Help Perfect Camera Settings?

[cunning plan]

What are the best general settings to use on the camera?

I always use manual focus where you have to touch the screen to focus where you want the lense to focus on, everything else is stock I think:

Issue: White / slightly over-exposed effect on pictures - kind of hazey.

Current Settings

Brightness - 0

Contrast - 0
Saturation - 0
Sharpness - 0

Effect - None

White Balance - Auto
ISO - Auto
Resolution - 5M
Widescreen - YES
Quality - High
Self timer - Off
Geo-Tag - Off
Metering Mode - Average
Review - 5 seconds
Flicker Adjustment - Auto
Auto Focus - Off
Face Detection - Off
Shutter Sound - On
Time Stamp - Off
Grid - Off

Be interested to see your settings if you think you have it perfect or at-least as good as you can get with the camera

 

[jabtas]

As the screen on the Desire is so good and punchy, what looks like a good shot is very flat and lacking in colour/contrast if you transfer it to the computer or view it online (picassa, photobucket etc)

I up the saturation and contrast to +1 and alter the WB to suit the situation

 

[Jammy]

Brightness - 0


Contrast - 0

Saturation - 0

Sharpness - 0


Effect - None

White Balance - I change this depending on the conditions.

ISO - Auto

Resolution - 5M

Widescreen - YES
Quality - High

Self timer - Off

Geo-Tag - On

Metering Mode - Average

Review - 5 seconds

Flicker Adjustment - Auto

Auto Focus - On

Face Detection - Off

Shutter Sound - Off

Time Stamp - Off

Grid - On

 

[el gringo]

It might be the metering thats causing the slight over exposure. By hazy, do you mean the sky is overexposed? As this would tend to happen with average metering when its trying to keep the foreground/middleground brighter.

 

[Pojken]

Vignette. That's the best way - you can actively change the settings to suit the image style you want. It is a beautiful camera replacement.

Tim

 

[cunning plan]

As the screen on the Desire is so good and punchy, what looks like a good shot is very flat and lacking in colour/contrast if you transfer it to the computer or view it online (picassa, photobucket etc)

I up the saturation and contrast to +1 and alter the WB to suit the situation

Excellent point, I will give this a go.

Brightness - 0


Contrast - 0

Saturation - 0

Sharpness - 0


Effect - None

White Balance - I change this depending on the conditions.

ISO - Auto

Resolution - 5M

Widescreen - YES
Quality - High

Self timer - Off

Geo-Tag - On

Metering Mode - Average

Review - 5 seconds

Flicker Adjustment - Auto

Auto Focus - On

Face Detection - Off

Shutter Sound - Off

Time Stamp - Off

Grid - On

Cheers!

It might be the metering thats causing the slight over exposure. By hazy, do you mean the sky is overexposed? As this would tend to happen with average metering when its trying to keep the foreground/middleground brighter.

Kind of.. Like this:

You can see it's very light in some bits and just 'hazey'.. Think I will change the metering to 'spot' - not sure what this means though

Vignette. That's the best way - you can actively change the settings to suit the image style you want. It is a beautiful camera replacement.

Tim

Sorry bud, this isn't what I am looking for - that is just a camera effects app and I need camera improvement!

 

[cunning plan]

Spot metering
With spot metering, the camera will only measure a very small area of the scene (between 1-5% of the viewfinder area). This will typically be the very centre of the scene, but some cameras allow the user to select a different off-center spot, or to recompose by moving the camera after metering. The first spot meter was built by Arthur James Dalladay, editor of The British Journal of Photography in about 1935 and described it in the BJP Almanac of 1937 on pages 127 to 138.[1]
A few models (including the Olympus OM-4, Canon T90 and, in the digital world, the Olympus C-5050z) support a Multi-Spot mode which allows multiple spot meter readings to be taken of a scene that are averaged. Some cameras, the OM-4 and T90 included, also support metering of highlight and shadow areas.

Spot metering is very accurate and is not influenced by other areas in the frame. It is commonly used to shoot very high contrast scenes. For example, if the subject's back is being hit by the rising sun and the face is a lot darker than the bright halo around the subject's back and hairline (the subject is "backlit"), spot metering allows the photographer to measure the light bouncing off the subject's face and expose properly for that, instead of the much brighter light around the hairline. The area around the back and hairline will then become over-exposed. Spot metering is a method upon which the Zone System depends.
Another example of spot metering usage would be when photographing the moon. Due to the very dark nature of the scene, other metering methods tend to overexpose the moon. Spot metering will allow for more detail to be brought out in the moon while underexposing the rest of the scene.

