The camera sucks

[hazydave]

hazydave...
Thanks MUCHO for setting me straight on the technologies involved here. I made certain assumptions that were incorrect and I hate giving out bad info.

Well, hey.. I'm a photographer and an electronics engineer... so I apply this, even to fun stuff like the DROID. I was a bit disappointed in the photo quality, too, even understanding the various details (lens limitations... the best you're usually going to find in a cell phone is a 4 element glass lens.. many use plastic, I have not found the specs on the DROID lens, other than the fact it's f2.8, which could be better, but it's horrible). So I dug in a bit.

My statement about the "lens not being capable of 5mp" was a general statement which was meant to include the sensor but I should have made that clear

It's good to understand which pieces effect which things. It's quite possible that a lens would not offer resolution enough to give you any practical difference between 5Mpixel and 2 or 3 Mpixel.. but the effect would be, they all look pretty much the same... the 5Mpixel photo would be just a blurry as the 2Mpixel photo. What we see, I think most agree, is a sharp photo with lots of noise. I'll add in that, in my experience, every once in awhile, I get a photo that's just uselessly noisy -- this is clearly some software bug, since this happened to me twice in situations where the photos before and after were in identical lighting conditions.

It's also true that every digital camera on the planet does image processing on the output of the sensor... noise reduction, color interpolation and balancing, etc. If I have the 5Mpixel sensor correct (this is one of those things I've found surfing the net, it could be wrong, but it was from a couple potentially independent sources), there's a bunch of "different" tech in there. I wonder how tightly coupled the Android people are from those elsewhere at Motorola using the same camera... could be there's a big improvement possible in software. We can hope! It's definite there's a small improvement possible in software.

Yes... the pics on the ZN5 page look pretty good so you've raised my bar of hope that the Droid will too someday take better pictures.

Yeah, I looked at those, up close, compared to the DROID photos, and I believe it's at least possible. First of all, 5Mpixel camera sensors are rare at the moment.. and particularly one thin enough for the DROID. So this is a good match, even if I didn't have information claim this is it. Second, Motorola's already using it, so why go find a different one for the same job? As well, the nature of the digital noise in both was the same, though far more pronounced in the DROID photos. And that's a double-edged sword when you're doing DCT-type compression, since the overall quality of the photo in will be reduced, as the JPEG algorithm does its best to retain that noise. So, drop the noise just a bit, and the photo can be dramatically better looking in its final form.

Hopefully, they improve it next week!

 

[windstrings]

There's another app I found, for recording whiteboard/blackboard before it's erased. This app does image processing to deliver something in high contrast and useful as a drawing, not a photo. Great thing, since I'm definitely not taking any of my 30+ cameras (film, digital, video) into the typical meetingroom.

There is another app I have my eye on called "snapit", take and recognize text and translate it, or save it to the droid or email or share.

 

[windstrings]

Well, hey.. I'm a photographer and an electronics engineer... so I apply this, even to fun stuff like the DROID. I was a bit disappointed in the photo quality, too, even understanding the various details (lens limitations... the best you're usually going to find in a cell phone is a 4 element glass lens.. many use plastic, I have not found the specs on the DROID lens, other than the fact it's f2.8, which could be better, but it's horrible). So I dug in a bit.

I appreciate your optimism, it gives hope.. it would be the total icing on the cake to end up with a decent camera in all this.
That would be quite a stride to make an awesome device, perfect!

Any juicy info you come up with about the camera workings, I'll sure be interested in hearing about.... good stuff!

 

[dylanthecat]

Hazydave, do you have the name of the whiteboard program you mentioned? Sounds useful to me.

 

[windstrings]

There's no such thing as a "lens incapable of 5Mpixels"... the lens is analog. You can have sharp focus or soft focus, clean colors or chromatic aberrations, straight lines or distortion. But the various bits of noise cannot possible be a lens issue.

