Anyone notice this strange problem:
After updating to Froyo, about 1/4 of the time when using the camera flash, I get a dark picture. The flash goes off every time it is supposed to, but the camera sensor takes the picture after the flash goes off, resulting in a very dark picture as if the flash was disabled. Take another picture and it usually works.
Happens in stock camera app and 3rd party apps too.
2.2 rooted, stock rom, etc. (Happened before I rooted 2.2)
I've noticed this. What else I've noticed is that the photo may be dark, but it's still very high quality. It isn't grainy and rough like a photo taken without a flash. It leads me to believe that the camera is adjusting the settings to take more of a "true" lighting with high quality.
It's not -- I often take pictures inside a dark bar at night and you care barely see anything on then and it's a noisy mess. I did some more test shots yesterday and it really is really is funny the EXIF data shows the flash being used, even though clearly it wasn't synced up properly.
I also notice that it is usually the first pictures or so when you start the camera. If you take many successive shots, it doesn't happen........
I tried switching from 3mp to 2mp to see if that helps. I find the lens to be pretty low resolution that even 3mp is pushing things.
I used my phone extensively last night at the Christmas Tree lighting event in San Francisco. It was the first time I experienced the camera not playing nice. It's not been an issues until now. I had a hard time snapping pictures as it became non-responsive and at times very laggy. I'd have to hit the home button and start the camera to get it working again. I don't know if it had anything to do with the HDR mode. I switched back and forth better normal mode and HDR. It was at a very low light situation. The only other time my phone lags is when it's hot (note: not warm but hot) but that's a separate issue. Have any of you guys experienced such a thing?
Sometimes the on screen menus freeze or none of the different modes work.
HDR is slower (that happens when you take a bunch of shots at different exposures and then blend them together) and it processes in the background so if you take a bunch of shots in succession it will slow the phone down.
I've been having this problem when every few photos, just a plain green picture is taken. And sometimes there are distorted colors. I decided to play around with the settings to check if it changes anything.
I found out that the problem is keeping the focus mode in Continuous Auto focus. Keeping it in this mode apparently has problems which are the green photos, distorted colors, and around 2 seconds of lag between the shutter and the photo being taken.
Keeping it on Auto took off 2 of the problems which were the green photos and distorted colors. But it was still kind of laggy, I think it's supposed to be this way though to have time for it to focus
Putting it on Infinity fixed all of it, I took over 20 photos without any problem or lag.
I don't know why that problem occurred, but it's probably just the camera firmware and not a hardware problem.
Hope I got to help
Anyone else observing that when they take a pic with the flash on in "medium" light conditions, the photo comes out actually darker than if the flash wasn't even used?
I swear the timing of the flash is bad on my S5. When I tap the button to shoot the photo, the flash turns on and the image on the screen looks bright and good. But then I think the photo is actually taken a split second later after the flash has turned off, and the photo that gets taken is dark as hell. I think I've tried all the combination of settings in the default S5 camera app, and nothing helps.
Brent212 said:
Anyone else observing that when they take a pic with the flash on in "medium" light conditions, the photo comes out actually darker than if the flash wasn't even used?
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I haven't seen this with my S5. Unfortunately you didn't elaborate on your camera settings, camera version or other crucial details.
At a guess, and it is only speculation since we don't have your details, you are expecting the flash to act like a fill flash. When the auto mode (which is probably what you are using) probably uses the flash in a conventional manner i.e. a fixed shutter speed (or limited shutter speed range). There are good reasons for that, but the net effect if the subject is outside of the flash range is that little of the flash is reflected back and the (presumably) higher shutter speed lets less total light in resulting in a darker picture.
You can test that thesis by taking some pictures of a subject that is very close to the camera. If the problem goes away with close subjects that implies that the problem is an artifact of using flash for a subject that is too distant for the flash to work with. No flash can work at an unlimited distance which is why people using a flash in a stadium when they are 75 meters from a subject is silly. In this case, flash mode simply isn't appropriate to the situation you are using it in and you'd be farther ahead to use a slower shutter speed, without flash.
It's highly unlikely that a bug would see the shutter opening after the flash.
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It happens with literally *every* combination of the settings in the camera app (with flash set to "on"). Auto mode, beauty face mode... actually, are there any other modes that I'd use to take a picture of something 3 feet away in a darkish room? I have panorama, "shot & more", virtual tour... those wouldn't be right, correct? So both beauty face and auto, with all the combination of settings... hdr on/off, stabilization on/off, iso at auto and all four "manual" options, all three metering modes... nothing makes a difference.