Center-weighted average metering
In this system, the meter concentrates between 60 to 80 percent of the sensitivity towards the central part of the viewfinder. The balance is then "feathered" out towards the edges. Some cameras will allow the user to adjust the weight/balance of the central portion to the peripheral one. One advantage of this method is that it is less influenced by small areas that vary greatly in brightness at the edges of the viewfinder; as many subjects are in the central part of the frame, consistent results can be obtained.

Average metering
In this metering mode the camera will use the light information coming from the entire scene and averages for the final exposure setting, giving no weighting to any particular portion of the metered area.

Metering mode - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arr interetsting..

 

[partridge]

I'm happy to take photos with my Desire and play around with them once they're on my PC. I have vignette which I love, but I use it for taking creative photos, not tweaking existing ones. If I'm taking a "straight" photo I use the Desire camera.

I am very happy with the results I get, it's a phone after all, but it takes perfectly adequate shots, if you want to take a top quality picture then get a digital camera!

 

[cunning plan]

That's an odd attitude to have.

That's like saying, don't use the Desire to look at webpages - that's what a computer is for. Or don't use the Desire to listen to music - that's what an iPod is for.

The point is, technology is progressing to the point where you don't need several devices to do lots of different things, one device that does a lot of tasks. Perhaps right now we haven't got a Android with SLR-type capabalities, but it is certian we soon will have - why wouldn't we? I'm sure when the Nokia 3210 was knocking about people were wondering if you could play more than 'Snake' on it and I am sure people like you came along and said 'why bother if you want to play games get a Game Boy'. But now look at what you can play with your phone.

BTW - I hope you aren't using your phone as a sat nav?!!

Point of the post was to get the best out of the camera by sharing settings and thoughts - I didn't ask (or care) what your opinion of the camera in general was. So thanks for a pointless post.

 

[ifb-online]

This is an interesting thread for me because I run several photography-related website magazines. That's my day job

The problem with the Desire and most other camera phones is that thet imaging sensor is really tiny. This means its sensitivity is much lower than conventional digital cameras. This means the dynamic range is poor and results in burned out highlights (bright areas) and the shadows can often be very dark with little detail. Another issue is high noise (grain and colour blotchiness) in conditions where the light is not particularly bright.

A few weeks ago I posted some images taken with my Desire on the forum at one of my sites. There is a fair amount of adsjustability in the image quality:

HTC Desire smartphone camera still photo quality? - DPNow.com Discussion Forum

Maybe I will do some evaluation of the camera settings and come up with some recommendations...

Ian

 

[ifb-online]

That's an odd attitude to have.

That's like saying, don't use the Desire to look at webpages - that's what a computer is for. Or don't use the Desire to listen to music - that's what an iPod is for.

The point is, technology is progressing to the point where you don't need several devices to do lots of different things, one device that does a lot of tasks. Perhaps right now we haven't got a Android with SLR-type capabalities, but it is certian we soon will have - why wouldn't we? I'm sure when the Nokia 3210 was knocking about people were wondering if you could play more than 'Snake' on it and I am sure people like you came along and said 'why bother if you want to play games get a Game Boy'. But now look at what you can play with your phone.

BTW - I hope you aren't using your phone as a sat nav?!!

Point of the post was to get the best out of the camera by sharing settings and thoughts - I didn't ask (or care) what your opinion of the camera in general was. So thanks for a pointless post.

Lighten up!

He talks sense, and your hypersensitivity to responses like this is hardly helpful.

The fact is that a camera phone will always have limitations compared to a conventional digital camera. There is a limit as to how much better a camera phone can improve and any improvements in a camera phone will be matched by even bigger improvements in a digital camera.

Camera phones, and the Desire is no exception, compared to a conventional digital camera, lose out in dynamic range, noise, resolution, lack of optical zoom, manual override options, image format options (possibility of RAW files), continuous shooting flexibility, and responsiveness (shutter lag).

