Database Users

Camera focusing and quality

I'm on 318 and it seems the camera takes a while to focus, and it gives a little beep. Does that mean I shouldn't capture until it beeps? I've noticed the picture quality stinks, and there are threads about that, so I guess its what I have to live with until smart peps figure out how to make it better. But, in the mean time, what's the best way to get decent pics from this thing. Wait for the focus, or should I be seeing the Sam quality without waiting for the focus beep? I swear, it seems to me that if I don't wait for the beep, the pictures look even worse than if I had waited for the beep.
Sent from my Dell Streak using Tapatalk

carhigh said:
I'm on 318 and it seems the camera takes a while to focus, and it gives a little beep. Does that mean I shouldn't capture until it beeps? I've noticed the picture quality stinks, and there are threads about that, so I guess its what I have to live with until smart peps figure out how to make it better. But, in the mean time, what's the best way to get decent pics from this thing. Wait for the focus, or should I be seeing the Sam quality without waiting for the focus beep? I swear, it seems to me that if I don't wait for the beep, the pictures look even worse than if I had waited for the beep.
Sent from my Dell Streak using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
To get the Bleep are you keeping your finger on the shutter
The way i do it is just a quick press it focuses in a sec and takes a good pic
Thing to remember its a phone not a camera it may be a 5mp camera but it has not got all the software a 5mp camera has.

lufc said:
To get the Bleep are you keeping your finger on the shutter
The way i do it is just a quick press it focuses in a sec and takes a good pic
Thing to remember its a phone not a camera it may be a 5mp camera but it has not got all the software a 5mp camera has.
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Click to collapse
Turn on the camera and just hold it in one place. It will focus and beep and the 4 corner things will turn green.
It should take better pics than it does. My hd2 running windows or android shoots this streaks camera to shame.
The streak does take and reply nice video though.
Sent from my Dell Streak using Tapatalk

carhigh said:
Turn on the camera and just hold it in one place. It will focus and beep and the 4 corner things will turn green.
It should take better pics than it does. My hd2 running windows or android shoots this streaks camera to shame.
The streak does take and reply nice video though.
Sent from my Dell Streak using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try it without holding the button just tap it
Seems to take a better pic for me if i just tap it

lufc said:
Try it without holding the button just tap it
Seems to take a better pic for me if i just tap it
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Click to collapse
I don't hold the button at all. I just open the camera and tap the shutter to take a pic. I've never tried holding the button at all. I just noticed the camera focuses and makes a sound if you don't take a pic and just hold the phone still. And weather I just take a pic or wait for it to focus and beep and the corners change to green, it really doesn't matter because the pictures still aren't up to par with the hd2 pictures. Sometimes I also noticed the setting changes from 5mp to VGA on its own.
Sent from my Dell Streak using Tapatalk

I'm using 318 and I haven't had much luck with it autofocusing correctly. I tried to take a pic of my christmas tree with the Streak and it missed on the focus every time. I tried pointing it at different parts of the tree but it missed every time. Not sure if it was the lights or the lack of solidness (is there a word for that?) that threw it off.

You might want to try taking pictures of different things first. The camera isn't the best but it does the job. Its probably the only thing I miss from my iPhone. LOL.
Sent from my Dell Streak using Tapatalk

You can hold the on-screen shutter button and then when you release it takes the picture.
I find that this works better to keep hand-shake out of the image. You just keep your finger on the on-screen button and it will focus, then when you release, it snaps the pic.

mellojoe said:
You can hold the on-screen shutter button and then when you release it takes the picture.
I find that this works better to keep hand-shake out of the image. You just keep your finger on the on-screen button and it will focus, then when you release, it snaps the pic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This DOES take better pictures!
Thanks for the tip!
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App

What are the best settings for the camera to take optimum pictures?
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App

Low photo resolution even if 5MP is chosen
Upgrade to 2.2 build 12821 recently, took a number of photos, but only realize today that the file size (resolution?) of those photos are really small i.e. around 500kb.
I have always set it as 5 MB. It was never an issue until I upgraded...
Sigh... previously I had the orientation problem, and now the resolution problem. Dissapointed with Dell software.

