambient light to try to remedy this.

It's not a problem with the phone's camera per se. You will get this with any real camera.

Otherwise what natediddy1120 said - mess with the settings.

You also need to understand that some stuff may not be able to be "fixed" with the camera in the phone. It obviously doesn't have the best lens, and not a large sensor for the system. Those two things are major drawbacks to quality. It's low-light qualities are quite lacking.

That being said, I've gotten some acceptable images as long as there's enough light. And if I really wanted to take photos, I'd use one of my real cameras I own - not a phone.

It also has software and not physical hardware zoom. The reason it is grainy is because when one zooms, you are Basicly "Cropping and then expanding" the picture, then changing the resolution with some automatically controlled dithering. This results in grainy pictures if you go to full zoomed mode. What might work better is taking the pictures in non zoomed mode and then editing them on a real computer with good software ... or if you want high quality pictures, get a good digital camera with a real sensor and lenses that are designed to zoom.

People see 5 Megapixel camera and then assume that the cell phone can take pictures like a real camera. But they don't expect their camera to also be a cell phone. There is NO WAY that a tiny camera module with a tiny lens and no hardware zoom is going to take pictures like a $900.00 Nikon digital camera .. it is just not going to happen. If you have that expectation, it is unrealistic.