These things really do differentiate a camera phone froma conventional camera, but they don't mean a camera phone is useless. Just that there is little point in having mega high expectations. And of course a camerphone has its own advantages; you're more likely to have one to hand, it's well integrated with the GPS and comms for direct uploading,and for other applicationslike bar codes, etc.

Horses for courses.

Ian

 

[cunning plan]

This is an interesting thread for me because I run several photography-related website magazines. That's my day job

The problem with the Desire and most other camera phones is that thet imaging sensor is really tiny. This means its sensitivity is much lower than conventional digital cameras. This means the dynamic range is poor and results in burned out highlights (bright areas) and the shadows can often be very dark with little detail. Another issue is high noise (grain and colour blotchiness) in conditions where the light is not particularly bright.

A few weeks ago I posted some images taken with my Desire on the forum at one of my sites. There is a fair amount of adsjustability in the image quality:

HTC Desire smartphone camera still photo quality? - DPNow.com Discussion Forum

Maybe I will do some evaluation of the camera settings and come up with some recommendations...

Ian

Awesome, cheers Ian - helpful.

Lighten up!

He talks sense, and your hypersensitivity to responses like this is hardly helpful.

The fact is that a camera phone will always have limitations compared to a conventional digital camera. There is a limit as to how much better a camera phone can improve and any improvements in a camera phone will be matched by even bigger improvements in a digital camera.

Camera phones, and the Desire is no exception, compared to a conventional digital camera, lose out in dynamic range, noise, resolution, lack of optical zoom, manual override options, image format options (possibility of RAW files), continuous shooting flexibility, and responsiveness (shutter lag).

These things really do differentiate a camera phone froma conventional camera, but they don't mean a camera phone is useless. Just that there is little point in having mega high expectations. And of course a camerphone has its own advantages; you're more likely to have one to hand, it's well integrated with the GPS and comms for direct uploading,and for other applicationslike bar codes, etc.

Horses for courses.

Ian

The point of this thread is to share settings and experience of getting the best of the Desire camera - 'partridge' coming in with 'his' opinion of the camera and saying don't use it, just buy a 'proper' camera - is 'hardly helpful' don't you think?

I know I can go buy a

 

[droid83]

As the screen on the Desire is so good and punchy, what looks like a good shot is very flat and lacking in colour/contrast if you transfer it to the computer or view it online (picassa, photobucket etc)

I up the saturation and contrast to +1 and alter the WB to suit the situation

I actually tried this and the difference is quite noticeable...see below:-

Contrast, Sharpness, Saturation = zero


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Contrast, Sharpness, Saturation = One


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

The difference is huge!!!

 

[LECTER]

I actually tried this and the difference is quite noticeable...see below:-

Contrast, Sharpness, Saturation = zero


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Contrast, Sharpness, Saturation = One


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

The difference is huge!!!

That's pretty amazing!!

 

[turbohobbit]

Sorry, my work 'puter won't allow me to see the images. I presume the +1 image is better?

 

[droid83]

@ turbohobbit

Yes its much much better....The washed out effect goes away by keeping contrast and sharpness at +1...The saturation adds more color i think...

wierd...i have had the desire for abt 3 mos now and never tried this before!@$

 

[turbohobbit]

Ah. I presume this is for the stock / Sense camera, not the AOSP one (the one that comes with Defrost)?

 

[droid83]

@ turbohobbit

I dont understand AOSP?? My Desire manufacturing date is May as the serial no says HT05..

 

[turbohobbit]

Sorry, Android Open Source Project. Basically, are you using the original Sense ROM on your HTC or have you rooted it and flashed a custom ROM?

 

[droid83]

Yes i am...not rooted yet..Does a custom ROM effect the camera quality somehow?

 

[turbohobbit]

Kinda... Some custom ROMs such as Defrost use a camera app that is "stock" (AOSP) rather than designed for HTC/Sense. As this is essentially a different programme the settings don't apply (for example My contrast and saturation run from 0-10 and sharpness runs from 0-30).

 

[TheOnlyRick]

If you have hazy pix off your camera, check your lens (or the back of your camera case) is clean and not cracked.

On my phone, the little bit of plastic that covers the lens has a slight crack in it, and when the light catches it from the 'right' angle, I get haze in pictures.