Look for an option for "reset to default"on camera settings. Mine also switched to low resolution after the upgrade. But it is back now.
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App

The top button on screen is the camera settings. It is scrollable. At the bottom is "reset to default". Should do the trick
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Mine kept resetting to VGA too. I think its sticking on 5mp now though
Sent from my Dell Streak using Tapatalk

Have you tried various camera apps such as Camera360? Those seem to work pretty well also, plus they have a ton of options.

Camera quality is bad

So I've been taking a few pictures on my phone, and I have noticed that the Galaxy S2 is very very inconsistent in taking quality photos. I can have a great clear shot of some mid-ranged photos, but far distanced photos have horrible quality. I understand if you take pictures of something really far, obviously it won't be that good, but when I compared to my friends iPhone 4, the 8MP is barely on par with it. Do any of you know what might be the problem? I've tried using auto focus and manual focus, but it is always blurry.

It seems to be an hardware problem. I find the sgsw camera pretty good, especially the dynamic range. My only concern is with indoor pictures, a bit noisy and cold.

Can you upload and provide some shots samples?
Everything on auto? It might help to know which ROM/mod you are using.
I'm not an expert in mobile digital photography but if I can see your blurry distant shots it might be able to tell if I get better result with my device.

The S2 tends to like low shutter speeds (1/4s - 1/20s) ALL the frigging time.
It will select this slow shutter speed even when it should raise the ISO and get a faster shutter speed.
This is why the S2 often takes blurry photos, because even 1/15 or 1/19sec is not fast enough to take a photo sharply with a 28mm lens (effectively what the S2 is).
The slowest shutter speed the S2 should use is 1/30sec to ensure the photos aren't blurred by *camera* vibration/shake. (But, if the *subject* is moving, like a child, then 1/60s or 1/80s are the minimum that are needed to freeze the subject).
This is why the photos are so often blurry as soon as the light gets slightly low - cloud day, in shade, etc. I don't have a solution sorry!
Proof: check the EXIF data of the blurry photos you take. Most will have a stupidly low ISO (like ISO25, ISO50) and a stupid low shutter speed.

Yes I have noticed that the shutter speeds are quite low...now I'm assured that its not just me
I can take SOME really good photos, but almost every other pictures are very blurry even at a close distance.
Everything is on default, except I have enabled Anti-Shake or something like that, and I am using CheckROM 3.1.1 (KJ3)
The first 2 are taken at a considerably good range, with no zoom or any effects, just a normal shot, but then the outcome was very weird.
The last one was a closer shot, but in a darker area, and that one was a little bit more clear

I don't want to be captain obvious, and I am sure you are a better photographer than me but can you check if the focus mode is set to macro if it is then change to auto focus.
Since this happened to me once i set to macro and forgot and all the photos were blurry.
I just felt that might be the reason.

I am guessing that what you're doing is pressing on the "Capture" button without focusing on the subject yet?
I do find that it's best to press to focus on the area you want to take and then press the main capture button to capture it. It seems like the focus hasn't focused on what you want to take.
It's quite annoying because then that means I have to press in the middle and then press the capture button to take a decent shot. I wish I could just hold down the capture button to focus, then release to shoot.. which works sometimes but not as good as what I said above.

Here you have 2 images, far and close focus. You can see the great quality of the camera. Take a look at the focus settings: better in auto mode if you don't want to manage it in all photos. Maybe you have some problem in the camera hardware... so warranty is the best option here.

