S4 Camera - Verizon Samsung Galaxy S 4

One of the big selling points for me with this phone was the camera. I am finding the pictures to be a little underwhelming. I find that half the pictures I take are out of focus, and when i try to manually focus on a target, it zooms in and out trying to figure out the image, but ultimately ends with a red square and an out of focus image. I was really hoping for a smarter camera with better results. I dont remember ever having issues like this with my last phone (HTC Rezound). I use my camera a LOT (mostly taking pictures of my kids). Should I try downloading another camera from the app store? Anyone else experiencing these issues?
I should note that outdoor, long range pictures seem to come out much better than indoor relatively close (5-10 feet) shots.
Any tips/tricks as far as settings go?
Also, when I hook up the phone to my pc and view the pictures, they are all rotated to the left 90 degrees.

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[Q] how does the 5mp evo3d camera look compared to other 5mp cameras

hi guys. im just curious how the video and pictures on the evo3d look compared to other 5 or 8mp cameras. are they sharp ect. how would the evo3d compare to say the iphone 4?
im in the market for a good camera phone
I personally feel the evo3d only takes great pictures sometimes - meaning it is hard to get good pictures.
The pictures tend to look better on the phone than when you look at them on a computer, where they tend to look more grainy when not in the brightest light. This feels like a step down from HTC's other offerings, which can look as good if not better than iphone pictures when pulled to your computer. I have gotten some fantastic pictures, but for the most part the camera has left me a bit wanting.
Playing around with 3d pictures is quite fun, and video recording is very good - particularly the audio, which was lacking in the evo4g.
eazye1984 said:
hi guys. im just curious how the video and pictures on the evo3d look compared to other 5 or 8mp cameras. are they sharp ect. how would the evo3d compare to say the iphone 4?
im in the market for a good camera phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It takes a much better picture than the Evo4G did. Much sharper looking, even with 3mp less.
However in low light it still gets grainy...the sensor can't help that, but the software can...but it doesn't. It does, however, take fantastic macro shots for a cell phone...surprisingly.
The 5mp cam on the NS4G I had for a few weeks was phenomenal. When I came back to the E3D it really made taking pictures with it seem pointless...and that's not even taking into consideration the .5-1.5 second shutter lag from when you push the button.
For a freakin' cell phone? It's fantastic. I've never used an iphone4 camera but I've only heard good things. But after seeing what a Samsung 5.0mp sensor/lens/software combo can do I am completely down on the E3D's camera. Granted it does 3D and it is a rather compelling effect...though the problems with the 5.0mp single-cam shots get even more pronounced in 3D at 2.5mp.
YMMV, etc etc etc. It is a cellphone after all.
EDIT: Also any shots with motion are pretty much ruined before you take them.
I agree with nhutpham, post number 2. The camera is not nearly what it should be. This phone revolved around its camera's, I mean come on its not called "Shooter" for nothing. 3D pics turn out good, still shots do anyway. But standard pics, thats a whole other ball game. Low light produces bad pics, even with the flash. Some pics will get a greenish tint to them (whites) when using flash. Rather then use all the "auto" settings I find setting things manually will result in better 2D pics. The device was not purchased by me for the camera though. I bought for the dual core processors Though now that I have my dual core I am wishing HTC would have stepped it up on the 2D camera
i think at stock the pictures look ok. but when you adjust iso,sharpness,exposure,contrast in the settings it makes them look much more vibrant and sharp.
i took a compartive shot of small rocks and the evo3d looked crisper and better overall compared to the iphone 4. so the camera cant be all that bad
Maybe this might help. I'm actually surprised at some of the pictures on here.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1243765
Being a photographer myself, I am impressed with the camera... but not all of the time. It takes phenomenal pictures outside in a good sunny day and even in overcast. Take the camera inside in average lighting of just about anyone's living room when the sunlight isn't dominating the light, then I'd be reluctant to show it of.
The poorer the lighting, the harder it is to focus and the photos can get very grainy. HTC also chose to compress the photos quite a bit which affects the picture quality, but makes it easier on the phone and network to share and upload. This goes back to a previous comment that they look better on the phone than on a larger display - its the compression.
If you're willing to root and mod this phone, there is a camera mod in the CDMA dev forum for this phone with camera improvements which makes me that much more impressed with the camera. Although, I think all that was changed was the compression for photos and video.
If you are taking a still picture under good light they look really good. If you have kids and are planning to take any pictures of them forget it.
Let's just they are playing baseball and you want to take a picture of them at bat. They get up there and you click the shoot button. The picture is then shown to you for review and you say wait, who the heck is that. Well while you thought you were snapping a picture of your child, by the time the camera actually took the picture your child got a double, the kid after him grounded to third, and in your picture is the batter who was batting 2 guys after him.....Great picture of someone elses child and of course that kid moved so the picture is blurry as well.
Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a little. You would probably get the batter right after him and not 2 guys down in the lineup, but it would still be blurry unless he batted like a statue....
Green, but otherwise good
Ya unfortunately the shutter lag makes the phone worthless in taking non still images.
Sent from my PG86100 using XDA App

