Camera has been blurry since the FW update months ago...

[captain_tinker]

When I first got my S4 the day it came out on AT&T, the camera was really very nice. Not perfect mind you, but very good. I was able to take pictures in quick succession, and they were very clear and crisp. Good quality. Even with the little plastic thing on the lens that I figured out after a few days. Months later, I believe in July, there was a FW update for the camera that was installed via an update of sorts. It seems that since that time the quality of the camera went way down, and my pictures just aren't as nice anymore. In fact, its gotten so bad that no matter how still I hold the camera, and make sure it focuses etc, it still comes out just slightly blurred and kind of grainy. I've tried to set it to anti-shake, and messed with the white balance etc. For example in rooms with fluorescent lights, the picture turns out all yellow and gross, even with the balance set to fluorescent. Then last night, I met a local celebrity, our local news weatherman, and had a picture taken with him, and it was so blurry you couldn't even make out the faces! I was so mad, because I couldn't take another shot, it was my only chance... Now I'm really bummed. Is there anything I can do to fix this? I've looked and found several threads about this, and the only thing I can gather so far is to increase the ISO somehow, but that doesn't seem like that would fix the problem since it was working just fine prior to the FW update in July.

capT

PS: I believe I had set the camera to Night Shot for this picture... I wasn't the one taking the picture, a complete stranger did, so that may account for part of the blurriness...

 

[srkmagnus]

If you are still having the issue consider the following to fix the problem:
1. Clean the lense.
2. Clear application data: Settings > Applications > Camera > Clear data
3. Make sure the device is up to date on the latest software.

Hope this helps.

 

[STSVA]

When I first got my S4 the day it came out on AT&T, the camera was really very nice. Not perfect mind you, but very good. I was able to take pictures in quick succession, and they were very clear and crisp. Good quality. Even with the little plastic thing on the lens that I figured out after a few days. Months later, I believe in July, there was a FW update for the camera that was installed via an update of sorts. It seems that since that time the quality of the camera went way down, and my pictures just aren't as nice anymore. In fact, its gotten so bad that no matter how still I hold the camera, and make sure it focuses etc, it still comes out just slightly blurred and kind of grainy. I've tried to set it to anti-shake, and messed with the white balance etc. For example in rooms with fluorescent lights, the picture turns out all yellow and gross, even with the balance set to fluorescent. Then last night, I met a local celebrity, our local news weatherman, and had a picture taken with him, and it was so blurry you couldn't even make out the faces! I was so mad, because I couldn't take another shot, it was my only chance... Now I'm really bummed. Is there anything I can do to fix this? I've looked and found several threads about this, and the only thing I can gather so far is to increase the ISO somehow, but that doesn't seem like that would fix the problem since it was working just fine prior to the FW update in July.

capT

PS: I believe I had set the camera to Night Shot for this picture... I wasn't the one taking the picture, a complete stranger did, so that may account for part of the blurriness...

I haven't noticed any changes in camera performance since Verizon updated the GS4 to Android 4.3, and I suspect that the AT&T update is not the cause of your camera issues, although of course I can't be sure. The shot you posted looks like it was not focused and the camera was moved during the shot, so you got a double whammy of badness. That being said, I've noticed from the beginning that the S4's camera tends to use a very slow shutter speed, which, along with the 13MP sensor (the high pixel density makes any motion blur more noticeable), translates into blurry looking pictures a lot of the time due to camera movement when taking shots. I can get good shots in bright light, but I doubt any night shot will look very good unless you rest the phone on a table or other stabilizing surface and make sure it doesn't move at all during the shots. Unlike the situation with a DSLR or compact camera, the LED flash on the GS4 does not have a fast enough burst to freeze motion, so that won't help. As you note, in order to get a faster shutter speed you need to increase the ISO (that's basically what Night and Sports shooting modes do). The problem with that is that a higher ISO on a sensor with incredibly tiny pixels like the GS4's is an increase in noise (graininess). The answer is either to get more light, or not depend on the GS4 for lower light shots.

 

[captain_tinker]

Thanks guys. I'm actually still on 4.2.2 on AT&T, afraid to update to the 4.3 due to all the bad stuff I've read about on here, and just don't want to deal with it yet. (Unless of course that's changed and now it works properly?) Anyway, I did go back into my camera configuration options, and I noticed some settings. Auto Night Detection was on, which took off the options for ISO and Anti-Shake. I turned that off, and set ISO to Auto for now, and anti-shake to on. Metering is set to Center-Weighted, I've got no idea what that even means. Face Detection is on, and Burst Shot is on. Photo size is 4128x2322 (16:9). Also, white balance is set to Auto. What is Exposure Value? It is set to 0 right now. Since I took off auto night detection, things have been just a bit better. Its still not perfect, but its better than it was. I suspect though that the photo may still have been blurry anyway even with these settings because it wasn't me who was taking the picture. I could tell she was an iPhone user, because she had one in her hand and put it away. Not to say that iPhone users are bad, but she probably just wasn't familiar with how the S4 takes pictures, or just didn't care... I dunno. Owell.

 

[STSVA]

Hope the changes you made result in better shots. To answer your question, Exposure Value is basically how dark or bright you want the picture to be. It's sort of a compensation setting telling the camera whether you want the picture darker or brighter than its metering system and exposure programming tell it the picture "should" be (that's where the type of metering comes in - center weighted means the camera's exposure programming will mostly be looking at the center of the scene as framed in the LCD display when calculating exposure). Using the exposure value setting is mainly useful when you have large brightness differences in the scene you want to take a picture of. For example, if you want to take a picture of several people standing in front of a window and it's bright and sunny outside, the camera will pick up how bright the window is and the people inside will probably be underexposed (meaning they'll be way too dark). In that situation you would increase exposure value a click or two to the right of center so the people would be properly exposed (while the window would probably look white with no detail because the bright lighted area would be overexposed). You can also use it if you try a shot and, for whatever reason, it turns out darker or brighter than you want. You can use exposure value to compensate the other way (if the picture turns out too dark, move exposure value to the right; if the picture turns out too bright, move exposure value to the left).