There are at least 2 types of camera modules in SGS II.
Check this:http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1098834
Mine also had this problem (blury at far objects), the soultion is set the metering to matrix in camera menu.It works for me.

iocar said:
Yes I have noticed that the shutter speeds are quite low...now I'm assured that its not just me
I can take SOME really good photos, but almost every other pictures are very blurry even at a close distance.
Everything is on default, except I have enabled Anti-Shake or something like that, and I am using CheckROM 3.1.1 (KJ3)
The first 2 are taken at a considerably good range, with no zoom or any effects, just a normal shot, but then the outcome was very weird.
The last one was a closer shot, but in a darker area, and that one was a little bit more clear
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
are you using macro mode to take farer objects ?
thats why it is more clear when you are taking photo of the specimen (3rd one)
or the camera firmware is broken , if not ,it may be the hardware issue

I always touch the place where I want to focus, and that is why I am confused
Yes I was using Macro, but only because it had the best quality...Auto-Focus doesn't really help as it never focus properly, as in when I press the "Capture" button, most of the time it goes to red and doesn't turn green. I am holding the phone still and don't know why
The camera firmware is also up to date
What I don't get is that my old HTC Desire can take photos that are much more crisp than my Galaxy S2

Try resetting the camera settings see if that works,try a third party HDR camera app or Camera 360,if quility is still bad in the 3rd party app then it could be a hardware fault
Sichroteph said:
My only concern is with indoor pictures, a bit noisy and cold.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
auto contrast I find helps take better indoors

Cant say I've had any problems with the camera. Love the macro focussing.

It seems obvious that your device doesn't behave like it should and have focus problems. I can have the exact same results with macro mode activated (and not shooting close objects)
I would suggest :
- trying another camera app (like TheiPhoneKiller suggested)
- trying a totally stock rom
- trying a rom like CM7 or MIUI
If you still got totally unfocused shots, you may very well have an faulty device. Try to get a replacement unit if you can.
(And did you try the fix kisstom suggested?)

Well... my shots is certainly much more grainy, since i upgraded to 2.3.5 - even if shot outside in bright sunshine. And many of the pictures is becoming more yellow than before - especially when using the flash-LED, so something has happened when i upgraded... this is one of my big complaints about the new upgrade. My old W800i 2Mpx beats the SGS2 in pure quality of the pictures now (but that was also, and still is, a VERY good camera for a phone)...
When comparing the newest pictures to some of the old pictures i have shot in the past, it's clear to me that i have a loss of quality since upgrading. How do i check manually, if there's a new camera-software version available - as i can't seem to find any in the Samsung apps, even if i have read somewhere that there's a newer one, comparing to my version of the camera-software???
But a least it's still not as crappy as my old HTC's camera - THAT was lousy...

Frankly speaking, 'Camera quality is bad' makes no sense. If you've said it's bad than this or that then I'd take it. Have used all the SE phones as I loved their image quality and I'll say after playing with the Satio, C905 I don't think this one would beat them. We are talking about a small image sensor here. So the main job is how good the post image processing is, some part still depends on the lens though.
The thing is I didn't buy this one for camera, believe me or not, after purchase, that is almost six months now, I've shot barely 10 pics with it. For normal usage and as a professional can't go without 350D, and for short tours and holidays I still shoot with my C905 , but not GSII.
But still this Camera is capable of taking some great pics, posting some of them here, after seeing them you certainly can't say Camera quality is bad.
The very bests I've found,

-> ithehappy
Well - i used to have that image quality too, but it has become somewhat impossible to shot such good pictures, since upgrading... i suspect that it's because my camera firmware still is TBEC28 (but of course not sure of it)

iocar said:
I always touch the place where I want to focus, and that is why I am confused
Yes I was using Macro, but only because it had the best quality...Auto-Focus doesn't really help as it never focus properly, as in when I press the "Capture" button, most of the time it goes to red and doesn't turn green. I am holding the phone still and don't know why
The camera firmware is also up to date
What I don't get is that my old HTC Desire can take photos that are much more crisp than my Galaxy S2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Confused!!! Are you saying that you always have macro focus on?
If so then turn it off. My cousin complained about the exact same thing, blurry and red box when trying to focus. Went through his settings, turned macro off and everything was good again.
Also auto focus will not work correctly if macro is on, unless your taking really close range pics, which is what macro focus is for.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium

well i am on 2.3.5 Images are really Perfect for me am seriously impressed the Quality iam on kI8 here is one example
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/708/20111118205552.jpg

iocar said:
Yes I was using Macro, but only because it had the best quality
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Click to collapse
That's exactly why your pictures are blurry at a distance.
Macro focus is for close-up pictures, use auto focus for longer distances

