Develop Bugs

T-Mobile TP2 Camera Stutter

Is it normal for the TP2 picture to stutter when trying to take a picture. If there is perfect lighting in the picture there is no stuttering in the picture, but if there is a light source or if it goes from the dark to a light area it stutters badly as it attempts to balance light levels and focus.
Does anyone else have this issue or is this normal?

When you say "stutter" I suppose you mean that your pics come out blurry due to your device shaking in your hands?
This is normal in low light conditions. Since there's not enough light, the camera compensates by slowing the shutter speed to allow more light to pass through the lens. The bad side to this is the slow shutter speed will also exaggerate any camera movement and this translates to blurry photos unless your device is fixed on a stationary object (and your subject is not moving).

yes! that is exactly what I am seeing. Yeah, i did not know that was normal. the screen refresh was so choppy it is hard to take a clear picture in low light. This is my first nice phone ive had and i am not used to all the features. Thanks for explaining that to me, I appriciate it!

You're very welcome, man. Just so you know, this isn't specific to our TP2. It applies for all cameras. Those with a flash would help a bit, but not much if it is really dark.
If you try to take a picture with any camera outdoors at night without a tripod and flash, it'll come out terrible.

I just laughed when I read the TP2 camera was 3.2 with no flash.
I will never use the camera because the pictures will come out looking like crap 90% of the time.
The camera for me is honestly useless. But oh well, the rest of the phone makes up for it.

camera works good with barcorama app. takes decent pics in well lit areas

[Q] TP2. Really Bad Camera Quality?

Hi all,
I have a touch pro 2, have upgraded from a touch pro, and its an all round better phone than its older brother.
However, the Camera on my old TP is so much better than mine on my TP2. On both the stock Rom, and my Energy rom the picture is total rubbish at all resolutions that its taken from. all the images seem very grainy and distorted compared to my TP.
I have tried cleaning the lens, and that hasnt seemed to make any difference either.
Has anyone else found this?

I completely agree with you on this. I remembered I was watching a video review on this device and they noted that the severity of the camera graininess is carrier specific due to the different battery covers. The other day I took a Pic with the battery cover off just to see if their was a difference and the pic was definitely a little bit sharper.

The clear window on battery cover can severely degrade image quality if scratched or greasy. The TP2 camera takes very nice pictures set at highest resolution and with good/bright light. Not so good in dim/poor light situations.

I've seen the same thing. Detail is all mushy. It reminds me a bit of some noise reduction software set too high. Since the tiny sensor in this phone would be prone to noise (small sensors have small pixels, so their light gathering capability is boosted by amplification, adding noise), so the Tilt2/Touchpro2 may have excessive noise reduction running.
Just a thought.

Images taken w/TP2
I am surprised to hear these comments! I have had a couple people mention how good images look that I have taken (using default settings). I have the T-Mobile version TP2 and am using b16b's AthineOS 21914 (superb) and am OC'd @729mhz. I have attached a couple photos taken recently that show what my device produces with it's camera. I am not a photographer by any means, and the image quality isn't amazing compared to a high-end digital camera, however, for my everyday usage which is somewhat limited to impulsive shooting of animals or car-wrecks & bum-fights, it seems to take fairly decent pictures. I do want to also mention that I take great pains to keep my device clean and use microfibre cleansing material frequently. Also, most of my use is outdoors, I have noticed that indoor usage doesn't give great results unless there is PLENTY of light available. Lack of a flash really disappoints me, however, overall I am very satisfied with my TP2!

[Q] Camera on HTC HD7 Quality poor ?

I would like to here your views on the picture quality on HTC HD7
I think it is very poor compared to my HTC HD2 running Android
The focus is very bad is it just mine or is it a general problem ?
Steve

Indoor the camera seems to be iffy on quality but outdoor I haven't had an issue. It does seem that sometimes the camera doesn't want to focus but I think thats a bug.

This is one thing I hate about my HD7. Although I am not a camera guy, I still want the best out of the things I buy. I hope its just software issues, although I genuinely doubt it.

It's HTC, what did you expect? If anything they're known for their crap cameras.

On all the htc devices I have had (which is many), cameras have never been more than adequate. The camera on my hd7 is ok, better outdoors than in.

I can confirm this, I was at a bar with a friend whom have an HD2 running Haret. We both shoot the same object and the HD2 is so much more focused and sharp. the differences are huge.

considering what I use a phone camera for (twitter, facebook, quick pic messages), I consider it to be ok.
here are some taken last week:
edit: and those are default settings, haven't even played with the settings yet.

OMG, what are you eating on the last picture?