The problem is the same all the times -- it's not just that the non "subject" areas are dark -- the whole image is dark, just like if you turned off the light in a room and snapped a pic at the moment when the light was still on at 50% brightness as it's turning off. It's super annoying just because of how damn good the image looks on the screen when the photo is being taken... it even seems to "snap" the shot at the right time... the shutter sound goes off and the little border animation happens when the pic is nice and bright. Then I open the actual image and it's garbage.
I was hoping someone might know of some setting in a config file somewhere for a delay between when the flash is triggered and when the camera attempts to capture the image, and that maybe mine got changed somehow to a larger than optimal value.
My wife has an s5, I'll have to test with hers and see if it suffers from the same problem.
Long story short: the camera is using a fast exposure time to keep the subject from being "blown out", i.e. overexposed, when the flash is used. That means that the foreground is going to be sharper but anything in the background will be lost in darkness if the ambient lighting is low. When you leave the flash off, the camera will use a longer exposure time (or shutter speed, if you will) to allow enough light, which also lets more of the background be seen in the picture.
Another thing to consider is that if your screen is set for auto brightness control, you will not have the same brightness when viewing the gallery pictures that you will when looking at the camera view. The camera view is full brightness at all times, but if you're viewing the pictures that you took in the gallery, screen brightness will drop down according to ambient lighting. Photos definitely look dark if you're looking at the gallery by lamp light.
Marlin29 said:
Long story short: the camera is using a fast exposure time to keep the subject from being "blown out", i.e. overexposed, when the flash is used. That means that the foreground is going to be sharper but anything in the background will be lost in darkness if the ambient lighting is low. When you leave the flash off, the camera will use a longer exposure time (or shutter speed, if you will) to allow enough light, which also lets more of the background be seen in the picture.
Another thing to consider is that if your screen is set for auto brightness control, you will not have the same brightness when viewing the gallery pictures that you will when looking at the camera view. The camera view is full brightness at all times, but if you're viewing the pictures that you took in the gallery, screen brightness will drop down according to ambient lighting. Photos definitely look dark if you're looking at the gallery by lamp light.
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That's interesting stuff, but doesn't really apply to the problem I described (at least the first part... the screen brightness setting stuff is potentially related, but isn't in my case). The exposure time is fine, it's just **when** the exposure starts that is the problem... a little too late, IMO. Really wish there was a way to adjust when it takes the photo in relation to when the flash is fired.
The foreground objects aren't lit up at all. No difference between foreground and background. Sometimes, I'm taking a picture of a t-shirt laying on a flat surface from 2 feet away. Without a flash it looks pretty good, but it's a little dark so I decide to try the flash to see if it'll lighten it up a bit. Instead, it makes it look like I turned out half the lights in the room.... way darker than no flash.
Same here, three friends of mine too.
I'm having the same problem s5 neo
I just figured out how to correct the pics from coming out dark. Go into camera-settings-exposure value-slide to the right to 2.5 or more.My pics come out fine now. Indoor light normal daylight.( with flash off.) I will know more in other settings (places ,situations )if it needs to be tweaked again.
no problems here
my settings are AUTO MODE
flash AUTO
no effets at all
and still i get good shots in night
Power/current draw issue?
Mine was doing this, and I noticed the first flash (ranging) was fine, but the second flash (to illuminate the image when taken) was much weaker. Whilst plugged into charge, repeated low light experiment, and the low light flash illuminated image was fine!! Maybe battery on its way out?
So, I've been having some issues with the focus on the rear facing camera for the V20
This is a pic with the Wide Angle Lens:
imgur.com/EBu8tdN
It's crisp and clear (ish)
This is a pic with the normal lens:
imgur.com/fYDOhNd
It's blurry as hell, unless I'm like two inches away:
imgur.com/qJstB0X
I've tried in both Auto and Manual mode, and have tried the focus in both Auto and Manual.
Any ideas?
Many thanks.
P.S. sorry for the imgur links, I haven't posted enough to be allowed links in side my post.
Nope. Just issues with longer focus in darker scenes but that is every phone. Lens clean?
Did you find any solution, I've the same issue.
#4
i have same issues
any solutions?
Tap to focus
I find just pointing it and clicking doesn't set focus properly with some scenes
It's a bit odd as the G4 would have zero issues with this and the V20 also has IR AF
Any Solution yet?
I am also having the same issue, the focus doesn't work, neither manually nor in auto mode. Sometimes, just sometimes, it luckily does work, but most of the time it doesn't.. i dont understand what the problem is..
Recently, the camera was acting way weird, like showing dark picture with green lines, and sometimes it wouldnt even open, it showed just a black screen, i cleared data of gallery and camera, which resolved the issue, but still void of ability to focus.