I have a question about my camera

[mikagabrielle]

I discovered some screen discoloration on my new Iphone and was having trouble holding a signal in Greenwich Village I took my phone to AT & T and
received rude customer service. The Iphone was my first smartphone but
the lady at AT & T tried to say that i had somehow damaged my phone(within 12 hours) but finally a manager returned it and cancelled my contract.
I decided to visit Verizon and i decided to get a Motorola Droid. The man told me an Iphone comparable phone was coming in 2 weeks and to check it out.
Anyway I love the phone. The keyboard is slightly awkward. Not much feel for keys.But i have been taking pictures and I wanted to know why the quality is so grainy and what i could do to fix it.

 

[Psychokitty]

Unfortunately, the camera quality in the Droid is lacking. In anything other than bright light conditions or outdoors in sunlight, the camera takes very grainy photos. But with adequate light, you can take fairly decent shots.

-The iphone took better photos despite the color issue? How many MP is it?

 

[mikagabrielle]

It has the same megapixel amount. 5 megapixels.
Currently, I am looking through the pictures I have
taken of myself and the quality is horrible. Is this
with all motorola devices? I wanted to exchange
for the new phone that is coming out.

 

[mikagabrielle]

as an example i took my avatar last night on my Iphone and
it was pretty good yet this one just seems really grainy for some
reason and i wasn't sure if i was doing something wrong or had
the wrong settings.

 

[doomedromance]

The quality is grainy because of what is called noise. It is pretty bad due to the amount of pixels shoved into such a tiny sensor. When capturing the light through the lens to create the image the pixels create heat. This heat is turned into the graininess you see. ISO # is like a rating for light sensitivity the higher the ISO the more noise there is, but the more light gets captured. When there is little light the camera will bump the ISO higher to capture enough light. So when it is dark this graininess shows more. With film if you use ISO 200 film it will look better but with ISO 800 film you can take pictures in less light. Same goes for digital. In like an action photo at dusk with ISO 200 on a point and shoot you'll have blurred images whereas with ISO 800 you'll probably stop the motion, but you'll have the grain. Other than the size of the pixels, the sensor, and heat, the technology of the sensor also plays a part in it. Simply Apple never played the megapixel marketing wars and went with quality. That's why the pictures come out so well. The sensor in cell phones are much smaller than what's in a point and shoot, and much much smaller than what's in a DSLR. They cram 5megapixels into a small space creating a lot of heat which degrades the quality of the image.

 

[Psychokitty]

Likely the CCDs are the same size, with the same pixel count. There are other hardware factors involved like filtering (digital ISO control) and aperture range. And then there's the pixel interpolation software. One of the first things I tried to find out was whether the 5+ MP count was actual or after software rendering because cameras have been sold as having higher pixel counts than their speced CCD can support by taking (for example) 10 MP of data and using software to change it to 12 MP. I could find nothing on the filter(s) or aperture, though.

I have a Canon TX-1 (7.1MP) which I run a hacked ROM on. I got it because at the time, it was the only P&S with a 10x optical zoom lens. But it took terrible grainy shots in low light conditions. Now that it's hacked I can change the ISO to any whole number value from 10 to 64,000, flash coordination & intensity, exposure from 1/65,000 of second to 65 seconds, manual focus, etc. I can change just about anything you can imagine on it. I can run motion detection and timed shot scripts. I've captured lightening at night with the MD script! I can change the focal point incrementally after every shot in a predetermined number of shots by 1mm and then combine them using software to create zero DOF compilations. I now have a DOF & subject distance calculator right on my screen, as well as a dozen histograms to choose from.
It's really, really, really great.

-It STILL takes shit pictures in low light without a tripod!

You can compensate to a certain point by exploiting the hardware parameters as much as possible, but ultimately I believe it's the software used to interpolate the pixel data that is the limiting factor for quality in CCDs on this scale. As doomed mentioned, the CCD pixel heat is the ultimate culprit, but could be reduced as a hardware parameter if the accompanying software could be changed to accommodate the lower voltage. I don't know that that would actually work, but even if it did, it's not likely to be something an update can fix.

Speaking of which, I think that we've seen just about the best Motorola intends to do regarding making the camera on the Droid better in the 2.2 update. They've added an exposure setting, which is fiddly and not all that much help, IMO.

If you root and get into saving back-ups of whatever ROM you're running, you can go into the system and mess around with the camera and video settings. You can change the bit rate for the video, stuff like that. I haven't checked out whether I can fine tune this latest exposure setting option yet.