So-so
Yeah, its okay, nothing to write home about.
Inside photos can be a bit grainy, and it takes a while to focus.
But even so if you get use to it and take your time to take a photo (nothing ridiculous a few seconds more than usual) it produces decent pictures.

First photo is sharp.. although perhaps the young lady is moving a bit for the shutter...
Second photo is out of focus.
Third photo is also sharp.. and LOOKS DELCIOUS ! Now I'm hungry. sheesh...

Poor! Poor! Poor!

I always go into settings and force it to flash when taking a picture. This seems to cut down on the blurriness I usually get.

I've found workarounds for a lot of scenarios. It requires adjusting but the camera CAN take pretty damn good pictures. I've never seen a phone that has a GREAT camera though, so I don't know why people ***** so much.

eternalemb said:
I've found workarounds for a lot of scenarios. It requires adjusting but the camera CAN take pretty damn good pictures. I've never seen a phone that has a GREAT camera though, so I don't know why people ***** so much.
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What are the workarounds you found?

well i have had an iphone 4 and now i'm on hd7..i must admit the iphone 4 is better in the camera department (even though hd7 has the same res) the camera is fine in day time but in low light conditions...it suffers & can't focus...
i hope they will fix it...

I agree with what most people have said. In good lighting conditions, the camera is good... However bring in the low-level conditions and the shutter speed is greatly reduced causing motion blur a focusing issues.
Some "Artsy" pics i've take in good lighting conditions attached, which i think are respectable for a HTC camera.

Audio said:
... bring in the low-level conditions and the shutter speed is greatly reduced causing motion blur a focusing issues.
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Show me a camera that doesn't reduce the shutter speed in low light and I'll introduce you to Santa Claus. That's how cameras work. The less light there is, the longer the shutter has to remain open to get enough light to stimulate the CCD.
Elementary physics.
All you people with focussing issues, you need to half-press the button to focus, then depress all the way to take the shot. Just like any digital camera.
I've not had any issues with focussing myself.

Jim Coleman said:
Show me a camera that doesn't reduce the shutter speed in low light and I'll introduce you to Santa Claus. That's how cameras work. The less light there is, the longer the shutter has to remain open to get enough light to stimulate the CCD.
Elementary physics.
All you people with focussing issues, you need to half-press the button to focus, then depress all the way to take the shot. Just like any digital camera.
I've not had any issues with focussing myself.
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I'm aware of how camera's work
Show me a camera/phone 5MP or more that has a shutter speed as slow or slower than that on the HTC's.
Now i don't know enough about how HTC develop their Camera's or the software for them but to me it seems all HTC's have a poor Auto-Brightness filter. It stems back to my old TyTN II where putting the phone on standby and then back on again would disable the auto-brightness, thus massively increasing FPS and shutter speed in the camera, at the cost of having a rediculously dark photo/video.
The Quality is there, It's just making best use of it that seems to be difficult.

I think it's pretty good tbh, as long as you half-press first. I haven't had any of the issues others have reported such as the quality or pinkish hue (knock on wood). For me, it's been more than enough... But that may vary with uses and expectations... I've always understood that it's a phone camera... Not a personal Nikon.

Audio said:
Show me a camera/phone 5MP or more that has a shutter speed as slow or slower than that on the HTC's.
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Click to collapse
The correct shutter speed is determined by the sensitivity of the CCD and the size of the aperture. Camera phones have a tiny aperture and probably quite an insensitive CCD so the shutter speed is always going to have to be quite slow to compensate.
Now i don't know enough about how HTC develop their Camera's or the software for them but to me it seems all HTC's have a poor Auto-Brightness filter
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Click to collapse
Not sure what you mean by "auto-brightness filter" - cameras employ a process called "metering" to determine if a scene is over or underexposed, and metering can be done across the frame as a whole or just over a particular spot, say in the middle of the frame. If your shots are suffering from poor metering, i.e. the phone doesn't set the correct shutter speed for the scene, then you need to change the metering type. Phones don't have a very high dynamic range either, so they have trouble with scenes containing both very bright and very dark patches.
Basically, phone cameras really are not suited to anything but the most casual of photos when you don't have a proper camera to hand.
But even a phone camera can produce vaguely acceptable results if you learn the basics of photography and work with the limitations. With no control over aperture, ISO or shutter speed, and with such a microscopic lense, it'll always be a huge compromise though.
I don't know why people get so upset about the cameras on their phones - they were never meant to replace a real camera, they're just a toy.

[Q] Picture quality, day and night?

