TLDR; version: Are there any apps or ROMs that implements autofocus (not continuous) for the Nexus S video mode?
Long version:
I was quite shocked when I realized that there is no way to autofocus before starting to record video in the stock ICS 4.0.4 ROM. I'm not talking about any fancy continuous autofocus here. You know, just the one that makes the video not come out all blurry. If I record things that are at a distance (I bet focus is locked on infinity), it's quite fine. But everything closer than 2 meters comes out all borked.
I can not understand the reason that it's not there. It should be dead simple to implement. I mean, prefocusing before taking a picture is there in the still camera.
Also (but this isn't quite as critical), the sensitivity seems more or less capped in video mode. Ones it goes below a certain light level (which isn't quite low) everything is just dark, the auto exposure stops compensating.
Not only this. When in video mode, before starting to record, the exposure can look OK. But, when pushing the record button exposure is set back at least -1 EV.
I couldn't care less about the "low" resolution of the camera, but at least Google (or anybody else) could fix these things that should really just be a matter of (simple) software tweaks.
My question is: are there any ROMs (or even better, applications) that fixes at least the lack of autofocus?
Related
Hi,
My camera is very very slow. The quality seems good but when filming and moving the phone everything is very blurry. Is this normal / common issue?
If I take a picture of something it has to be absolutely still otherwise the picture is blurred.
When I direct it to a wall which is 1 color the camera if very fast, but when I move it to a colored area with lights etc, it flickers 1 time and then it goes very slow, as if some filter is applied in areas which are lighter.
I get this also and upgrading the radio has not solved the problem.
I've noticed that it seems to be fast in daylight?
Theres a camera trick in the forums - kaiser I think about switching off the phone (sleep mode by pressing the power button) whilst the camera is on and switching it back on again improving the speed but I have not been able to make it work.
The Polaris camera is very good in daylight conditions! If you try to take pictures in low light conditions the fps will drop so that it seems like it is very slow.
Try this little trick for videos or pictures in low light conditions with max fps:
1. Activate camera with camera button
2. Put your finger on the camera lens and hold it there
3. Turn of Screen / Put Polaris into sleep mode and wait 5 - 8 seconds
4. Activate Polaris screen again with power button
5. Now you can take pictures / videos with max fps!
But be aware of the fact, that with this little trick the iso lightening won't work anymore and the pictures will be darker and have lower quality!
After using the camera in better light conditions, everything will be as before the trick!
WOW! and that actually DID work
thanks for tip friend, I can live with the lower quality if I can get a decent video recording... The ones I've done before were rubbish. I would have been embarassed to show them to anyone... except maybe at a 60's convention..the blurryness was a little psychadelic!
The trick seems to work! Isn't there a way to modify the rom to always disable the light filter?
The other front camera is always working very fast, it's just the one on the back.
Thanks!
Maybe UDK might build it into his v9 release? (hint, hint!)
As far as i know there is no chance to tweak some software or a rom so that the problom won't occur again. When starting the camera it's hardware will always activate the iso lightning and therefore there will be those fps drops in low light conditions.
It has something to do with the lack of hardware drivers which could keep high fps rates also in low light conditions..... BUT i'm not sure because of the diamond!
If you compare it with the diamond, there ARE some video drivers but the performance of the camera is nearly the SAME as on Polaris.... in some situations even worse and less fps rates!
ZaPP187 said:
As far as i know there is no chance to tweak
If you compare it with the diamond, there ARE some video drivers but the performance of the camera is nearly the SAME as on Polaris.... in some situations even worse and less fps rates!
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htc phone has the slow camera problem all the time ,and will last too its dieth
so change your htc for samung or nokia their cameras are better than htc
ZaPP187 said:
It has something to do with the lack of hardware drivers which could keep high fps rates also in low light conditions.....
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Click to collapse
It has absolutely nothing to do with drivers. The phone's night mode isn't simply adjusting the ISO. The phone is allowing more light into the sensor, thus keeping the shutter open longer. Doing so blurs the picture if you move around. Any phone with a night mode does the same thing. In fact any digitial camera with a nightmode will also do this.
ZaPP187 said:
The Polaris camera is very good in daylight conditions! If you try to take pictures in low light conditions the fps will drop so that it seems like it is very slow.