Sense Camera Bug (ICS OTA)

Not sure if this applies to other ROMs wtih sense, but on the verizon-deployed ICS OTA the Sense Camera seems to be brain dead if you try to take a normal aspect ratio picture (Read: not widescreen). Verified on another rezound with the same OTA.
Noticed this as the Sense camera defaults to widescreen "8mp" - when you actually get pictures cropped to 6mp. Not caring much for the widescreen anyways, I turned it off. Over the next few weeks, I discovered the previously stellar photo quality start to tend towards overly dark and ill focused - auto focus in particular was brain dead, especially at macro resolutions, where I had previously tested the camera being able to focus perfectly at about 2-3 cm. It'd take me messing with lighting, varying distance, angle, etc, to maybe get it to focus - most of the time it would either stop focusing before or after the ideal focus.
On top of the focus issue, sometimes the exposure calculations would be completely off, usually when there was some light shining at the camera - for instance, from a display. Amazingly terrible, overall. I'm pissed it took me so long to notice and figure out the cause. I was worried it was the camera hardware itself wigging out.
Downloaded another camera app - ICS Camera - and it took pictures just fine at the full 8mp resolution (non-widescreen). Focus and exposure calculations working fine. Oh, and it supports using the volume keys as shutter buttons, which has been something I'd been looking for for some time. Only noted problem is that it does not work as a camera data provider (ie. attaching to a message) - fails for some reason. Otherwise, it's replaced the Sense camera entirely for me.
Attached are pictures of one specific instance. Sun did decide to poke out at the end, but it didn't cause a major difference in the pictures as I was in a shaded area the whole time.
Notes:
HTC-initial is spectacularly bad, even for the addled state the camera was in.
HTC-best is the best i could get the camera to do, mashing autofocus a few times and messing with manual exposure.
HTC-widescreen is the first picture I took with me setting widescreen and everything else default. AF was done once, automatically.
ICSCam is the first picture I took w/ ICS Camera, no settings changed. AF once, automatically.
TLR; Sense 3.6 Camera does not handle 4:3 aspect ratio correctly; AF tends to be poor and exposure off.
Zig zag... That's a very fine analysis of the camera focusing problems I've been having. I've been quite upset with the camera behavior since the ICS update. On GB, the camera functioned remarkably. I'm an avid photographer and even have a Canon DSLR. I was loving the camera on this phone. Never used widescreen. Just stuck with mid-high resolutions but never full 8mp. Sensor has it's limits. Touch focus, just once regardless where I touched...it was clear. Ever since ICS....the camera app lags and the most important thing (Focusing), has gone to s**t. I have to keep touching all over the damn screen just trying to get it to focus on an area I want it And yes, very close shots are hell now. Just last night, I was about to throw the damn phone because it refused to focus on something I used to normally have no problem with. I have no idea what the issue is but it keeps adjusting the exposure level way too bright, sometimes too dark. I'll touch a bright cloud in the background and suddenly the exposure jumps 5 points and burns out the sky. The complete oppositte of what it's supposed to do. Hell frustrating. Has the same focus/exposure problems in Camera360. Yeah, being as bright as it is outside...I was pissed when I got home and found a pic of a cloudy horizon and a canal in front. The entire pic was completely out of focus. The camera AI is so dumb that it habitually withdrawls the focal point to the macro view...even when trying to focus at infinite.
Hmmm.. does one need ROOT for ICS Camera?
I don't think you need root. Here's the link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moblynx.cameraics&hl=en
Honestly, I'm surprised that HTC managed to break autofocus and auto exposure - when I was looking through android APIs it seemed like those functions were all done below the level at which apps can adjust them. At any rate, using the ICS Camera, autofocus and exposure function just as well as they did on GB, once more. I'm assuming other apps would work fine as well - just something affecting the Sense camera only.
Hmm..it works well. Thanks for the link. Only thing I don't like is it's missing Saturation, Sharpness and Contrasts controls..also missing ISO setting. Tells you image size in megapixels instead of resolution. I haven't actually snapped a pic with it yet so I'll give that a try in a bit. I'm going to give the video recordibg portion a shot and see how the quality fairs out as for sound.