Hey guys/gals,
Just wondering on how the quality of the pictures are with this phone. I've seen pics taken by reviewers, but it's always better to look at it from a user's perspective. Has anybody tried playing around with the camera?
Also, can someone be kind enough to upload some sample pictures of random shots, like daylight shots, night time, and macro shots? I know the camera is supposedly very good, but it'll be nice to actually see a few real samples, especially the night time shots.

bump, anybody? hehe

Actual pics to come, but from my own experience as both a previous user of the Nexus One AND a hobby digital photographer are;
All of this is using the default Camera, default settings (except for turning OFF the shutter sound).
1. The Nitro does a rather good job in low light situations. Opting to raise the ISO more than use Flash. On more than a few occasions where I expected to see flash, it didn't. When blown-up you certainly can see the picture is grainier without the flash, but for web/facebook viewing the results are quite good and a LOT LESS harsh from not using flash.
2. LONG shot-to-shot time! I wonder what the buffer size with the camera is, IF there's even a buffer that comes with it! Because it takes me about 6 seconds between taking one picture before I'm able to take the next. Even when I try using a 3rd party app (Camera Zoom FX) I only got the time down to 3 seconds. Do NOT plan on using this phone's camera for any kid's birthday parties!!
That's all I've got for the moment, will add more when I've done more playing/testing.

Guess I can upload a bunch I took.
A note, some are taken with HDR + and others with Camera Zoom FX.
http://thewisedumbass.tumblr.com/post/14540968432 (Had to make it a post on Tumblr, pics kept messing up here)

The photos looks decent for a phone, nothing spectacular, at low light is more like "meh" - an average or slightly above, but when it comes to movies at low light I'd prefer have grain (Atrix 4G / Nitro) rather then ghosting (any other phones). On Nitro and Atrix 4G regardless of the light the picture is smooth 30fps, as opposite to Skyrocket or ANY HTC phone with 5fps and all smugged.
Here are some shots to compare:
Nitro with flash (left), no flash (right):
Atrix 4G with flash (left), no flash (right):
Also note Nitro has much lower lens focal length, which makes it capture wider surroundings. The photos were taking from 4 feet away and Nitro's photos captured much more surroundings then Atrix. Even when you hold both phones side by side the image at Nitro looks at pretty much correct distance, rather then on Atrix it looks like zoomed in. Yet, in low light Atrix's ISO captures much more light.
This is first phone camera that beat Atrix's (IMO). /me very happy with it.

Nice!! thanks guys for the details comparisons. I am liking wat i see with the Nitro. Do any of u guys find the auto focus annoying, or is there an option to do manual focus, like the atrix??

Not sure what manual focus you are talking about, but the camera does allow you to touch to pick the area to focus. Still auto-focus to the region, but better than the normal.

aquariuz23 said:
Nice!! thanks guys for the details comparisons. I am liking wat i see with the Nitro. Do any of u guys find the auto focus annoying, or is there an option to do manual focus, like the atrix??
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Neither stock nor MIUI camera has manual focus on Atrix...In fact Atrix doesn't allow you pick which part on the picture you want it focus to, it's always at the center.

My pictures all turned out horrible! (blurry and over-exposed)

