Horrible Shutter lag

[ScrapMaker]

Originally Posted by chronster

even my instinct had better camera it seems. You may say this has a flash, but dude, it's just an led light. I might as well use the led on my keys.

I laugh when people compare the touch pro to the iphone and say "TOUCH PRO CAN DO VIDEO" because it BARELY can do video...

Yup, even my M1 did QVGA video, which the TP STILL cannot do.

Xperia X1 is supposed to do full-VGA video at 30fps though... hhrrmmm

Too bad it's a $799 pricetag, unlocked at Best Buy, and the BB insurance on it is $219--I checked.

So out the door, with no service, you are already looking at $1,018.

That's wickedly-expensive. I may be forced to get a carrier-subsidized phone, like... guh, the iPhone... but I will feel like a traitor, to myself. Just, at some point you have to tip your hat and give props to a higher-quality device, (even if you hate the fanboys, and/or Apple.) The hardware is brilliant, and I don't think many people would argue otherwise. (The camera isn't amazing, but I think it still takes better pictures than ours, most of the time.)

I wish someone could hack the iPhone to run Windows Mobile, or at least a TRUE multi-tasking Linux OS...

[midiology]

Originally Posted by ScrapMaker

The problem here is not the auto-focus (which is ridiculously-slow as well,) or with the SD card, but with the EXPOSURE time. It's practically a whole second. I need a tripod to take a picture of a statue, practically. You almost need to hold your breath to get a good picture.

I have decided the best way to take a picture of a still object is to push the button, and let it auto-focus AND take the picture as soon as it's done. If you push your finger on the focus button, then all the way in to take the picture, you shake the phone (just a little,) and that can severely impact your pictures.

Ok,,, let me chime in,,, this phone does not have a shutter...
this term is carried over from archaic technology and is still in use today.. the camera in this phone uses a ccd device that when switched on is constantly excited by light particles and is constatnly transmitting signal to the encoders/decoders,,,
for a moment lets completely forget anything about autofocus,, and study on just the ccd device itself... if youll take your phone and have someong stand inside your house and have them just kind of slowly sway back and forth while you take their picture,, then have them go outside and do the exact same thing,, then when you look at the two pictures the one from in the sun will be sharper and less motion blur than the one in the house... reason being?

well on my mogul I freaked the registry to allow the camera app to show frames per second on the display while i had the camera up... and when in a normally lit room,, it would be like 6,7,8 maybe 10 frames per second that the ccd device was capturing,, then when it got brighter such as being outside it jumped up to over 15 frames per second,,,

what the deal is is exposure....

when it is dark the camera app is lowering the fps to increase the light intake for clearer picture,, this lags the camera and causes blur...

when it is light it increases the fps so that the light saturation is less but the picture is still clear...

this also affects the video... video shot indoors is crappy,, and at low frames per second,, video shot in bright sun will be less choppy etc...

so if someone could find out how to permanantly set the ccd device to 15 or 20 frames per second reguardless of lighting conditions then the phone would take clearer pictures with less blur,, but the tradeoff is in darker conditions the picture would be very dark,,,,

so lets see what we can do...

[dr g]

Originally Posted by midiology

Ok,,, let me chime in,,, this phone does not have a shutter...
this term is carried over from archaic technology and is still in use today.. the camera in this phone uses a ccd device that when switched on is constantly excited by light particles and is constatnly transmitting signal to the encoders/decoders,,,
for a moment lets completely forget anything about autofocus,, and study on just the ccd device itself... if youll take your phone and have someong stand inside your house and have them just kind of slowly sway back and forth while you take their picture,, then have them go outside and do the exact same thing,, then when you look at the two pictures the one from in the sun will be sharper and less motion blur than the one in the house... reason being?

well on my mogul I freaked the registry to allow the camera app to show frames per second on the display while i had the camera up... and when in a normally lit room,, it would be like 6,7,8 maybe 10 frames per second that the ccd device was capturing,, then when it got brighter such as being outside it jumped up to over 15 frames per second,,,

what the deal is is exposure....