 

[mikagabrielle]

Thank you both for your help and insight.
I wish i could post the pictures I was taking
here to show what i mean when it is grainy
and blurry looking when i take pictures
but i don't know what the rules are
regarding bikini/beach pictures I took
with famiy and friends. I
do not want to offend anyone.

 

[Psychokitty]

So they are full sunlight shots?

 

[mikagabrielle]

the ones outside are
and the few we took inside
in the hotel just came out
grainy.

Are there any apps that improve the camera?

 

[Psychokitty]

Well after poking around a bit I found that the structure in which the camera software parameters is listed is all different on 2.2 than it previously was. This suggests that maybe they've made more significant changes that I first thought. (I'm running a Froyo ROM.) At the very least it illustrates that there's more to work with for those who have the know-how to tweak the camera from the software.

Aside of that, there are few camera apps I know of that actually give you much more control than the regular stock app. Most of them just offer after-shot enhancements.
I use Camera Zoom FX. 85% of what it does is post shot, but it does have a few pre-shot benefits.
Pic Say Pro is what I use as an in-camera editor. It's a really fantastic tool for cleaning up shots, being artistic both subtly or heavily, and even for goofing with caption bubbles, and such. Vast array of post shot effects applications.

 

[mikagabrielle]

Well after poking around a bit I found that the structure in which the camera software parameters is listed is all different on 2.2 than it previously was. This suggests that maybe they've made more significant changes that I first thought. (I'm running a Froyo ROM.) At the very least it illustrates that there's more to work with for those who have the know-how to tweak the camera from the software.

Aside of that, there are few camera apps I know of that actually give you much more control than the regular stock app. Most of them just offer after-shot enhancements.
I use Camera Zoom FX. 85% of what it does is post shot, but it does have a few pre-shot benefits.
Pic Say Pro is what I use as an in-camera editor. It's a really fantastic tool for cleaning up shots, being artistic both subtly or heavily, and even for goofing with caption bubbles, and such. Vast array of post shot effects applications.

Crazy cool avatar. Killer kitty lmfao

I downloaded picsay pro and it is wonderful. Just like using photoshop.
Thank you

 

[takeshi]

(nm)

 

[crenita]

I 2nd the use of Camera Zoom FX app.. before I got that app I would NOT take a pic with this camera phone as they all came out fuzzy and grainy... Now .. I am snapping away.. it is sooo nice.. I downloaded additional free addons for CameraZoom.. and it makes it even better. There is a Photoshop app but I find using CameaZoom.. makes that program almost unnecessary.

 

[Psychokitty]

-Yeah, forgot all about that; There's a HUGE list of add-ons for the "Camera Zoom FX" app.

Anyone reading this who has tweaked the camera settings from within the system, I'm really interested in reading about it. I've changed b]my bit rate & frame rate, but that's all. That was in 2.1. I'd like to see what others might be doing in 2.2.

BTW, if you don't know what you're doing, you can seriously screw up your phone, so I'm not in any way suggesting anyone go casually messing with these files!

 

[mikagabrielle]

psycho could you explain what you did in your last post.
I am a bit confused

 

[Psychokitty]

Firstly, your Droid must be rooted. Using Root Editor, I went into a file that contained the parameters of things like the camera video frame rate, bit rate and codec for both large file recording (for the SD card) and small file recording (which is sent via mms by default), etc.
I'm a complete novice, so I'm by no means the guy to ask about the details. I'm now sporting a Froyo ROM, so the file is different, and I can't remember the name of the one I had messed around with. The changes became popular upgrades in a lot of ROMs, but I read about them on droidmod.com and droidfroums.net.
Uping the bit rate or frame rate too much led to pixelation and mini freezes in videos, so there's really only a little better you could go. Over clocking the CPU to 1 GHz seemed to help, but since light conditions appeared to effect the anomolies, it's hard to say.

I'm rather surprised more work hasn't been done to enhance the camera in ROM work.
If you find threads elsewhere, please post the links here. I'd love to see what you find out.

 

[Psychokitty]

-Don't feed the spam troll, folks. His post will be removed soon enough. I really want to see this thread kept on track!

 

[mikagabrielle]

I am sorry. Did i miss something?

 

[SinfulDragon]

As soon as 2.2 hit the streets I felt the camera was better. Its not perfect but as said before its nice to see they are tweaking the settings to clean them up. I haven't used any of the software to mess with the pics after they were taken, just point and shoot, and either cuss or move on LOL.