Develop Bugs

[Q] How can I take better quality pictures with Desire Z?

Something that's been annoying the crap out of me.
I know that the T-Mobile G2/Desire Z only has a 5 Megapixel camera, but the quality of the pictures I'm taking is absolutely atrocious.
What can I do to keep my pictures from looking extremely blurry? I noticed when I try to take a picture with the camera, if I hold the primary button down for a few seconds, it clears up, but as soon as I let go of the button the camera loses focuses and picture ends up getting blurred. Am I simply doing it wrong or is there some sort of trick to this in the camera settings?
I notice the camera likes to take extremely high resolution low quality pictures, is there a way to configure the camera to instead take low resolution higher quality ones instead? I don't need my pictures to be more than 1920 x 1080 but it looks like it tries to do that all the time.
Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks.

Try holding the camera button down halfway for it to focus, then push it down the rest of the way to take a picture, that might help.
Otherwise I'm not sure of any settings you could change, maybe see if there's any 3d party apps that'll work good?
-Nipqer

or you can download 3rd party apps like camera360, WHICH I HIGHLY recommend.
I've tested ALL of the camera apps and I am quite fond of Camera360, partly because it takes the clearest pictures in my opinion.

i also have problems with pic quality with this phone. lots of grain...

I've found that using touch-to-focus and the software shutter button gives me the best pictures. Depending on where in the frame you pick your focus lighting can change dramatically. Try pointing at the horizon and shift focus from the sky to the ground - huge difference!
I always take pictures with maximum resolution and mostly just pass on a snapshot if it's not daylight.

camera360
the best camera app

Keirnoth said:
Something that's been annoying the crap out of me.
I know that the T-Mobile G2/Desire Z only has a 5 Megapixel camera, but the quality of the pictures I'm taking is absolutely atrocious.
What can I do to keep my pictures from looking extremely blurry? I noticed when I try to take a picture with the camera, if I hold the primary button down for a few seconds, it clears up, but as soon as I let go of the button the camera loses focuses and picture ends up getting blurred. Am I simply doing it wrong or is there some sort of trick to this in the camera settings?
I notice the camera likes to take extremely high resolution low quality pictures, is there a way to configure the camera to instead take low resolution higher quality ones instead? I don't need my pictures to be more than 1920 x 1080 but it looks like it tries to do that all the time.
Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The default camera app takes the shot at the last moment until you hear the click sound.
Whenever you are taking the picture just let the camera look at it and it will automatically focus, adjust exposure, etc. after that when you click the button on screen it optimizes the settings and only at the last moment it takes the picture.
It you'll change the camera position or the object moves, then the picture will appear blurry. So, the trick is to keep your hand steady and the object should also be steady and keep your hand at one position while clicking photograph until the camera is ready to take another photograph.
Another trick is to install HTC Amaze camera app for Vision available on xda and flash it.
While taking the photograph, change its mode to action, now it will take the best shot out of all possible positions of the object but it won't implement any exposure correction or face detection so efficiently.