Try this little trick for videos or pictures in low light conditions with max fps:
1. Activate camera with camera button
2. Put your finger on the camera lens and hold it there
3. Turn of Screen / Put Polaris into sleep mode and wait 5 - 8 seconds
4. Activate Polaris screen again with power button
5. Now you can take pictures / videos with max fps!
But be aware of the fact, that with this little trick the iso lightening won't work anymore and the pictures will be darker and have lower quality!
After using the camera in better light conditions, everything will be as before the trick!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OMG, it works! thx a lot!
Can I ask how to modify this trick via a .reg file?
As said above, this cannot be done. You'll have to do it manually each time.
sonus said:
It has absolutely nothing to do with drivers. The phone's night mode isn't simply adjusting the ISO. The phone is allowing more light into the sensor, thus keeping the shutter open longer. Doing so blurs the picture if you move around. Any phone with a night mode does the same thing. In fact any digitial camera with a nightmode will also do this.
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Click to collapse
Ok, but how about setting a value for nightmode, so it wont be used in mediocre lit areas thus increasing performance?(maybe to finally allow to make some nice, steady pictures) I think HTC overdid it a little.
And how can you explain this trick, fooling phone that it's complete darkness, so it decides to turn nightmode off? Kinda weird.
Also what LightSensorHz(50) registry value does?
\HKLM\Software\Drivers\Camera\Property
When I had the tilt, I could easily speed up frames per second on the camera by turning the unit off, covering the lens, turning it back on and waiting a few seconds (AND EVENTUALLY USED A CAB FIX). This would allow me to use the camera/video in low light conditions with little lag. Is there a similar fix for the Fuze?
Also, I've been asking, people have been looking...is there a VGA full screen dialer available? Anywhere?
I would be interested in that to...
I don't see the horrible lag on my fuze, that I had on the tilt.
ya but when taking a video it drags a little when things move semi-fast... kinda blurrs and speeding up the Fps would probably help that
specially on low light conditions.
I'm trying to understand what makes a camera phone produce good quality pictures. Initially, I thought it was pretty much solely dependent on the camera itself: I have an HTC EVO 4G LTE and it's 8MP. I want even better picture quality so I was searching for phones that had more megapixels, since I assumed that more MP the better. But during my search, I saw more discussions centering around the camera software, and how that effects pictures, which I hadn't even known before. Can I just simply download a camera app and get better quality pictures, or will I have to get a new phone, or both?
Altom85 said:
I'm trying to understand what makes a camera phone produce good quality pictures. Initially, I thought it was pretty much solely dependent on the camera itself: I have an HTC EVO 4G LTE and it's 8MP. I want even better picture quality so I was searching for phones that had more megapixels, since I assumed that more MP the better. But during my search, I saw more discussions centering around the camera software, and how that effects pictures, which I hadn't even known before. Can I just simply download a camera app and get better quality pictures, or will I have to get a new phone, or both?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sort of. Megapixels are a measure of resolution, which is essentially how many mini-dots of color make up an image. One megapixel is the equivalent of 1,000,000 of those little dots, called pixels. They make up every digital screen you've ever seen. The more pixels an image has, the more detailed, and the the clearer it can be.
Now, there are some issues with large amounts of pixels in a small camera. One is that each pixel in the sensor must capture light, and the smaller they are, the longer they take to capture enough light for a well-lit, clear picture. That leads to the second main issue, which is blur. When the shutter time (amount of time that the camera sensor takes in the light that forms the picture) is long, you get a well lit, clear picture... provided the subject is stable, and your hand is too. If something moves, then the sensors see it both in it's initial - "true" - position, and every position in between where it ends up when your sensors stop taking in light. This causes blur. When the shutter time is short, blur is reduced, but pictures are darker.
So, yeah, the software you use is important. Some will use smart software to correct for blur, some will automatically brighten the image (Which reduces detail), and the best ones (IMO) let you set your own shutter time depending on what you're taking a picture of. For example, if you're watching a baseball game outside, you should set a very short shutter speed so that you minimize the amount of motion blur captured, but there should be plenty of natural light provided by the sun. If you're in a dim art gallery, you may want a longer shutter time, as you need the time for lighting, and nothing's going to be moving.
Creed14 said:
Sort of. Megapixels are a measure of resolution, which is essentially how many mini-dots of color make up an image. One megapixel is the equivalent of 1,000,000 of those little dots, called pixels. They make up every digital screen you've ever seen. The more pixels an image has, the more detailed, and the the clearer it can be.
