My HTC One focus issue

[FlowingAway]

What's up everyone? I have the Sprint variant. Rooted newest OTA. I'm attaching a picture comparison shot I made today. The blurry one is what 99% of my pictures look like.

The crisp looking one is the one I got to take after focusing on something very close, then immediately moving the phone back to the parking lot shot. I had to do that multiple times before the nice crisp focus was achieved.

It seems anything a good distance away from me is giving the focus fits. The best way to describe what it does is that it starts to focus on the far away objects, but stops just short of perfect focus and ends up focusing on something a little closer, regardless of whether I tap on the far away objects or not.

Do you guys think the upcoming camera fix OTA will remedy this? Or this is a hardware issue? Does anyone else have this problem?

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[Daniel.Lynch]

I'm on the DNA and I have the same problem. It looks fine in the preview but my hand pressing the button shakes the phone and screws it up. I don't have shaky hands or anything, but the little amount of movement seems to put the camera out of focus.

 

[FlowingAway]

This is a different issue than shaky hands. When I try to focus on something in the distance I can literally watch the focus begin, start to get clear, but stop just short of 100% focus. I can tap it 50 times and it always stops just short of the proper focus.

Here's another picture I took at a graduation Monday night. In this one essentially everything is out of focus, no matter how many times I tapped the screen to focus, it stops just short of properly focusing.



Close objects focus better than any phone I've had. Crazy crystal clear. It's just things more than, say, 15 ft away.

 

[secretLOVER]

Mine focuses perfectly and then goes to crap when I'm taking close pictures (mobile check deposits). What settings do you have on your camera? I've learned to use the settings on this cam a lot more than I would on any other i've had.
Have you tried to do the "best shot"? Hold the camera button in so it takes 20 pics then select "best shot".

 

[Darth Mo]

To me, at least in the parking lot images, the "out of focus" one is actually overexposed so it might not be a focus issue but a metering one. An overexposed image will lose sharpness which also has the effect of appearing out of focus.

You can try setting the exposure compensation to -1+, but I don't know if that will just throw off other shots.

Good news is that it should be able to be fixed in a software update if that is indeed the problem.

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[FlowingAway]

Mine focuses perfectly and then goes to crap when I'm taking close pictures (mobile check deposits). What settings do you have on your camera? I've learned to use the settings on this cam a lot more than I would on any other i've had.
Have you tried to do the "best shot"? Hold the camera button in so it takes 20 pics then select "best shot".

These were done using the default settings. I'm thinking the best shot feature wouldn't help with this. I can see plainly on the screen that a proper focus hasn't been achieved. I think doing a burst shot would only take 20 out of focus shots. I will still give it a shot however.

 

[FlowingAway]

To me, at least in the parking lot images, the "out of focus" one is actually overexposed so it might not be a focus issue but a metering one. An overexposed image will lose sharpness which also has the effect of appearing out of focus.

You can try setting the exposure compensation to -1+, but I don't know if that will just throw off other shots.

Good news is that it should be able to be fixed in a software update if that is indeed the problem.

Sent from my HTCONE using Android Central Forums

Thank you, I'll give that a shot as well.

What really irks me is that I've got 2 coworkers with the Sprint HTC One and I've done side by side comparison shots and both of their phones focus perfectly every single time. If it is a software issue, why wouldn't they be experiencing it as well? We're all on the same software version.

 

[SCjRqrQCnBQ19QoYCtdl]

Thank you, I'll give that a shot as well.

What really irks me is that I've got 2 coworkers with the Sprint HTC One and I've done side by side comparison shots and both of their phones focus perfectly every single time. If it is a software issue, why wouldn't they be experiencing it as well? We're all on the same software version.

Looks to me like you got a bad unit. Have it replaced. That may be the only answer.

 

[Darth Mo]

Thank you, I'll give that a shot as well.

What really irks me is that I've got 2 coworkers with the Sprint HTC One and I've done side by side comparison shots and both of their phones focus perfectly every single time. If it is a software issue, why wouldn't they be experiencing it as well? We're all on the same software version.

It's not necessarily a software issue, per se, just something that can be corrected by software. Auto-metering is done by software, hence exposure compensation is set by adjusting a setting.

But if your buddies can consistently get better shots of the same scene, I'd swap out the phone.

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[Gothamoddisee]

I'm on a T-Mobile One and have encountered a similar issue of finicky focusing. Though I expect there to be an OTA fix shortly, I would honestly prefer a manual focus option, a focus slider (to replace the tragically place zoom slider) that can enable me to lock focus then go to town!

 

[SCjRqrQCnBQ19QoYCtdl]

I'm on a T-Mobile One and have encountered a similar issue of finicky focusing. Though I expect there to be an OTA fix shortly, I would honestly prefer a manual focus option, a focus slider (to replace the tragically place zoom slider) that can enable me to lock focus then go to town!