Ok, I'm about to break out a bit of Photography 101 up in here. I'm sure a lot of you know some or all of this stuff, but I'm going to try not to assume anything and pretend I'm trying to teach a caveman from 10,000 BC how to take good pictures. I'll try not to write a book, but no promises... but since this is the internet and people have short attention spans, I'll also do a TL;DR summary at the end for the ADD people. ;p
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Note: I'm going to start by talking generally, and then I'll try to get a bit more specific about cell phone cameras, the G2/DZ camera, a specific app, and techniques you can use to create optimal pictures. So, the beginning will start out sounding obvious to most of you, but will gradually get more into some (hopefully) useful specifics.
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Alright, photography is all about capturing light. This might sound obvious, but it's useful to keep in mind when you're trying to think like a camera, so you will be able to know what it wants in different situations. Cameras want light - lots and lots of light. You can almost never have too much light. The less you have to depend on the wimpy and crappy flash, the better your pictures will look. The BEST pictures won't need to use flash at all. So IF you can, get as much light as possible on whatever you're taking a picture of. You often can't control any lighting, but what you can do is maximize what lighting there already is. This means if you're shooting outside in the sun, you want to try to have the sun shining on whatever you take a picture of. But you want the sun behind you, and shining on your subject. If the sun is behind your subject and shining towards you, you'll end up with with plenty of light, but your subject will look like a silhouette. It's the same if you're shooting inside or even outside in relative darkness - you want as much light as possible shining on your subject, but as little light as possible shining *directly* into the camera. So try not to take pictures of people or things that have lights or bright things behind them - if possible, you want those things behind you and shining/reflecting onto the subject. So, when you're inside, turn on all the lights you can, as long as they're not behind the subject or shining directly into the camera.
The way a camera makes sure it gets as much light as it needs is by adjusting how long the shutter (ok, CMOS sensor) stays open. When there's plenty of light the shutter will open and close really fast - this is generally good, and this is what you want to shoot for. When there's not a lot of light, the shutter will need to stay open for longer - this is generally bad, and this is what you want to avoid. The main reason you want to avoid this is that it's impossible to hold your cell phone completely steady in your hands, and the longer the shutter needs to stay open, the more blurry the picture will be from the motion of your hands and the subject, and the more "noise" artifacts will show up in the image because of the nature of digital image sensors. LIGHT, LIGHT and more LIGHT is the key to good pics. Light is your friend, so learn how to work with it.
But you can't always control light, so what else can you do? The answer is to practice ways to hold your phone as steady as possible when you're taking a pic. First, always hold your phone with two hands, particularly in lower light situations. Also, you can brace your arms by pressing your elbows up against your body. If possible, brace your body by standing against or leaning on a wall, or sitting down. In situations where you can, rest the phone itself or at least your hands/arm/elbows on a solid surface like a table or whatever. After maximizing the lighting, anything you can do to hold the phone steady will have the second biggest impact in the quality of your pics.
This brings me to my app recommendation, which is called Camera Magic. I saw that two people previously recommended Camera 360 - I haven't tried it because some of the reviews and the permissions it requires scare me. A camera app needs access to personal log data? No thank you. But for all I know, it could be a real kickass and legit app, and I'm missing out... Anyway, among other things I like about Camera Magic is that it has a "Timer" and "Burst" mode. The timer mode is the key here. Using the timer will allow you to set the phone on a table or whatever and have it take a pic by itself, without having your shaky hands mucking up the image quality for pictures you want to come out extra good. For group shots, or self-pics, you can also set the timer so that you can strike a pose and get yourself in that higher quality image you'll get. And here's the really neat trick specific to our G2/DZ's that might make reading all this worth it - our phones have a built in tripod! Sort of... If you halfway open the keyboard, so that the screen and the keyboard halves are at the points farthest apart from each other, you can set the phone on a table and it will stand up on it's own!! Now be careful, because I'm not responsible for any cracked or scratched screens if your phone falls over. But I doubt that would happen even if it fell over, because it would fall flat and should be ok. Just don't do this in a precarious situation with your phone on a ledge or something it could fall off of.
Ok, I need to wrap this up for now, but here's a quick note about auto-focus. You don't usually need it. Most of the time it will just slow you down if you need to take a quick snapshot. The only time auto-focus helps is when you are taking a picture of something *closer* than 4 feet away. If you turn off auto-focus, everything farther than 4 feet away will always be in focus anyway, and you'll be able to take pictures a bit faster.
Ok, one last note about using zoom. You don't need it either. It's not a real zoom, it's just digital zoom, which just leads to lower quality images. Just take the picture (following all above guidelines) without zoom and your subject centered in the frame. You can always do any cropping or digital zooming later in Gallery, QuickPic, or even better Photoshop or whatever image editor you use, if necessary. That way, you'll have more time and control to get it framed just right.
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TL;DR for those with ADD:
- LIGHT - You want as much light as possible ON your subject, but NOT behind your subject or directly into the camera.
- FLASH - Try not to depend on it. The best pics won't need to use flash at all, because you already have plenty of light.
- STEADY - Hold the phone steady with two hands. This is extra important in lower-light situations. Brace your hands/arms/elbows against something like a wall or table, or sit down, or if you can't and there's nothing to brace against, then press your elbows up against your chest/body and try to hold as still as possible. Use the app called Camera Magic so you can take advantage of the Timer function, among other features. Also see the G2/DZ-specific "tripod" trick (bolded) above, so you can take a completely steady pic.
- AUTO-FOCUS - You don't usually need it, it's only good for taking pictures of things closer than 4 feet away, otherwise it just slows you down when you want to take a quick picture. With auto-focus off, everything farther than 4 feet away will be in focus anyway.
- ZOOM - Don't use it, it will lower quality since it's not a real zoom, and you can always crop/zoom later with software, when you'll have more time/control.
I hope this helps some of you take some better pics!
(Edit: Hmmm, I guess bold doesn't work... maybe just a new user thing?)

