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.
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??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Hi all,
I noticed that whenever I take a picture and then open it up in the gallery, the colours are all different than the actual colours that appear on the screen when you are in the Stock camera. So I tried pressing the screen capture button and comparing the same picture, Stock VS Screen capture.
The results where great imo, screen capture has a better representation of colour and better contrast, also the lighting and brightness come out more accurately.
I also noticed that even without auto enhance on (A feature that appeared in a modded camera app recently) the colours and brightness are still saved incorrectly.
Now I am using the home button with a Capture Screen function in Viper X with the capacitive button set to the shortest delay.
The good:
Better colours, better contrast, better lighting.
Saves in .png format.
Smaller size
The bad:
Only 710*1280 pictures with a size of around 1mb
Delay between shots until the .png file is saved.
No auto-rotation of pictures taken in landcscape view.
Lower quality images - Compression discoloration.
I have attached some pictures with comparisons so you can see the difference.
I used the UiMod camera I posted recently with the lyapota mod: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1875022
All the best
imo the standard pictures look better
The pictures have been resized so there is some quality loss there too..
Try it on your phone if you have a mod that allows you to take screenshots.
The quality is not that good, but I think the colours look better.
All the best
htckt said:
The pictures have been resized so there is some quality loss there too..
Try it on your phone if you have a mod that allows you to take screenshots.
The quality is not that good, but I think the colours look better.
All the best
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the skull looks alot better on screen capture, other two I'd say camera wins.
But I think the camera on the HOX is a total let down, considering when they were advertising they jumped out of a bloody plane with it, if we did that it would be blurry as hell, false advertisement bloody hell !
Wilks3y said:
I think the skull looks alot better on screen capture, other two I'd say camera wins.
But I think the camera on the HOX is a total let down, considering when they were advertising they jumped out of a bloody plane with it, if we did that it would be blurry as hell, false advertisement bloody hell !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
unless you use burst-shooting
the thing is when you are using burst, at least one of them will look sharp
try it with a fast moving animal, guaranteed you will get one good one
Wilks3y said:
I think the skull looks alot better on screen capture, other two I'd say camera wins.
But I think the camera on the HOX is a total let down, considering when they were advertising they jumped out of a bloody plane with it, if we did that it would be blurry as hell, false advertisement bloody hell !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think the camera is a let down too, I was so excited when I first bought it but then after a while everything started seeming strange, colours, contrast, brightness, the saturation was way too much also. Pictures look pretty good with the lyapota mod though :- )
all the best
the camera is great for fast moving objects, took a few pics of my nephew running around the other day, every single pic was focused and not blurry.
i have noticed that the hq camera mod slows it down, unless you reduce the quality a bit.
Just bumped into this thread and i have to agree with the OP, i just noticed that 2 days ago and I was trying to find a solution. When I take a picture it looks great during the review time ( 3-5 seconds) but then when I open it in the gallery it seems it loses its quality. It's driving me crazy!