Very disappointed in the camera

[anon(12803)]

Vignette
https://market.android.com/details?id=uk.co.neilandtheresa.NewVignette&hl=en

Camera360
https://market.android.com/details?id=vStudio.Android.GPhotoPaid&feature=top-paid

These are two of the most popular ones. Vignette is a good app, but for me (Droid X) is semi slow in taking pics IMO, but I still use it.

Check the market and see if one works for you.
https://market.android.com/apps/PHOTOGRAPHY

Thanks! I have used Vignette before but I will check them out further.

 

[kb0uy]

I find the camera pretty good in the sun. Available light inside is not as good as the droid charge and the audio pickup in video recording is not as good. I really don't expect quality that u would get with my nikon d200. We are dealing with a very small apature. But the other qualities are alot better than my charge ie gps lock on and data dropping and bluetooth problems.

 

[Mikeyw88]

The question is, why are you trolling the Bionic forums? I haven't seen you around at all during this whole prelaunch. I've been spending time in these forums because I was waiting for and researching the Bionic because I was looking hard at getting one. I'm here absorbing information to help with my decision, which I've just made that I would PROBABLY pass on it. This thread pertains to the main reason I am passing on it so I am putting forth my input. My post on this topic belongs here, your initial post was trolling at it's finest.

Also I'm still weighing buying a Canon ELPH 300 HS so that I don't have to rely on a smartphone to have a great camera, thus expanding the possible phones I can choose from, the Bionic being one. So I still have a big interest in perusing the Bionic forums to gather feedback from current and ex Bionic users. What say ye, troll?

I have been a lurker for some time, got a bionic yesterday so I decided to post. No problems with mine. Not here to fight. I'm fairly knowledgable in electronics ( I am an electrical engineer). Nice use of old english to sound cool though.

 

[JoJoCal19]

I have been a lurker for some time, got a bionic yesterday so I decided to post. No problems with mine. Not here to fight. I'm fairly knowledgable in electronics ( I am an electrical engineer). Nice use of old english to sound cool though.

Hey you know what, it's all in fun.

It would be cool if you put some input into the thread though, rather than vague statements to buy a camera instead. After all, one of things about smartphones is replacing many devices with one device, hence the importance to many of a good camera.

But being an electrical engineer I would think you are pretty analytical of your devices so I think you could provide good input.

How do you think the camera stacks up compared to other devices you've owned? What do you/don't you like about it?

 

[Mikeyw88]

Hey you know what, it's all in fun.

It would be cool if you put some input into the thread though, rather than vague statements to buy a camera instead. After all, one of things about smartphones is replacing many devices with one device, hence the importance to many of a good camera.

But being an electrical engineer I would think you are pretty analytical of your devices so I think you could provide good input.

How do you think the camera stacks up compared to other devices you've owned? What do you/don't you like about it?

Ok good, like I said wasn't trying to fight. From what little time i have spent with it. It seems so take decent pictures. Auto-focus seems a bit slow but I know thats because it's all in a rather small package. Color and flash, and features are all good. I am coming from an LG Dare and Droid X. It is very similar to the X on both hardware and UI fronts. Best smartphone camera I have used ( I have also used but not owned X2 and Incredible 2). No iphone experience though. I'm still rocking my second gen 40 gig ipod from when I was 16 (I'm now 23). The front facing camera is very low res, would have liked to have seen them use something better. Thena again, the front camera is TINY. Hope these are more helpfull. If you are interested here you can see a complete tear down of the phone : iFixit guts the Motorola Droid Bionic in latest teardown - SlashGear.

 

[JoJoCal19]

Ok good, like I said wasn't trying to fight. From what little time i have spent with it. It seems so take decent pictures. Auto-focus seems a bit slow but I know thats because it's all in a rather small package. Color and flash, and features are all good. I am coming from an LG Dare and Droid X. It is very similar to the X on both hardware and UI fronts. Best smartphone camera I have used ( I have also used but not owned X2 and Incredible 2). No iphone experience though. I'm still rocking my second gen 40 gig ipod from when I was 16 (I'm now 23). The front facing camera is very low res, would have liked to have seen them use something better. Thena again, the front camera is TINY. Hope these are more helpfull. If you are interested here you can see a complete tear down of the phone : iFixit guts the Motorola Droid Bionic in latest teardown - SlashGear.