Try a Sense 3.0 or 3.5 rom, they tend to produce the best quality photos from their camera app.
CM7 camera picture quality is terrible. I dont know if it has been fixed but I remember reading somewhere its caused by CM7 compressing the pictures.

Apologies in advance for bringing back old posts, but I wanted to followup on this post just to see if more people have any other ideas.
Thank you to all of you for your assistance. Not sure what software touch focus was, but what I did was take some of the guidelines from voltaic's posts and also switch over to Camera360. I took some tests shots with it and they seem to be pretty decent. Loads of image altering features similar to its iOS competitor. I just needed basic picture taking and from a few test shots, they seem to be a bit clearer. It also allows me to lower the image resolution so instead of taking giant grainy shots I can take smaller clearer looking shots.
I suck at using the default Camera app. The only thing I know how to do is adjust the Flash, and zoom that are on the right side when you take a photo (horizontal orientation).
Not sure if changing the Brightness/Contrast/Saturation/Sharpness, White Balance, and Focus mode does any good. I see Continuous, Auto, Infinity, and Touch. I don't mind having to press an extra button if it will help stop these grainy looking pictures - would switching it to Touch help a bit?

I just made a long post of tips on another thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1478405
Touch focus lets you tap on the screen to focus a particular part of the screen; whereas default is center focused, with maybe face detection (don't know if 360 has face detection).
Grain or nose is a function of high ISO. Lowering the ISO will reduce the grain, but may result in not enough light for a decent shot (will be underexposed or too dark). Increase the light if possible, so you can lower the ISO. Sometimes just changing the angle of the camera, your position, or simply turning on more lights in the room can make a huge difference. Manually setting the ISO and white balance might help a bit. But the fact of the matter, is that if there isn't enough light, you are going to need high ISO to get a decent shot.
Special effects can be fun. But most (or all) of these effects can be applied to a photo after the fact (Picsay Pro and Vignette are my favorite phone apps for simple photo edits). On the other hand, if you take a picture with the effect, it can't be undone afterwards. OF course, there may be times when you don't care for the "raw" photo (
Manipulating brightness is useful if the pic looks too dark or light. For instance, the picture looks much lighter than what your eyes see (outdoor night photos is a good example). But those settings (brightness, contrast, saturation) usually won't change graininess or the overall quality of the picture (how its captured). Again, these are all things that can be fixed after the fact. However, I've found setting white balance manually to be very helpful. Setting white balance manually (while it takes time to do so for each different environment) gives much better results than Auto. Auto takes extra time to evaluate the light conditions when you hit the shutter, and sometimes does so incorrectly. Technically, white balance can be fixed after the fact. But the fact Auto white balance delays the capturing of the photo, means it can often cause a blurry picture.
Long story short, learning the basics of how a camera works, and simple camera techniques (angle and position) have much more influence on photo quality than messing with different apps or effects. Aside from settings that fundamentally change how the photo is captured (ISO, focus, white balance), the rest is just frosting on the cake. And you can't polish a turd.

I'd noticed battery drain with Camera360, even if I've cut the localisation.
Anyone else?