One concern... the sensor is a 1/4" sensor. This is an issue, because of how tiny each pixel gets, 1.4µm². The original iPhone had nearly twice the per-pixel sensor size. If this is the Kodak chip, they have a number of technologies that they employ to claim it's still a good chip:
Kodak revolutionizes image capture with new CMOS sensor

Yep, just about the time I"m thinking we are doing too cool with the pics we get from such a small lens, I'm reminded of the Eagle and how good it see's soaring thousands of feet in the air while moving.... then I'm brought back to reality!

 

[windstrings]

I'm betting at least some of the problems are due to software. This, in particular, because this chip is used in other Mot phones, including the ZN5: Motorola ZN5 test photos
Much better photos there, eh?

I hope your right.. this stuff if way over my head.. too cool if the droid has it and we just need to tweak the software... thats usually the case with cutting edge hardware.

 

[windstrings]

Here's a pick of my mad recipe for 15 lbs of salmon in brine getting ready to be smoked!
Everything auto, including focus... 5 meg pic "photobucket knocks way down to 800res"

 

[whiteymack]

I have tried indoor pictures and with nominal light indoors I get blurry pix and sometimes they come out dark... even with the flash

I decided to switch right over to action shot...
and in action,, it doesnt auto focus, it focuses to infinity which sucks,, but,,,,
its lighting calibration doesnt kick in,, and it doesnt try to white balance,, it just snaps the shot,, and belive it or not they come out clear as a bell,, except a little dark...

thus this leads me to believe that the hardware is there,, because in action it was able to increase the shutter/capture speed fast enough to capture my daughter running across the room with no blur,, whereas in auto with flash the same shot a few seconds ago was blurry,,,

so if they could somehow add focus and flash to the action we would be in the money.....

 

[New2u]

I'd say see what the update does for it. See how this helps in any way. Hopefully it helps at least some.

 

[johnflo88]

@whiteymack: your answer to my questions were very enlightening.I hope motorola will soon address the short coming. Btw,does the new ota updates for the camera bugs solved the problems yesterday?Thank you.

 

[windstrings]

I have tried indoor pictures and with nominal light indoors I get blurry pix and sometimes they come out dark... even with the flash

I decided to switch right over to action shot...
and in action,, it doesnt auto focus, it focuses to infinity which sucks,, but,,,,
its lighting calibration doesnt kick in,, and it doesnt try to white balance,, it just snaps the shot,, and belive it or not they come out clear as a bell,, except a little dark...

thus this leads me to believe that the hardware is there,, because in action it was able to increase the shutter/capture speed fast enough to capture my daughter running across the room with no blur,, whereas in auto with flash the same shot a few seconds ago was blurry,,,

so if they could somehow add focus and flash to the action we would be in the money.....

and considering an action shot should make dark pictures even worse, this is encouraging.

 

[SwordOfWar]

Obviously there are some major software side issues. One of the release notes for the upcoming update noted a fix for the auto focus and the long delay between picture shots.

The grain and light issues can be improved via software. Their raw to digital conversion could be poor, and it obviously needs some brightness increase via software to make those pictures not come out so dark.

The fact that picsay pro can work wonders on these pictures is proof enough that it can be improved via software.

Lets hope the update gives us some help. I still havent gotten an update although its suppose to be "slowly" rolling out right now.

 

[windstrings]

For anybody thats not up to speed... here is a thread with instructions of how to get the Dec11 update now...... camera fix is one of the fixes.

 

[atomicwedgie]

For anybody thats not up to speed... here is a thread with instructions of how to get the Dec11 update now...... camera fix is one of the fixes.

Thank you so much for this! Preliminary tests show the camera to be much more responsive AND focus works perfect each time!

 

[Anomander]

Here's a pick of my mad recipe for 15 lbs of salmon in brine getting ready to be smoked!
Everything auto, including focus... 5 meg pic "photobucket knocks way down to 800res"

Windstrings that just sounds delicious! Is 15lbs of smoke salmon going to last long?