Ok, let me start out by saying I know very very little about photography. I pretty much just leave it on Auto. I mean, I know how to switch between different presets (Auto, Portrait, Night, HDR, etc.) and that you can tap to focus there.... that's about it. I don't know how to set ISO levels or anything else.
Anyway, so I was at a 3-day event a few weeks ago, and was hoping that my M8 was going to be a huge quality boost over my EVO 3D. Sure, the photos would be 4MP instead of 5 (Though most of my photos were 2MP anyway since I mostly shot in 3D) but I figured the phone being several years newer and having high low-light performance would offset that.... boy was I wrong.
I noticed that my indoor photos were kinda fuzzy and blurry, even with my hand held still (thank you HTC for removing the OIS...) so I resorted to taking the same photos 2-4 times and hope I can pick a "best shot" out of the batch later when I could review all my photos on a PC. (Yes, I know I can hold the shoot button to make it auto-snap quick images, but I wouldn't have time to review and select the best out of each one for each photo I took). Even with this many of them even with perfect focus were still pretty terribly grainy/noisy, some even out of a batch of 5-6 remained blurry.
Outdoor where there is a lot of sunlight...... had it's OWN problems! Any object, sign, wall, or person clothed in white was overexposed to near comical levels! I had taken many shots, both with the subjects in focus and out (on a shaded area so it used more light on the subjects) and both on auto and flash off. This resulted in photos that were kinda badly over-exposed to photos that were so badly overexposed anything with white in it just looks like a bunch of white blobs! Even of the ones where it managed to get decent exposure on the subjects, the image was overly dark and anything not in focus which was white was still overexposed to the point of any and all detail being lost. (Seriously, it was so bad that there were signs which just looked like a solid white rectangle or circle, no words or symbols could even be noticed on them).
I took over 2000 photos (over 4 gigs worth) during those three days, mainly just mashing the shutter button at slightly different settings and angles hoping one out of every 20 or so would at least be usable... and to say that I can even get 100 to 200 "passable" photos out of these 2000+ would be a stretch!
The other day I was experimenting with the HDR option that I was advised to try which should hopefully alleviate these under/over exposed issues. Purposely shooting white objects in bright outdoor conditions in different conditions with HDR on and off. Didn't really help. The condition or light focus on which I shot them in HDR mode seemed to not matter, but the image was still fairly over-exposed. Not AS bad as when the focus is off the white object, but still pretty close (and still nowhere near as good as when the focus IS on the white object). On top of that, many of the HDR photos looked washed-out and with dulled colors (I thought HDR made colors more vivid?).
So I am at a loss, I don't know if this is a problem with my new expensive phone which I am stuck with's camera, if I am just using it horribly incorrectly, or both. (I remember several reviews mentioning over-exposure being an issue, but I didn't expect it to be worse than my EVO 3D, and it was mostly for background objects).
Does any have any tips or advice on what I can do?

Cyber Akuma said:
Ok, let me start out by saying I know very very little about photography. I pretty much just leave it on Auto. I mean, I know how to switch between different presets (Auto, Portrait, Night, HDR, etc.) and that you can tap to focus there.... that's about it. I don't know how to set ISO levels or anything else.
Anyway, so I was at a 3-day event a few weeks ago, and was hoping that my M8 was going to be a huge quality boost over my EVO 3D. Sure, the photos would be 4MP instead of 5 (Though most of my photos were 2MP anyway since I mostly shot in 3D) but I figured the phone being several years newer and having high low-light performance would offset that.... boy was I wrong.
I noticed that my indoor photos were kinda fuzzy and blurry, even with my hand held still (thank you HTC for removing the OIS...) so I resorted to taking the same photos 2-4 times and hope I can pick a "best shot" out of the batch later when I could review all my photos on a PC. (Yes, I know I can hold the shoot button to make it auto-snap quick images, but I wouldn't have time to review and select the best out of each one for each photo I took). Even with this many of them even with perfect focus were still pretty terribly grainy/noisy, some even out of a batch of 5-6 remained blurry.
Outdoor where there is a lot of sunlight...... had it's OWN problems! Any object, sign, wall, or person clothed in white was overexposed to near comical levels! I had taken many shots, both with the subjects in focus and out (on a shaded area so it used more light on the subjects) and both on auto and flash off. This resulted in photos that were kinda badly over-exposed to photos that were so badly overexposed anything with white in it just looks like a bunch of white blobs! Even of the ones where it managed to get decent exposure on the subjects, the image was overly dark and anything not in focus which was white was still overexposed to the point of any and all detail being lost. (Seriously, it was so bad that there were signs which just looked like a solid white rectangle or circle, no words or symbols could even be noticed on them).
I took over 2000 photos (over 4 gigs worth) during those three days, mainly just mashing the shutter button at slightly different settings and angles hoping one out of every 20 or so would at least be usable... and to say that I can even get 100 to 200 "passable" photos out of these 2000+ would be a stretch!
The other day I was experimenting with the HDR option that I was advised to try which should hopefully alleviate these under/over exposed issues. Purposely shooting white objects in bright outdoor conditions in different conditions with HDR on and off. Didn't really help. The condition or light focus on which I shot them in HDR mode seemed to not matter, but the image was still fairly over-exposed. Not AS bad as when the focus is off the white object, but still pretty close (and still nowhere near as good as when the focus IS on the white object). On top of that, many of the HDR photos looked washed-out and with dulled colors (I thought HDR made colors more vivid?).
So I am at a loss, I don't know if this is a problem with my new expensive phone which I am stuck with's camera, if I am just using it horribly incorrectly, or both. (I remember several reviews mentioning over-exposure being an issue, but I didn't expect it to be worse than my EVO 3D, and it was mostly for background objects).
Does any have any tips or advice on what I can do?
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Click to collapse
There is an Anti-shake mode. I'd check your lenses for scratches, sometimes the coating gets scratched and causes problems. It can be removed.
Incidentally my lens is perfect and nothing at all wrong with the photos it takes.