Try using HDR Camera+ it's been HIGHLY recommended by PocketNow.com to get the best quality pictures out of your android phone.
Available in the android market.

gnex photography tips

so i have been messing with the camera. its not that bad for a camera phone.
i wanted to start a topic where we could share some tips specific to this phone
here are my thoughts:
-what you see is not what you get: mind the screen brightness when taking the pic
-camera seems to overexpose my shots. most of my pictures turn out better when i dial the EV down.
-during editing, keep in mind that highlights and shadows does not equal brightness or exposure adjustment. it changes the curve. i liken this to top and bottom of contrast adjustment that can be adjusted separately
-the lens is very exposed and any light will refract on it causing the picture to wash out. that means that keeping it clean is very important. that also means that shielding the lens from refractory light (like using your other hand as a visor or something) will improve your photos. then again you can always use some polarized sunglasses when youre outside but thats not really specific to this phone lol

Very nice tips. What about for night photography?

GeLopez said:
Very nice tips. What about for night photography?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks. night photography will be difficult. i usually dial the EV down a bit... -2 or -3. this way youre telling the phone that the scene is supposed to be dark. try with flash on and off
the thing about flash is that you dont seem to have control over the power of the flash... meaning that either way the flash will be the same brightness. keeping in mind that light diminishes by the square of the distance, you can understand that the distance between you (and your flash) and your subject will directly affect the ability of your flash to light up your subject.
with this in mind, the two things you can control is the distance between you and the subject as well as the objects that are between you and your subject.
first you need to understand metering. when you tap the screen to focus, the LED will light up and the phone will calculate how long the shutter needs to stay open to make the darkest point = black and the brightest point = white. at night, there really is no white.. not bright white atleast. all the white is more like light gray. so dialing down the EV tells your phone to make the brightest point light gray, thus the shutter speed is faster, theres less blur, and theres less amount of noise in your shadows.
so the point is that the phone meters with the LED on when you have flash turned on. this is a significant point to understand. for example, say i am sitting on my couch and taking a picture of someone in the doorway about 10ft away, however there is a stainless steel lamp on the end table to the my right that is about 2ft away and will be caught in the frame. i tap the screen to focus on the subject in the doorway, the phone meters and the stainless steel lamp is 1/5 the way between me and the subject. obviously it will light up more brightly, and the phone will take that in consideration when it meters, making the lamp look about right but then your subject is left in the dark. take two other versions of the same senario: on one i have the phone flipped so that the flash is towards the left (farther away from the lamp) or more ideally i have reached forward so that the lamp is not even in the frame and thus does not obscure the metering. so instead of having this hazy picture with a bright ass lamp on the right and some dark subject with glowing eyes in the doorway, i have the subject captured as well as possible.

Thread Cleaned.

Anyone else noticed a lot of light bleeding into images..

As the title suggests. When taking a pic, for example of a wall with a window next to it, the light from the window bleeds into the images like rays and although certain pictures would look cool with this effect, I have no desire for an image I can see clearly with my eyes to be altered by the camera, took the same pic with a galaxy s5 and an iPhone 5 and they dealt with the light just like you would expect your eyes to.
I'm finding this in most shots unless its very well lit, I haven't changed any of the settings on the phone, I'd expect HTC to have got the camera right, third time lucky etc.
Have tried other shooters, like snap camera (which is a great app) but I get the same thing.
Extremely irritating, especially seeing as its meant to be a decent camera this time.

Focus is on the plant.

After altering the image, this is the best I could get..

Try cleaning your camera lens, there may be some oil on it that causes the flares.

chong81 said:
Try cleaning your camera lens, there may be some oil on it that causes the flares.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have done mate, its not that. Like I said when there's perfect lighting the camera is spot on, but if the conditions aren't just right the camera just has a brain fart.

Have you tried manually lowering your ISO setting? That usually helps with lighting blowout.
Try ISO 200 as a start point, if too dark give ISO 400 a try.