Camera Delay Taking Photos.

Anybody else getting this. It's about a 2 second gap. I'm thinking it's only relatively low light but it's annoying and misses photos.
All camera apps seem to have the same delay between pressing the shutter and actually taking the photo so it has to be hardware.

fr4nk1yn said:
Anybody else getting this. It's about a 2 second gap. I'm thinking it's only relatively low light but it's annoying and misses photos.
All camera apps seem to have the same delay between pressing the shutter and actually taking the photo so it has to be hardware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hmm that's weird, mine only takes 0.5 secs even when it requires focusing. If I had focused before I pressed the shutter button, it takes the photo almost instantly.

If you have hdr on it has additional processing...if you have IA intelligent autofocus it had a delay to focus when you click shoot. If you just use manual focus and no IA it will fire as expected.
Sent from my VS980 4G using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Try to tap to focus on anyhting you want to focus,it will be faster.

fr4nk1yn said:
Anybody else getting this. It's about a 2 second gap. I'm thinking it's only relatively low light but it's annoying and misses photos.
All camera apps seem to have the same delay between pressing the shutter and actually taking the photo so it has to be hardware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As the others said, be sure to tap to focus first.
Also, you can hold down the shutter button to force a focus and then let go to instantly take the shot. It locks the focus.

Mine does the same in low light situations. If tap to focus it still takes the same amount of time all together as I have to wait for it to focus still when I tap. And when I pan around its really slow. In normal or bright lighting I have no issue.

I think asia cnet's camera comparison just solved this.
They think there's post processing going on under certain low light conditions.
I have'nt checked being I'm still reading the article. If the shutter speed is stripped from the EXIF info we can be almost certain that's our delay.

Camera slow shutter speed

I know the camera issue has been beat to death already but I've been testing it for many days and would like to relay my results. A lot of people are saying that the auto focus is bad causing blurry pictures. This is false, the focus works great but the camera always chooses a shutter speed that's to low for the lighting causing blur on subjects in motion. The only way I can get the shutter speed over 1/20 is by taking a picture in bright light. Even in above average lighting conditions the shutter will go to 1/20 or below. There is no option for metering so I wonder if LG coded something wrong in the camera drivers. I have tried every camera program out there and they all take the exact same picture using the same to low shutter speed which tells me it's not the stock camera app. I don't have the skill to dive into the programming but that is where the problem seems to be. It's the same brand (Sony) camera sensor as the SGS4 so I know that it's not the sensors fault.
Any thoughts?
Sent from my LG-D803 using xda app-developers app

Anybody else have any ideas?

I'm also seeing these ridiculous shutter speeds (1/14, 1/20) when shooting in low light indoors, even if picking Sport mode, and was looking for a discussion on the topic here. Happy to find it
I had almost given up getting the camera to do what I wanted, when I discovered that the Intelligent Auto feature actually sometimes is ... intelligent. I took 4 photos of my toddler - obviously, not a subject willing to sit still. All photos on intelligent auto.
For two of the photos, the software shot with ISO 700 and 1/15th shutter, pretty much what Normal does every time. But - the other two were taken with ISO 1400-1/30 and ISO 1500-1/30. Naturally, the latter two were a lot sharper.
This is incredibly annoying since the Normal mode only lets you manually pick max ISO 800 and gives no shutter speed control. Until I found out about this intelligent auto thing, I forced -1, -1 1/3 stops underexposure to make the camera use a faster shutter (it typically used 1/59 for some reason). Now I guess I will take 5-6 pics every time and hope the camera is indeed intelligent part of the time.
- Is there no custom camera app capable of setting shutter speed manually, and use the ISO settings available to Intelligent Auto?
- Noone's had any word from LG on this?
I will be contacting LG support about this as well, but wanted to get the XDA word on the matter first...
Cheers, Are

