The camera sucks

[cmk325i]

mine clicks as well im hearing its normal u sometimes if your outside and its loud you do not hear it . but once inside it is clicking ... upon start up it clicks 4 times than when it tries to focus .

 

[640k]

i've seen a few suggestions as what to do for the camera and wanted to chime in with my own findings. if you set your camera to do inifinity focus, you won't have problems taking "in focus" pictures.

 

[MAzing87]

I am actually a bit disappointed that there aren't many settings to work with on the Droid. I have the LG Dare which had more settings, including lighting, face scan, etc. It took very good pictures for a 3.2MP camera. I was hoping to get just the same features and more for the 5MP Droid camera. The video recorder is excellent! And from what I am reading, this is all software related, which keeps me optimistic that there will be software to utilize the camera.

 

[MAzing87]

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.

I agree with you because I own a Dare and it does take excellent pix!

 

[gardobus]

Yeah, I used to have a Dare also, the camera is what I missed most when I got rid of it to get my Curve.

 

[MAzing87]

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

This is an excellent comparison. With the exception of the lighting, which isn't a big deal, your 3.2MP Storm clearly takes better pictures than any of the Droid pix at any MP setting. My LG Dare took pictures just as good as your Storm.

I am having similar issues as most regarding the auto focusing not working like it should, the odd noises and delay it takes for the camera to boot up or take another pic, etc.

While I didn't really buy the phone for it's camera, with all the things it can do, and upgrading from the 3.2 Dare, I expected the camera to be just as good or better. I hope this December 11th update helps improve the camera issue.

 

[gardobus]

Here is a pic I took of the dirty golf cart steering wheel. It took a few half-presses to get green corners. Doesn't look too bad.

 

[gardobus]

if you set your camera to do inifinity focus, you won't have problems taking "in focus" pictures.

I tried this and EVERY pic I took was out of focus. What infinity focus does is try to focus as far away as possible so if you are shooting scenery, sunset, and other things that are far away then it will look good but anything semi-close will be blurry.

 

[640k]

Auto Mode (auto focus):

Sports/Action Mode (∞ focus):

Auto Mode (∞ focus):

Auto Mode (macro focus):

 

[akj27]

Is that something that can be improved with a software update? I thought that they could only improve the camera if they changed the lens or something like that?

 

[MAzing87]

Auto Mode (auto focus):

Sports/Action Mode (∞ focus):

Auto Mode (∞ focus):

Auto Mode (macro focus):

Interesting post. So infinite focus is much sharper.

 

[gardobus]

Is that something that can be improved with a software update? I thought that they could only improve the camera if they changed the lens or something like that?

Software will do it. If you notice, the lens focuses just fine in some pictures. The software doesn't know when to tell it to stop or something.

 

[ZeRo_C0oL]

I actually just took a few shots of my keyboard for comparison from my Droid that I think look pretty snazzy... One sec!

 

[ZeRo_C0oL]

Resized to 640x480 on ImageShack, so this is after compressing the image... This actually looks pretty sharp considering I got four red corners!

 

[ZeRo_C0oL]

God, we have some filthy keyboards, and this LED flash really brings out the worst elements of them. I just cleaned my keyboard not even a week and a half ago and it looks disgusting in the picture, but clean IRL.