I just took some similar pics yesterday, low light with a natural light source coming in thru a window in the background. While they were not they greatest, they did come out good, no light streaks like that.

spikeydoo2006 said:
Have you tried manually lowering your ISO setting? That usually helps with lighting blowout.
Try ISO 200 as a start point, if too dark give ISO 400 a try.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been playing with the settings, raw does enable a greater degree of control, its just that my wife was sat next to me taking the same pic with a galaxy s5, full auto and I was sitting there with my brand new m9 with a sad face her pic came out perfect, she was quite smug and I was annoyed..
Anyway, having had a play about i managed to take some decent pics especially zoomed in ones of my wife's engagement ring, something I've been unable to do on any other phone before, I don't mind working to take a pic, I just find it unusual that it doesn't compete with other devices automatically. There's nothing wrong with the device

Some other pics I took

dladz said:
Have done mate, its not that. Like I said when there's perfect lighting the camera is spot on, but if the conditions aren't just right the camera just has a brain fart.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It looks like lens flare. That means a light is shining into your lens when you're taking the shot. Try putting your hand above it, assuming its lights above like you would shield your eyes from the sun. This has the effect of making a lens hood like you see in DSLRs. It also concentrates colour.
---------- Post added at 07:21 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:16 AM ----------
dladz said:
its just that my wife was sat next to me taking the same pic with a galaxy s5, full auto and I was sitting there with my brand new m9 with a sad face her pic came out perfect, she was quite smug and I was annoyed..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This tells me two things
- she did not take the picture in the exact same position as you. So you could also try moving a bit, to avoid lens flare and try again.
- gs5 is default set to centre weighted metering. If you've not changed it. So metering isn't the problem. the m9 does not offer any choice here, its centre weighted and that's it.
I don't mind working to take a pic, I just find it unusual that it doesn't compete with other devices automatically. There's nothing wrong with the device
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
what i learnt about m9 is this auto focus thing, aim it, let it get focus THEN click. As opposed to tapping to focus like with most other devices. Tapping to focus will mess up photos with the m9 and drive you nuts

One Twelve said:
It looks like lens flare. That means a light is shining into your lens when you're taking the shot. Try putting your hand above it, assuming its lights above like you would shield your eyes from the sun. This has the effect of making a lens hood like you see in DSLRs. It also concentrates colour.
---------- Post added at 07:21 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:16 AM ----------
This tells me two things
- she did not take the picture in the exact same position as you. So you could also try moving a bit, to avoid lens flare and try again.
- gs5 is default set to centre weighted metering. If you've not changed it. So metering isn't the problem. the m9 does not offer any choice here, its centre weighted and that's it.
what i learnt about m9 is this auto focus thing, aim it, let it get focus THEN click. As opposed to tapping to focus like with most other devices. Tapping to focus will mess up photos with the m9 and drive you nuts
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was the same position because I took the picture.
I hear you with the auto focus, I am used to clicking the screen and have been taking much better pics, I'm just using raw for all my pics now, haven't took a bad pic since.
Also was a little annoyed that there is no focus alteration and the manual focus only goes so far. Either way overall its still a good camera, just not what I'm used to.

Focus alteration ? you mean focus on something other than the centre.
and what did you find missing with manual focus ?

One Twelve said:
Focus alteration ? you mean focus on something other than the centre.
and what did you find missing with manual focus ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Focus alteration as in a different metered focus type, ie; centered, spot etc.
With manual focus although I really do like it, i found with objects which are really close up, the slider only goes so far, i'm being nitpicky about that but it's just something i noticed, to see what i mean, try to focus on something close up, the slider just doesn't got that far.

yes its limited to centre weighted.
With close up shots if you use the macro settings you will be able to get closer. thought manual would accomodate this. for a 4mm lens you should be able to get up as close as 5cm.

One Twelve said:
yes its limited to centre weighted.
With close up shots if you use the macro settings you will be able to get closer. thought manual would accomodate this. for a 4mm lens you should be able to get up as close as 5cm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a lot better than other handsets, by far, was trying to take a pic of my wife's engagement ring, was quite hard to do and up close was just not possible. Got a few good ones though.

dladz said:
It's a lot better than other handsets, by far, was trying to take a pic of my wife's engagement ring, was quite hard to do and up close was just not possible. Got a few good ones though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Random comment but Opo does a really good job at macros its actually one of my favorite camera phones for macros. But yeah Macro focus for this phone could be a tad bit better

Teo032 said:
Random comment but Opo does a really good job at macros its actually one of my favorite camera phones for macros. But yeah Macro focus for this phone could be a tad bit better
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure if I've tried it yet, still good it a whirl. Cheers mate

Reduce camera flash brightness?