when it is dark the camera app is lowering the fps to increase the light intake for clearer picture,, this lags the camera and causes blur...

when it is light it increases the fps so that the light saturation is less but the picture is still clear...

this also affects the video... video shot indoors is crappy,, and at low frames per second,, video shot in bright sun will be less choppy etc...

so if someone could find out how to permanantly set the ccd device to 15 or 20 frames per second reguardless of lighting conditions then the phone would take clearer pictures with less blur,, but the tradeoff is in darker conditions the picture would be very dark,,,,

so lets see what we can do...

This is something to consider. Anyone who is a photo hobbyist knows about low light/indoor shooting and shutter speeds ... and from that standpoint, the blurry low light photos are not a surprise. I find the shutter speeds and relative ability to handhold equivalent to about 100 ISO sensitivity on a rough estimate. The real quesiton is, what is different about other cameras that makes them able to use shorter shutter speeds? What are they doing with the software? The hardware is likely not much better, if at all.

[1999TL]

i'm confused. You quoted his post, but you're still asking about shutter speeds? I'm not an expert on camera technology btw.

[dr g]

Originally Posted by 1999TL

i'm confused. You quoted his post, but you're still asking about shutter speeds? I'm not an expert on camera technology btw.

No, I'm continuing the discussion more from a photographer's standpoint. Basically, given the tiny sensors in these cameras, they will have very low ISO equivalency and thus low sensitivity. This means in low light, shutter speeds will drag -- causing blur. That's normal and expected.

However some camera phones seem to avoid this -- question is how, and where is the difference, in the hardware or software? From there we can try to figure out whether different software could improve things a lot, and just what the potential for this hardware is.

[jmorton10]

Originally Posted by dr g

No, I'm continuing the discussion more from a photographer's standpoint. Basically, given the tiny sensors in these cameras, they will have very low ISO equivalency and thus low sensitivity. This means in low light, shutter speeds will drag -- causing blur. That's normal and expected.

However some camera phones seem to avoid this -- .

I agree. Small sensors/cheap lens the size of a pencil erasor etc etc etc, all spells disaster for good pics.

Some phones do avoid it however & that's what's annoying. As I stated earlier, my wife has an old Samsung $19 flip phone that takes great pics (for what it is). Her shots obviously don't equal my DSLR shots, but they are 50 times better than any shot I can get with the TP..............

~John

[ScrapMaker]

I guess it's fun to discuss this, but we all know that we won't get HTC to fix this, nor will will take care of it ourselves... I mean, no one was able to do anything about ANY of the other HTC phones so far--so I take that as a pretty good sign.

It's unfortunate, but really all we can offer are tips/tricks on how to take better pictures.

Oh, and HTC probably does interpolate their numbers... the images blown up on my PC look hideous, compared to other 3.2 cameras I have seen. I would guess it's more like 2mp... but it really doesn't even look as good as my M1, which had a smaller lens.

[jmorton10]

Originally Posted by ScrapMaker

the images blown up on my PC look hideous, compared to other 3.2 cameras I have seen. .

LOL, no kidding. You won't be making any 8x10 enlargements from these images..........

By the way, 3 megapixels is plenty to make a quality 8x10 if it is a QUALITY 3 megapixels.

I used to have a Canon EOS D30 (3 megapixel) & using a pro ($1000) lens I took a pic of my daughter that we blew up to 24"x36" & the quality is absolutely outstanding.........

~John

[chronster]

Originally Posted by ScrapMaker

There are a lot of things the Instinct does better--but you have to realize each phone reaches out to a different consumer base.

Instinct reaches out to people who want a phone that works right, but is less customizable.

When I owned the phone it didn't work right most of the time lol

[ScrapMaker]

Originally Posted by chronster

When I owned the phone it didn't work right most of the time lol

Maybe I should have picked the iPhone as a better comparison. I just meant dumbphones in general...