Thanks man. Yea the AF is one of the bigger deals for me. Having an 11 month old, my iPhone 4 is always right there with me and it takes such quick snapshots which is useful for capturing children's funny moments. Shutter lag and AF speed are the two biggest deal breakers. The DSLR sits on the coffee table but we're not always right there with it when things happen. I'm looking heavily at getting a nice point n shoot to keep with me so I can make my phone choices independent of the camera quality if you know what I mean.

 

[Mikeyw88]

Thanks man. Yea the AF is one of the bigger deals for me. Having an 11 month old, my iPhone 4 is always right there with me and it takes such quick snapshots which is useful for capturing children's funny moments. Shutter lag and AF speed are the two biggest deal breakers. The DSLR sits on the coffee table but we're not always right there with it when things happen. I'm looking heavily at getting a nice point n shoot to keep with me so I can make my phone choices independent of the camera quality if you know what I mean.

Yup, happy hunting!

 

[oresteez]

I'm currently using a Canon SD750..which is a slim-type of camera...
I'm not really happy with even that anymore, I want to get a digital SLR, something along the lines of a Canon Rebel or a high end Nikon.. I have twin 5 year olds, and even my current Canon doesn't take pictures fast enough.

That being said, I want to have something that I can grab out of my pocket in a hurry and take a quick pic when necessary. I don't care if it has 20 megapixels...just increase the damn shutter speed. I think what these phone companies don't realize is that we aren't going to blow up every picture we take to be a 16 x 20. I don't need them to keep raising the megapixels... just make sure the shutter speed, the image stabilization, and the focusing work fine. Look how awesome the iphone 4 is, and its only 5 mp. Hell, I don't even take pics higher than 5mp on my regular camera...mainly because I don't want every picture to take up more than 1 MB at a time.

So to tie this all in, camera quality on a smartphone is very important to me. Otherwise, we might as well carry around RAZR's right? haha

 

[debonu]

I picked up Camera Zoom FX on my Gtab a few weeks back when Amazon was having a deal on the app. Just installed it on my Bionic and damn does it make a heck of a difference. From tapping on the app to open it to focus and snap of photo is sssooo much faster than the stock camera! So I would definitely suggest trying out other camera apps and see what one works for you.

Who knows maybe moto will put out an update to address some of these issues!

-D

 

[D1andOnlyOmen]

I think maybe I'm just not a fan of digital cameras or something.....the camera on my previous phone (HTC Touch Pro2) was awful....got my Bionic yesterday and have only tried a few pics...one in low light lastnight w/ flash turned off turned out fairly decently, but one inside (weird light) and set to auto flash that flashed wasn't that great...just ok. I may be some what ignorant when it comes to picture taking or something....I have a 10MP Cannon Sure Shot (or something like that, never use it so can't remember) and I've messed with every setting I can on the thing and I think those pics usually come out pretty bad too.....I just can't seem to figure out all the settings or something. I even had my cousin who is an amateur photographer change all the settings for me on the Cannon and I still think they look bad under certain conditions..... oh well..... I'll probably try a different camera app and just try to make due. The camera on my phone isn't something that I've ever really used all that regularly, though it would be nice to have good quality to be able to use it more frequently.....

 

[Explicit]

I think maybe I'm just not a fan of digital cameras or something.....the camera on my previous phone (HTC Touch Pro2) was awful....got my Bionic yesterday and have only tried a few pics...one in low light lastnight w/ flash turned off turned out fairly decently, but one inside (weird light) and set to auto flash that flashed wasn't that great...just ok. I may be some what ignorant when it comes to picture taking or something....I have a 10MP Cannon Sure Shot (or something like that, never use it so can't remember) and I've messed with every setting I can on the thing and I think those pics usually come out pretty bad too.....I just can't seem to figure out all the settings or something. I even had my cousin who is an amateur photographer change all the settings for me on the Cannon and I still think they look bad under certain conditions..... oh well..... I'll probably try a different camera app and just try to make due. The camera on my phone isn't something that I've ever really used all that regularly, though it would be nice to have good quality to be able to use it more frequently.....

People fail to realize that just because it's a 10mp, 14mp, 8 mp camera doesn't mean it will be good. It comes down to how good the sensor is. I've heard people say they take better pics when they lower the resolution. Maybe that is something some of you should try.

 

[Explicit]

I picked up Camera Zoom FX on my Gtab a few weeks back when Amazon was having a deal on the app. Just installed it on my Bionic and damn does it make a heck of a difference. From tapping on the app to open it to focus and snap of photo is sssooo much faster than the stock camera! So I would definitely suggest trying out other camera apps and see what one works for you.

Who knows maybe moto will put out an update to address some of these issues!