So I'm one of those losers who likes to take pictures of my food and drink and post it on social media. I'm also not an asshole who likes to blind the entire bar or restaurant with my flash going off when I take these pictures. I was wondering if there's a way to edit the camera flash brightness (maybe to 50% of the intensity?) so that I can still take a lit picture without making everyone within a mile of me hate my guts for taking a picture. At this point my work-around is to tuck a piece of napkin in my case over the flash, but it's kind of a pain, and looks ridiculous.
Any suggestions appreciated!

Why we don't have flash brightness adjustment on all camera apps is beyond me, since with leds you can just decrease the power to the leds to reduce brightness. Honestly though, if you set your flash to 50%, then all your other pictures needing it would come out under exposed, so I'd just use your napkin for now.

Note 10+ camera - smeared looking photos

Is anyone having camera issues?
For whatever reason, when I try to take a photo of my dog, the face looks smeared. Roughly 80-90% of the time. While on my iphone it looks great...I'm kinda bummed out about this and wondering if this is either an issue with my unit, or if this is a common thing with Samsung.
Also, just for some more info, I've tried turning on/off hdr, scene optimizer, and whenever I am ready to take a picture, it looks stunning. Then I hit the shutter button, and it turns out like poop. Barely half the quality of what it looked like before I hit the shutter button.
Here are two pics to compare so you can see what I mean. If anyone has any info regarding this please let me know, thanks.
Samsung
Iphone

resetoriginal said:
Is anyone having camera issues?
For whatever reason, when I try to take a photo of my dog, the face looks smeared. Roughly 80-90% of the time. While on my iphone it looks great...I'm kinda bummed out about this and wondering if this is either an issue with my unit, or if this is a common thing with Samsung.
Also, just for some more info, I've tried turning on/off hdr, scene optimizer, and whenever I am ready to take a picture, it looks stunning. Then I hit the shutter button, and it turns out like poop. Barely half the quality of what it looked like before I hit the shutter button.
Here are two pics to compare so you can see what I mean. If anyone has any info regarding this please let me know, thanks.
Samsung
Iphone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have always seen this happen on Samsung phones (S8, S9, and S10) when taking pictures in certain lighting situations. Especially inside when taking pictures of a rug or anything slightly fluffy. It is as if it is trying to apply the beauty mode to everything.

Try to get the AF to lock on to the animal's eyes.
A good pro cam can most times; it's a small but high contrast target.
-If you don't grab the eye(s) you lose the shot-
I haven't done any research how this cam's AF works; normally you would point focus AF although it may still target the hair as it's a high contrast target too.
There are a lot of high contrast targets in this shot, the dog's nose, that chair, the dog's hair and the floor boards. Try to limit potential AF targets by keeping the composure simpler and less cluttered with high contrast targets if you intend on capturing a face with the eyes in focus.
Getting closer to the subject makes an AF lock on the eye more likely. Try punching up the yellow focus/tracking square.
Worse with this cam's large aperture it makes for a shallow DOF which means a spot on focus is needed. The aperture setting is fixed so you can't stop it down to something reasonable like f/5.6 however this cam is sharpest at it's fixed aperture. Backing up therefore may help get more of the subject in focus. You need to learn to see through the camera's eye, as it sees rather than your eyes.
It is much more limited than the superb human visual system...
Manual focus is sometimes the only sure fire way to do it. In the pro mode it does have manual focus but lacks the smooth ring control of a good piece of glass found on stand alone cam systems.
A trade off... it's only a smartphone.

First, nice looking dog.
A couple of questions.
What were the lighting conditions?
Was your dog moving?
Sent from my SM-T727V using Tapatalk

Samsung applies way to much noise reduction destroying the details of a photo. This is why it appears like that. Also, there's nasty shutter lag with the stock cam...so you press the shutter to take the pic but it doesn't happen right away simply because hdr is always on no matter if you have the switch off or not. Basically Samsung have rendered there stock camera useless. Get the latest GCam port from arnova....all problems solved.