The camera sucks

[gardobus]

Agreed. Biggest thing is that the resolution is to big at 5MP. I have not seen anyway to change the resolution when you shoot the pictures. For what it is, it will get the job done. I think it will come in handy if I am out and about and my DSLR is not with me.

I just said a little big ago that I set mine to 3MP instead of 5 lol. When you are in the camera, click the grey bar to the left. It will open a menu with options. Go to Picture size and you can choose 3MP or 2MP which I have found increases the speed quite a bit and the pics still look good, especially if you are just texting them or uploading to a blog or something. Example, take this dirty keyboard test. This was taken with my Droid a little bit ago. it is 2MP and I think I had Focus Mode set to Macro. Either that or Auto.

I think it is focusing around the left side of the 4 key but I'm not sure.

 

[gardobus]

That's actually not the best example, when I uploaded it to Flickr, it got resized. Found that out when I uploaded a 5mp sample and it was smaller than the 2mp one lol

 

[T6D16C84]

I am pretty sure most of the pictures people will be taking from their Droid are going to be e-mailed or uploaded to facebook/myspace/twitter. The only issue I see with the camera is the auto focus feature and Verizon/Motorola/Google already are working on a fix.

 

[atomicwedgie]

Wow, were people expecting digital camera quality shots from a phone?? It's a cell phone, its not for taking prize photographs of your favorite bird in a beautiful landscape. It's for popping quick shots @ parties and events for quick viewing later. If the massive resolution is an issue, tone down the resolution in the settings, I'm sure there is a way to shoot pictures at 1024X768 or even 800X600. This will correct some of the pixilation on full screen views.

Did you bother to read the entire thread or just make assumptions? My main comparison was to my Storm which indeed is another PHONE CAMERA and I felt it took much better pictures.

Hell, I think my wifes Omnia takes better pics but I will do an all out comparison this weekend.

Mind you, there are LOTS of people complaining about the camera and it's almost known now that it has issues.

 

[windstrings]

Hell, I think my wifes Omnia takes better pics but I will do an all out comparison this weekend.

Mind you, there are LOTS of people complaining about the camera and it's almost known now that it has issues.

I may be imagining it, but the port hole that allows the light to come into the lens seems a bit small compared to my Dare "which takes excellent pics".

I'm also suspicious since the droid seems to not do so hot in dim lighting and "needs" a flash where my dare seldom needed a flash in any room that was comfortably lit within reason.
If you can read a newspaper, it can take an excellent pic... I'm not seeing that with the droid.

However daylight pics are much better, but that may have to do with optics.

Even a small pair of binoculars look great in broad daylight, but in dim lighting, the exit pupil is too small with the lower mm optics to bring in enough light to get good colors etc.
The quality and sensitivity of the electronics behind the lens make a difference too.

The encouraging thing is that if it takes good video.. it should take good pics with some tweaking.

On the other hand.... the video is marginal too in poor lighting.
That makes me question hardware... hopefully, its all a software issue.

This is one thing I liked about the Omnia 2.. seems like it had large optics.
Hopefully Google thought about this and we just need a tweak.

 

[atomicwedgie]

I may be imagining it, but the port hole that allows the light to come into the lens seems a bit small compared to my Dare "which takes excellent pics".

I concur... my Dare took excellent pictures. Probably the best of any phone I've owned with the Storm a close second.

 

[tablatronix]

The camera is crap. At least in low light situations, like most camera phones. However the redeeming factor on this phone was supposed to be its 5mp, dual led flash, auto-focusing capability.

But that doesnt seem to be working.

I have 2 droids, one autofocuses green almost everytime I one-stop press the camera button. It will even auto focus on a printed document at <4 inches.

The other droid never auto focuses and always tries to but it misses the optimum focal length, you can see it focus right past the clearest image everytime. Always red. You can hear the 8-10 clicks as it cycles through its range and goes right past the clear focus.

Again to test this, under good indoor light (at night) using a printed document try to focus it from about 4-6 inches.

The wierd thing is that even the droid that goes green and says its focused still takes crap photos in low light, so even when it says green I believe its still not properly focused.

I also noticed another thing, when previewing the shot you took, click done and watch and listen to the autofocuser, its goes crazy recalibrating when going back to live preview. Very odd.

 

[tablatronix]

Oh and this is my version of Gardobus's image (prev page)

Mine does not focus and you can clearly see the difference (although my keyboard is slightly cleaner ). This is a problem not people complaining about camera phone quality in general so the naysayers can please shut it already.

http://picasaweb.google.com/tablatronics/Misc02#5402486180274976722

 

[gardobus]

Oh and this is my version of Gardobus's image (prev page)

Mine does not focus and you can clearly see the difference (although my keyboard is slightly cleaner ). This is a problem not people complaining about camera phone quality in general so the naysayers can please shut it already.

Picasa Web Albums - shawn - Misc

I set mine to Macro Focus when I did the keyboard shot, did you try that?

 

[tablatronix]

Macro restricts the focus, but its still always red and its still takes the same photo as above. Same blurry mess.

When you use macro and take those close ups doe you get green focus corners ? I dont have the other droid with me to compare it.

Its almost as if there are 2 seperate issues or 1 effect.

The camera never knows when its actually focused and even when the camera optics are focused the camera somehow still takes an unfocused image. All images appear to be infinity focused.

 

[atomicwedgie]

I have a light booth we use for taking photos of products. I've already done a few test images and they still suck. In a little while I'll post up pics from the Storm and the Droid as proof the problem is not just low light situations.

 

[gardobus]

Macro restricts the focus, but its still always red and its still takes the same photo as above. Same blurry mess.

When you use macro and take those close ups doe you get green focus corners ? I dont have the other droid with me to compare it.

Its almost as if there are 2 seperate issues or 1 effect.

The camera never knows when its actually focused and even when the camera optics are focused the camera somehow still takes an unfocused image. All images appear to be infinity focused.

I can get green corners but I have to refocus a few times. It definitely doesn't like to focus and even in my pics you can see that it should have focused on the up/down keys since they were the main thing in the photo but instead it focused farther near the 4 key and left the up/down area blurry. So yeah I definitely can't wait for that Dec 11 update lol

 

[atomicwedgie]

Ok here is the real test... Taken using a lightbooth, resting the phones on a tripod.

I took 3 pics with the Droid. One each at 2mp, 3mp and 5mp. Then one shot with the Storm at 3.2mp. All using AUTO for every setting.

You MUST enlarge the photos by clicking on the header on each to see the real image.

Droid at 2mp

Droid at 3mp

Droid at 5m

Storm at 3.2mp

 

[atomicwedgie]

NOTE: Out of 13 tries, only once did I get the Droid to give me the green frames which means it focused properly. That photo was unusable due to user error though.

I think it's pretty clear that something is not being processed right within the camera software because as I showed in some posts back, the videos come out pretty damn good.

 

[Danthok]

That is a noticeable difference, hopefully the update December 11th will help the quality considerably.

With the Droid pictures it seems like the MP don't change just the image size is enlarged.