Just replying to say I'm having the same issue. The fastest shutter speed I've seen is 1/15 in a well lit, easy to focus shot. The vast majority of my shots are blurry as a result.
I'm running Cyanogenmod at the moment.

I'm having pretty bad shutter speeds as well. It take 2 seconds to take a well-lit picture.

Guys , Try out the Moto X camera app. I may be wrong but i think its a bit faster .

JasElS said:
I'm having pretty bad shutter speeds as well. It take 2 seconds to take a well-lit picture.
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Click to collapse
farazafs said:
Guys , Try out the Moto X camera app. I may be wrong but i think its a bit faster .
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Click to collapse
I'm not talking about how long it takes to take the picture, that's delay. I'm talking shutter speed, how long the shutter stays open allowing light to hit the sensor.

I have not had any big problems with this, most of my shots are pretty tack sharp, and seem to have some decent shutterspeeds.. Only in very poor light I do get 1/15 shutterspeeds but at pretty average lights I get 1/30-1/120 sometimes faster, but mostly 1/40..
My shutterdelay is almist nothing too..

I found a modified version of the stock LG G2 camera by sefnap that works with CM 10.2 M1 and produces much better results: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2522889
Some of the features don't work but overall it's vastly better than the camera included with CM.
There is also another modified version of the stock camera put up by Heatshiver that probably works even better but it doesn't currently work with CM (only works with stock and some AOSP ROMs): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2525783

I just discovered something the other day when playing with my camera... Albeit in bright light. Check out these pics taken at 60mph from my car while I was driving (ie not the most steady hand).
What I did was set it on sports mode and then old down the camera button until I heard the beep, and then released to capture the image I wanted (ie the road signs). The one out of my car window was actually more focused than I could focus with my naked eye...

Camera app of Sony Xperia Z5 just sucks

So simple, i installed Camera FV-5 and i can feel the thing with faster time capturing a shoot and autofocus time is much better.
Fix the app camera SONY.

dfavefenix said:
So simple, i installed Camera FV-5 and i can feel the thing with faster time capturing a shoot and autofocus time is much better.
Fix the app camera SONY.
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Camera FV-5 didn't work for me. The shutter lag was far worse and the autofocus sometimes hangs and I cannot even take an image. ProCapture isn't much better either.
I'm on the latest software version as well.
I use stock app on manual mode with 8 megapixels and be sure to half-press the shutter button to let it focus. The delay is not as bad but you can still see it skips a frame from the one when you press the shutter. This is unacceptable for a flagship device.

FYLin21 said:
Camera FV-5 didn't work for me. The shutter lag was far worse and the autofocus sometimes hangs and I cannot even take an image. ProCapture isn't much better either.
I'm on the latest software version as well.
I use stock app on manual mode with 8 megapixels and be sure to half-press the shutter button to let it focus. The delay is not as bad but you can still see it skips a frame from the one when you press the shutter. This is unacceptable for a flagship device.
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Click to collapse
I have been testing the app this last day and it feels so much better than app camera stock one. Thanks for the tip about the manual mode, i ll check it. But really Sony needs to fix the app, its just software fault

I personally like the stock Z5 camera app but I recommend you give Snap Camera a try if you hate the stock camera app.
I used to own the LG Optimus F3Q with most crappy camera you could find on a phone release in 2014.
But using Snap Camera on that phone made night and day difference. Some pics were even decent enough to be used as background wallpaper.
I like that app so much that I bought the full version.