-D

Gonna give this a try and see if I like the results as much as you do.

 

[Stilgar42]

Hey everybody, first time poster here. But I decided that I should chime in on this as an imaging scientist (yes that is a real degree and field of study) to take a crack at the analytical side of things.

I did a quick modulation transfer function on the droid bionic and my previous phone the OG droid. Some quick numbers on the real resolution on my bionic was 7.284 megapixels with a linear efficiency of 95.4% with a tripod to steady the image. The OG droid achieved 1.815 megapixels and a linear efficiency of 60.2%. In terms of raw resolving power, this is the best camera phone I've seen, but I've not spent a lot of time thinking about camera phones. I also decided that for a real world test I should see how hand holding goes, and came out with 5.697 megapixels. Take what you will from these numbers, but I'm coming away impressed.

 

[WhenForever]

Gonna give this a try and see if I like the results as much as you do.

Please let me know how this turns out, I am coming from the Thunderbolt and the camera on it blows this one away. Right now the poor camera is close to being a deal breaker for this phone and thinking of returning it

 

[YourMobileGuru]

Not sure if anyone caught this or not.

Go into settings and make sure it's not defaulting to 6MP, if so change it to 8MP.

Megapixel has very little to do with the quality of the image, it's mostly in the sensor and the lenses. The 3.2 and 5.0 MP camera in most Blackberries blows almost any Android phone camera out of the water.

 

[KillerG]

I picked up Camera Zoom FX on my Gtab a few weeks back when Amazon was having a deal on the app. Just installed it on my Bionic and damn does it make a heck of a difference. From tapping on the app to open it to focus and snap of photo is sssooo much faster than the stock camera! So I would definitely suggest trying out other camera apps and see what one works for you.

Who knows maybe moto will put out an update to address some of these issues!

-D

I told you that Motorola's stock app is going to be crap compared to a real camera app. Motorola didn't put a lot of effort into it apparently, I personally don't think I'll be using it when I pick up my phone very much. Try different camera apps, I've heard a lot of good things about Vignette.

 

[Lynx]

Hey everybody, first time poster here. But I decided that I should chime in on this as an imaging scientist (yes that is a real degree and field of study) to take a crack at the analytical side of things.

I did a quick modulation transfer function on the droid bionic and my previous phone the OG droid. Some quick numbers on the real resolution on my bionic was 7.284 megapixels with a linear efficiency of 95.4% with a tripod to steady the image. The OG droid achieved 1.815 megapixels and a linear efficiency of 60.2%. In terms of raw resolving power, this is the best camera phone I've seen, but I've not spent a lot of time thinking about camera phones. I also decided that for a real world test I should see how hand holding goes, and came out with 5.697 megapixels. Take what you will from these numbers, but I'm coming away impressed.

Welcome to the forum I definitely think you should try out some of the other phone camers if you think this one is good. The BB Storm and Tour are far better than this and are 3 years old. The iPhone 4 camera is in my opinion the best one I have used in a phone. I do think that outside in sunlight this camera is ok though.

I am a photographer and I think that makes me nit pick this camera so much though. I also have 2 young children (3 and a half and 1 month) so capturing those quick moments is important for me. Granted its no where near the quality of my Canon 7D w/ 24-105 L lens, but when I want a quick snapshot I need something thats gonna get a semi decent picture lol.

 

[chetqwerty]

Even on my X Vignette took better pics than the stock camera software. Just compare the resulting file sizes from the exact same subject shot with stock software and Vignette or 360 and you'll see a much bigger file with the latter two Vignette being the largest. Bottom line in any digital media is more data = better quality. I keep both camera shortcuts side by side and if I have to get a shot fast I'll use stock and if I have time and want to wait the 15 minutes (ok exaggerating a little) for Vignette to process the pic I'll shoot with that. What is lame on the Bionic is the new way they are dealing with the SD card which is freaking out a lot of apps Vignette included that look for the SD card for storage but are only seeing the internal SD and are using that instead of the 16 GB SD-ext.

 

[SSHGuru]

Personally I think it focuses and takes pictures very fast and the quality seems good. Tried Vignette and wasn't too impressed - didn't see a difference.

 

[neowarcloud]

The stock software for the camera is crap. Unless the light is excellent, its extremely sluggish...I installed FxCamera (free version) and instantly the camera worked better taking quality pictures...I'm going to play around with the different programs until I find which one I like best, but I definitely advise using different software. There is nothing wrong with the hardware its purely motorola's inability to put together a snappy camera and a smartphone.