Help Camera taking blurry pictures- Update- Software issue

[rushmore]

I assumed that based on other reports and reviews the pictures would be great, but so far, pictures look awful to me. The Razr was a lot better.

They focus and look sharp on the display, right after taking the picture, but the results are dim and blurry. I even set the camera down to avoid movement, but same result.

I have tried stock settings and tweaked, but same results. Blurry pics. Why would they look sharp on the display, but the actual pic blurry and dim?

Update: I do not have the issues using Camera FX.

 

[DaddyCee]

what quality are you saving the pic in?

 

[rushmore]

At first the default 3264X2448 and then tried others. Still blurry pics. My Incredible and Droid 3 took much better pics than this. Heck, my G1 took better pictures than this. Really. Something must be wrong I guess.

They look awful printed out as well.

Added: Also on my monitor compared to other pics. Complete lack of sharpness. Looks like the focus is off, but when taken, the image looks sharp.

Even tried different focus options. Looks like this one is going back, but will wait until Best Buy gets the blue 32gb in.

 

[rmcf]

I noticed this as well but never bothered to comment on it. For the most part it seems hit and miss. Sometimes id actually be impressed with the quality of a picture. Other times it was so bad i immediately deleted it. Perhaps i'm the one to blame?

 

[Eryl Flynn]

The few I have taken tend to be blurry, bad focus on them. Some do well of course. Think this is a software issue to be honest.

 

[rushmore]

It does not make sense though, since you would think users and reviewers would have picked up on this.

The camera performance for me is awful and I am more tolerant on picture quality. Bad device batches, perhaps? This stands out far too much to be a quality control miss for the device in general.

Added: Must be bad batches, since too many reviews from credible sources like Anandtech saying pictures look good. The blurry pics stand out and do not by any plausible stretch look good

 

[sean76]

It does not make sense though, since you would think users and reviewers would have picked up on this.

The camera performance for me is awful and I am more tolerant on picture quality. Bad device batches, perhaps? This stands out far too much to be a quality control miss for the device in general.

Added: Must be bad batches, since too many reviews from credible sources like Anandtech saying pictures look good. The blurry pics stand out and do not by any plausible stretch look good

Dammm...this is something I was really worried about Rush, the whole quality control thing. My phone down right takes awesome pictures, even when compared to my friends EVO 4G LTE, it blows his phone out of the water. My pics are really clear and sharp.

Now the issue is I was going to do an exchange because of the phone getting fairly warm on to many occasions.

But upon reading a few here and there posts of some people having awesome cameras, and other people having phones that take grainy pics...Not good, sounds like a quality control issue, and maybe different sensors used in different batches of S3's.

 

[Crafty]

OP can you post an example ?

 

[rushmore]

Here is a sample. Notice the double vision around the letters. Like the other pictures, the image looked razer sharp when taken. Does not matter if resting the phone to avoid movement. Same results. Must be a defect, since the reviews would have seen this, without doubt. Ditto for folks here as well. No biggie, since will be getting the blue 32gb anyway, as soon as BB gets them in. They kindly left my preorder open.

Blurry, is a fair description.


Update:

I had to delete the blurry example since took up too much forum attachement space with the new picture in the post below. The picture below is basically a non-blurry version of the one that was here. It looked bad, while the one below in spite of low light looks good.

 

[Yukiari]

Here is a sample. Notice the double vision around the letters. Like the other pictures, the image looked razer sharp when taken. Does not matter if resting the phone to avoid movement. Same results. Must be a defect, since the reviews would have seen this, without doubt. Ditto for folks here as well. No biggie, since will be getting the blue 32gb anyway, as soon as BB gets them in. They kindly left my preorder open.

Blurry, is a fair description.

View attachment 35718

I found that when I take pictures inside they come out a bit blurry, but I just took some gorgeous pictures outside of flowers and such just to test the camera.

 

[rushmore]

Perhaps it is software, since Camera FX has much better results. Unlike the stock camera app, pictures stay in focus: Resolution did not matter in regards to the blur with stock app.

Here is a sample for Camera FX:

 

[Crafty]

If I follow either of the attachment links I get a "invalid link specified" error.

In any case, quick 101 on camera stuff:

A digital camera consists of three main components:
Lens
Shutter
Sensor

The lens is a piece of glass that all light passes through. To control the amount of light that passes through the lens it has a disc that sits behind the glass that has a hole in it. The size of the hole can change, this is called the aperture.

The shutter sits behind the lens. You can think of this as a trap door that is normally shut but opens and then closes very quickly when a picture is taken. When open the shutter allows the light that flowed through the lens to hit the sensor.

The sensor sits behind the shutter. It is sensitive to light, so when the shutter opens it "sees" the light and from that it can form the image.

So, we can control how light or dark an image is in three ways:
We can make the aperture bigger, a bigger hole in the disc means more light gets in.
We can open the shutter for longer, the longer it is open, the more light we will have hitting the sensor.
Finally we could make the sensor more sensitive to light. This is known as the ISO setting.