You could try Camera FV-5 on the play store. It is like $4 or $5.

It allows lock exposure, lock focus, as well as exposure adustment, change in meterting mode on screen and a bunch of other stuff. I installed it but haven't played with it much- I assume the photos are just as good as using the HTC camera app, but as I said I haven't really tested it.

It does allow you to assign functions to th volume keys as well (shutter/focus, etc).

You can independtly set focus and exposure points by tapping.

Of course you can't use all the good HTC stuff with it though - no zoe, no burst mode.

 

[HawaiiD]

This is a different issue than shaky hands. When I try to focus on something in the distance I can literally watch the focus begin, start to get clear, but stop just short of 100% focus. I can tap it 50 times and it always stops just short of the proper focus.

Here's another picture I took at a graduation Monday night. In this one essentially everything is out of focus, no matter how many times I tapped the screen to focus, it stops just short of properly focusing.

View attachment 69129

Close objects focus better than any phone I've had. Crazy crystal clear. It's just things more than, say, 15 ft away.

That's the same issues I am having with my one(TMobile).
Update please

Sent from my HTC One Coconut Wireless

 

[HawaiiD]

Mine focuses perfectly and then goes to crap when I'm taking close pictures (mobile check deposits). What settings do you have on your camera? I've learned to use the settings on this cam a lot more than I would on any other i've had.
Have you tried to do the "best shot"? Hold the camera button in so it takes 20 pics then select "best shot".

That's what I have been doing too. But it is a pain to back and erase the bad shots every time

Sent from my HTC One Coconut Wireless

 

[Gothamoddisee]

Thanks - I'll give it a look - though I'm still holding out that HTC will hear our collective pleas and make adjustments accordingly - specifically because I still quite enjoy the interface for combined video and still photography control.

You could try Camera FV-5 on the play store. It is like $4 or $5.

It allows lock exposure, lock focus, as well as exposure adustment, change in meterting mode on screen and a bunch of other stuff. I installed it but haven't played with it much- I assume the photos are just as good as using the HTC camera app, but as I said I haven't really tested it.

It does allow you to assign functions to th volume keys as well (shutter/focus, etc).

You can independtly set focus and exposure points by tapping.

Of course you can't use all the good HTC stuff with it though - no zoe, no burst mode.

 

[HawaiiD]

Thanks - I'll give it a look - though I'm still holding out that HTC will hear our collective pleas and make adjustments accordingly - specifically because I still quite enjoy the interface for combined video and still photography control.

When I called HTC they played the that's the first time I heard of that problem before card. I told the csr not only is my camera not working properly, but the capacitive of buttons are not as responsive as my old HTC phone? I said it takes 3-4 presses before I get a response. Then the car says again...Oh, I never of that problem either. Why don't they just admit there is an issue and explain that there is a fix in the works? If HTC didn't play dumb?
I would probably be little more patient with them.

Sent from my HTC One Coconut Wireless

 

[obnpolo]

Its definitely a bad unit. I'm on my third HTC One(first due to black aluminum wearing, second to microphone not capturing sound while I spoke, and now this camera focus problem). I'm in LOVE with this phone, but HTC seriously needs to focus on their quality control. The camera is having a hard time focusing, and over exposes every shot. Here are a few examples. This is my last day to bring it into sprint, so its going to be interesting to have my fourth HTC One in 2 weeks. Maybe its something with the black units? My girlfriend has the bare silver and it has had zero problems.

The computer image is in full daylight. All the windows were open.

 

[begreen9]

I have the same issues with a new HTC one. The focus is particularly bad with low light. I have never gotten a sharp picture with this camera when shooting a distance shot in the evening and have had some failures in broad daylight. The video capture is even worse. Instead of focusing on 50ft to inifinity it focuses at about 10ft. It's totally worthless in it's current state IMO. I shot the same scene with my son's Samsung and it was dead sharp. They really need to fix this camera issue.

 

[Cool Jeff]

I have the same issues with a new HTC one. The focus is particularly bad with low light. I have never gotten a sharp picture with this camera when shooting a distance shot in the evening and have had some failures in broad daylight. The video capture is even worse. Instead of focusing on 50ft to inifinity it focuses at about 10ft. It's totally worthless in it's current state IMO. I shot the same scene with my son's Samsung and it was dead sharp. They really need to fix this camera issue.

I am having exactly the same issues with these situations even now that I am on latest 4.2.2 and updated hboot 1.54.
I wonder if I switch to S4 or not (for free) because it's already not cool to have 4mp in daylight situations but also getting 8 over 10 blurry photos at low light...the One's camera is a big disapointement

 

[Aby_Cat]

I was previously having focus issues but after I turned on the "Touch to Capture" option most of my photos are in focus.

 

[walt27]

I had the same problem I finally warrantyed mine out. Got the replacement today and pictures are way clear and sharper.

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