how is the camera?

[MaxBobcat]

IMO, the droid camera is the best camera phone on the market right now for outdoor photos.

Inside photos are fine, there just needs to be ample lighting.

are you serious?? nokia n82..or any other nokia camera phones blow the droid out of the water for indoor and outdoor pics

As for outdoor pics, do you really need anything higher quality than the example I posted above? You might, but personally I don't. If I do want anything better than that I, ya know, use an actual camera and not my phone. Outdoor pics look fine to me.

As for indoor pics, there is much left to be desired with the output, but with decent light and a photographer who knows what they're doing, the pics turn out OK. Not great, but OK.

$.02

 

[Cyrus6001]

the camera takes good pics outdoors in med-bright light. Indoor pics are grainy.
Heres a pic i took yesterday at the park around noon

 

[smokiedabong]

This is a camera phone not a photographer camera . It's meant to be that camera you always have with you so it can take quick snapshots from life , and it fails miserably from this point of view . There are a lot of situations when the lighting is not perfect , or the subject perfectly still . You don't get to set up scene lights for a quick snapshot in a pub for example . In low light conditions it performs way worse than any other smartphone at the same level , Omnia , Omnia 2 , Droid Eris , Touch Pro 2 , HTC HD2 , EnV3, Nokia N95 , BB Storm and these are only a few from the long list of phones I've tested and compared .
And if you think the difference consist of only grainier images , here are some examples :
ERIS :
[video=youtube;pCyWbFvMR1Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCyWbFvMR1Y&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - Eris low light video[/video]


DROID:
[video=youtube;Eeh295QsDLM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeh295QsDLM&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - Droid low light video[/video]


Nokia n95:
[video=youtube;iW36CHFyLbQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW36CHFyLbQ&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - Nokia N95 semi-dark video test[/video]


DROID:
[video=youtube;D1V0__yJ7j0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1V0__yJ7j0&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - Moto Droid test video semi-dark[/video]

 

[zakany]

The included camera app is a weak point.

 

[OHbowhunter]

I love the Droid camera.

Here are some pictures I took in the woods yesterday...

 

[Norbaracer13]

i would like the add that the macro lens function in the settings shoots very good close up pics. especialy when used with the flash.

 

[ak68]

camera lag question

I have barcode and qr code scanning software on my droid and it does a good job of reading codes but my wife's older iphone is much faster at acquiring the codes. Has anyone found a way to speed up the code acquisition with the droid?

 

[smokiedabong]

I love the Droid camera.

Here are some pictures I took in the woods yesterday...

But these are not pictures to be taken with a phone , and I don't really see the point of these pictures . If I want a wallpaper with an icicle I can find thousands on Google .

These is a picture to be taken with a camera that you always have with you , and Droid fails do deliver this

 

[slinky]

The bottom picture looks good phone sized. But why does it look so poor when at slightly larger resolution? So much dithering it's ridiculous. Also the spots on every picture. It's hard to determine whether the software/API is so horrible or the camera lens itself is so poor. My feeling is that the software (via motorola) may have a lot to do with this.

 

[Mamaperk]

I think pics taken outdoors in good lighting work out fine ... but indoor with flash, the faces are so white and without flash, the lighting has to be perfect ... but it's also slow between taking one pic to next. I don't usually expect much from a camera phone but in this case, really promoted this great camera which is my complaint. It's not at all what was expected.

 

[dylanthecat]

the camera takes good pics outdoors in med-bright light. Indoor pics are grainy.
Heres a pic i took yesterday at the park around noon

cyrus, i love this photo. It looks like it could almost have been taken down by river at my house here in WI. Uncanny.

 

[korky122]

all depends on the lighting. outdoors on a sunny afternoon. looks like a digital camera. inside at night time w/ decent light. bad pic quality.

 

[Hugh Jass]

IMO, the best camera-phone on the market is the LG Dare, the pictures I took with that thing were epic under nearly all situations. Blows the Droid out of the water, and it's a cheap ass phone in comparison.

 

[richie1378]

its a PHONE...buy a $100 kodak or cybershot if you want something to take quality pics quick. no ones gonna be happy with the camera when they think they deserve dSLR quality out of a $200 or less phone.

I don't think that anyone really thinks we would get dSLR quality pics from our droid, but we all probably want the speed other phones (including iPhone) can take pics at. The delay between shots is one of the biggest issues. The other complaint is how it's almost impossible to take pics in darker lit rooms because you can't see your object through the LCD. The Droid does take brightly lit outdoor pics really well though!

 

[slinky]

I'm still not sure. Of the following I am:

1) Horrific vignette effect with the flash. It is totally worthless unless the lighting is so dark that you'd have no picture at all. In many situations you are better off without it. At least you can turn it off.

2) Still unsure if the software and api is the problem. Some outdoor pictures are nice. The one above is one of the best I've seen. Others have good lighting but the resulting image, when blown up more than shrinking down to a small phone size, look like a jpeg saved at a very low quality rate - you see banding, spotting, dithering, etc.

Since people report that 3MP setting works very well, I'm wondering whether this is really an inability for software to take advantage of the 5MP camera's resolution.

If there is one thing I hope from the 2.1 update - it's that it addresses the horrible camera software and that it shows a marked improvement to consistently get nice photos. My iPhone 3GS always shot dark (as did most people's) but it had better focus lock, focus point settable in the software and didn't have nearly as much banding/off colors as the Droid.