Few quiestions, HDR, Creative effect

Hello,
I bought sony Z2 few weeks ago. It's a nice phone, it's very smooth and I'm very pleased. But it overheats, not as much in 4K(which I don't use so no bother for me) but Creative effect just puts too much stress on a battery and the camera very quickly shuts off because temperatures of the battery go over 46 Celzis which is probably a treshold temperature. I hope sony will optimize their code in future firmware updates for Z2. I don't change phones often, this was a step up from first! HTC Desire(more than 4years ago) and I'm hoping to get a few years of from Z2. I did tried a bunch of roms on desire, but Z2 is gonna wait, it is so smooth and ofcourse because of the warranty. If they don't fix the overheating problem, next time I'll try samsung or go back to HTC if they manage to make a decent camera which they never did make in any of their models(purple tint, poor sharpness, whashed colors etc. I'll stop here, don't wanna turn this into a flame thread, just my couple of thoughts)
Also, what's with the HDR in manual mode - it says it takes two pictures, but it takes only one and the picture is the same as the picture I take with HDR mode off. I see no difference... Or maybe I'm doing something wrong with HDR?
MartiniWisdom said:
Also, what's with the HDR in manual mode - it says it takes two pictures, but it takes only one and the picture is the same as the picture I take with HDR mode off. I see no difference... Or maybe I'm doing something wrong with HDR?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It will take two pictures and then combine them into a single one. The two pictures have different exposure (one underexposed to get more detail in the shadows, one overexposed to get more detail in the highlights), and when they're combined, the result is a single image with greater dynamic range (that is, the range of brightness from dark to light) than a single photo could've captured. The greater dynamic range will sometimes make them look flat and one-dimensional, but with the right shot it can be a big improvement.
If you want to test it, look for a scene with very wide contrast from shadows to highlights. A good example would be a dimly-lit room with bright daylight outside the window. In a single exposure the room would be dark, the window completely white, or both. With an HDR exposure, you'll see more detail in the room and/or window.
Tnx for the info,I know how HDR works and what it does but I didn't see any difference in photos. I'll try more photos with more shadows in scenes.

Burst mode is gone with 6.0 update?

In the new camera app, it appears you can't set the normal camera to take multiple pictures if you hold down the camera button. This functionality is something I used literally all the time, it is the only way to get a good not-posed picture. Also, although the light wasn't good this morning, the quality of photos seems to have become worse.
seems to have been replaced by some near useless sub-app called Time Shift, but those pica A) aren't full resolution and B) force you to pick one picture out of the 30 or so it took right now possibly missing another pic.
Does anyone know how to get a useful camera back.
I don't know it works with front facing camera, but holding down for multiple shots is still there.

Camera pictures are blurry when there is any motion

I bought my wife and I this phone because we had a baby recently and wanted to get some nice pics. No matter what I do or what settings I change, the shutter is slow and the slightest motion will yield a blurry pic. Not the whole pic but anything that was in motion will be blurry. Any movement at all ruins a shot. Even sports mode and burst take blurry shots. So does pro mode.
I have held it steady before and after shots, used voice activation to reduce shake, and put it on stable surface. I have tried lowering resolution, changing storage location, turning off 3 sec pre-pic video, turning off HDR, killing all apps, restarting phone, clearing cache and so on and so on. And no I do not have the protective film on the lense.
I have seen others online complaining about blurry pics too but I am not seeing solutions. I came from a Note 4 and did not have these complaints. My wife has the same issues. It is unlikely we both got defective devices.
Somebody I know has the S8 and we took pics of each other waving to see results and theirs was clear and my pic of them had a blurry hand. This was in a well lit room.
Is this Note 8 camera just lousy? Try taking a picture of your hand waving or fingers wiggling. See mine attached. I was not moving that fast and press to track my hand. Is anybody else noticing this? Is there a solution?
The solution is to take photos in better light. Take that same photo with a full camera and no flash and see if there is any marked difference.
If there is not enough light for the conditions of the photo, your camera will have to open the aperture for a longer period. The longer it is open, the more blur you will see. This is especially true when moving something like a finger that moves 'quickly'.
Try the same thing in daylight and see where you stand.
Those previous shots were under a dining room light that is bright. It was well lit. If you are saying I can only take shots in full daylight and get a good shot, then this is not a good camera.
I took a photo in my office in a well lit room and got a blurry hand. I took the same shot at the same time using voice activation on my coworkers S8 and hers was not blurry. Mine is attached.

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