Now, there are some issues with large amounts of pixels in a small camera. One is that each pixel in the sensor must capture light, and the smaller they are, the longer they take to capture enough light for a well-lit, clear picture. That leads to the second main issue, which is blur. When the shutter time (amount of time that the camera sensor takes in the light that forms the picture) is long, you get a well lit, clear picture... provided the subject is stable, and your hand is too. If something moves, then the sensors see it both in it's initial - "true" - position, and every position in between where it ends up when your sensors stop taking in light. This causes blur. When the shutter time is short, blur is reduced, but pictures are darker.
So, yeah, the software you use is important. Some will use smart software to correct for blur, some will automatically brighten the image (Which reduces detail), and the best ones (IMO) let you set your own shutter time depending on what you're taking a picture of. For example, if you're watching a baseball game outside, you should set a very short shutter speed so that you minimize the amount of motion blur captured, but there should be plenty of natural light provided by the sun. If you're in a dim art gallery, you may want a longer shutter time, as you need the time for lighting, and nothing's going to be moving.
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Wow, thank you for that very detailed answer Creed I understand this much better. So basically (let me know if I'm wrong here) a large number of MP won't make much of a difference if your software and settings suck? So, on average, what is a decent amount of MP? I have 8 right now on my HTC EVO 4G LTE. Can you also suggest a good camera app? Thanks very much in advance :good:
Hi.
Since the first time I tried to make a slow-motion video, I notice that the camera can't capture enought light, like it's always in the dark, but the regular photo/video works great.
The next day instead, one time when I open the camera app a toast appeared: "unknown error" and the camera wasn't open; in the second attempt instead it worked normally, even the slow motion video.
But sometimes, the 480fps video are "laggy", and sometimes not.
I'm pretty sure, at this point, that is a software problem. I already tried to delete the app's data, but nothing changed. Anyone have this problem too?
All high speed cameras ever made, especially stupid high framerate ones like 1000FPS+ (just gets worse the faster they get) needs bright light. You're not going to be shooting high framerate video on any device in dim lighting situations any time soon unfortunately.
Maybe turn on the improvement program data sharing if you want help with the errors, that would most likely be something the phone sends info to Oneplus about.
Already enabled. The bright problem in the slow-motion wasn't the low light itself, because I tried outdoor in the day, full of light. This disappeared after a while, but I can't replicate anymore. Have no idea.
As we have received Nokia 8 PRO Cam update globally, some of us not happy with the final application.
There are lots of bug with this new pro app and it is so clear that it had been rushed out to silence us.
Firstly, in landscape mode in order to launch Nokia 8 PRO features you have to go trough settings, swipe up does not work which is ridiculous and it shows they have released the PRO app without real user feedback, only dump software engineers can not notice such bugs.
Secondly, in default settings shutter control is on which makes a lot of noise in dark situations, try to turn it off and you will see much much better result with less noise. It is not a miracle, does not reach the level gcam has achieved but at least , with PRO cam we see less noise.
Considering it's price, I do not except a miracle from Nokia 8, but this little details kills Nokia legacy. I believe, they should listen feedback from users first before they launch any update.
..please? You have no clue how cameras work? You can't beat the physics. It's all about the amount of light being captured by the sensor. Dark situations will always be hard for small cameras, and vice versa crap cameras, can perform well in bright situations if the lens is sharp.
With a faster shutter will have few options to make to even out the exposure:
Open up the lens aperture more. (These small lenses are usually fully open always if not used in bright sunlight, so there is nothing to gain).
Raise the ISO. This is basically amplifying the sensor data, resulting in a brighter image but with increased noise and loss of details. This is what you are complaing about.
Revert back to a lower the shutter speed so more light can be collected. The disadvantage is that you need to hold you camera more still and moving objects will still not be frozen.
Give up and lower the exposure resulting in a darker image. (Exposure compensation)
A fift option is also cheating, adding post process noise reduction, think a bit like anti-aliasing resulting in even more detail loss. Personally I'll take a slightly noisy image any day in favor of a software drawn oil painting without details.
I can't comment the bug, I haven't hit it. I'd rather the Camera app to remember the settings from last session and also some user programmable "presets" would be nice. Or a full Live Bokeh from a short-cut would also work as an work-around just to make an example.
Usually your subject is gone before your camera settings are in place.
Anyway, t best solution for you would be to get a larger sensor and a larger lens so more light can be collected. Seriously, for example a Sony RX1R II would easily beat any cell phone camera out there in lower light.