Doing each of these things has disadvantages:
A wider aperture has an effect on depth of field (google it..). It can also cause pictures to become slightly out of focus because the optical part of the lens isn't very good when "wide open". Most lenses give their sharpest image in the middle of the aperture range.

A longer shutter time can cause blurry pictures, this is because the camera picks up movement from the person holding the camera, even if very slight.

Increasing the ISO setting will make pictures "noisy" or grainy, detracting from the overall appearance of the image.

So, back to your blurry pictures - it could be you are taking pictures in low light, the camera probably widens the aperture as far as it can go, increases the ISO setting as much as that can go.. but its still too dark so it can only increase the shutter time, it probably ends up too long and causes the camera to pick up shake.. causing the blur.

It kind of sucks, but I think phone camera technology is amazing for what it can handle, we have to remember it isn't meant to replace a DSLR or even a compact camera, phone cameras are just for snaps.

 

[KeyserSoze]

You're having better luck with "Camera Effects" or "FxCamera"?

I want to try it out. I've had pretty good luck with my S3 camera but def had some grainy and blurry pics along the way.

I use voice control with burst mode and best shot on for a win every time so far.

 

[irish]

My S3 takes insanely good pictures. I came from a RAZR and prior to that an iphone4. RAZR was complete garbage. Mildly better with Camera FX.

 

[Ken7]

Perhaps it is software, since Camera FX has much better results. Unlike the stock camera app, pictures stay in focus: Resolution did not matter in regards to the blur with stock app.

Here is a sample for Camera FX:

View attachment 35723

Weird. That's the kind of pix I get using the normal software. I'm very impressed with both the pix and the videos. My only issue with the videos is it's very tough to get smooth pans on these small cameras.

Not sure what's going on with yours, but it's obviously not a hardware issue if you can sharp pix in a different software program.

Do you get the blurry pix even outdoors in bright sunlight? That would tend to minimize the camera shake issue.

 

[rushmore]

Yes, meant Fxcamera. Fx does not have the blurry issue. Strange.

Not tried outside yet.

 

[TadeoNYC]

IMO the problem is in the software for the autofocus. I noticed wiping the lens off even though it was not visibly dirty improved the quality of snapshots. And I Am comparing apples to apples, my last phone was the Samsung continuum and consistently took better pictures with out having to wipe the lens first.

 

[quest4JC]

I'm having the same issue op, the screen looks super sharp when focused but once the picture snaps it has a slight grain to it when examined in detail.

 

[Ken7]

Keep in mind that pictures can look sharp on the comparatively small S3 screen, but in actuality not be sharp. Even as good as the screen is on the S3, it's really still much too small to see fine detail like small focusing errors, noise and grain.

Even on a DSLR, a picture in the small LCD can look sharp until you actually zoom in on small areas and then see the shot wasn't nearly as sharp as you originally thought.

With that said, if you take pictures in bright sunlight, there should be absolutely no grain.

 

[rushmore]

Confirmed today on a rainy/dark road trip. FX takes great low light pics and stock app for me takes poor low light pics.

In fact (for me) the camera using FX takes stunning pics- for a phone. Out in bright ambient light, the stock app seems okay, but FX covers all conditions for me.

 

[thelber]

My S3 is taking great pictures....just used it to take photos of my Maxx for eBay.

 

[jroyjohnson]

I assumed that based on other reports and reviews the pictures would be great, but so far, pictures look awful to me. The Razr was a lot better.

They focus and look sharp on the display, right after taking the picture, but the results are dim and blurry. I even set the camera down to avoid movement, but same result.

I have tried stock settings and tweaked, but same results. Blurry pics. Why would they look sharp on the display, but the actual pic blurry and dim?

Update: I do not have the issues using Camera FX.

Not sure why you're having such trouble with the focus. Miner was a little blurry the first few days until I realized I had to tap three screen to tell it to focus. x-( . Since then I've turned on the auto focus and rarely have to tap out to focus

 

[Dkp]

I sometimes have this problem as well, but not consistently. I did turn on anti-shake recently and it seems to be better, I haven't seen it happen since, but my problem is intermittent enough that I am not sure it is gone.

Maybe that helps?

 

[TadeoNYC]

I just bought Camera ZoomFX and took two photos of a stack of my sons blocks, one with the stock camera and the other with ZoomFX. Without touching any settings in Zoom FX the quality was noticably better even though I have no idea how autofocus worked (i did not select an area) the stock camera image that was directed to focus on the blocks was significantly worse with very soft edges.

So I think the three bucks is well spent, because I am not going to wait god knows how long for a Verizon update. The app looks like it is very useful in general. Incidentaly it is "App of the week" and is discounted from $5.

 

[trueblue71]

For those of you whose camera has no problems, what settings are you using? Specifically:
-Is anti-shake on?
-What metering mode are you using? Center weighted, spot?

I think I may have one of the bad batches because a lot of my pictures are hit-or-miss, even in rather well-lit places.