Help Very bad photo quality S2

[DavidB737]

Hello,
Recently I got my new Galaxy S2 (ICS 4.0.3) and I am very satisfied with it... except for one thing
Outdoor photographs look horribly compressed, smeared and blurry, rather than to try and further describe it I will just let it speak for itself:

Look at that blur in and around objects, look at that noise in the bright sky and asphalt floor, this photo was taken using the default camera settings, EXIF data says that an ISO of 400 was used.

I am pretty sure that this is not how photos taken using an S2 should look like, I used to take outdoor photographs with four years old Samsung Omnia i900 equipped with a standard 5 MP camera and a 400 mhz CPU, they looked way sharper and clearer:

I'd be glad if anyone would attempt to help me solve this issue

 

[chickenbox]

Wow that's strange, it's like a smudge stick effect has been applied to your photos.
Have you tried using any camera apps from the Play Store to take photos? I'm not sure if that'd help, but it's worth a try.

 

[DavidB737]

Wow that's strange, it's like a smudge stick effect has been applied to your photos.
Have you tried using any camera apps from the Play Store to take photos? I'm not sure if that'd help, but it's worth a try.

Hi, glad to hear I'm not the only one finding this effect strange.
Anyway, I have been browsing through Google Play but I can't seem to find any free camera app that takes 8MP photos, I only found instagram-like apps which take small photographs, do you happen to know any specific camera app that I could try?

 

[vantiveman]

I know this is a bit obvious, but have you checked to see if there is a small bit of plastic film over the lens. Often new devices are shipped with this.
For choice of camera apps, I use camera zoom and camera 360. Both are really good and probably have free trial versions.

 

[Hawker]

What camera firmware are you on?
You can check by entering *#34971539# into the dialer and selecting the Phone/CAM FW Ver Check option.

 

[DavidB737]

I know this is a bit obvious, but have you checked to see if there is a small bit of plastic film over the lens. Often new devices are shipped with this.
For choice of camera apps, I use camera zoom and camera 360. Both are really good and probably have free trial versions.

There is no plastic film over the lens and I don't think it can be due to a damaged lens either because on video mode 1080p videos look very sharp, sharper than the 8MP pictures this camera takes.

As for the apps, I will try them out and post here the results, thanks.

What camera firmware are you on?
You can check by entering *#34971539# into the dialer and selecting the Phone/CAM FW Ver Check option.

My camera firmware appears to be SBEF02

Cam FW Ver : SBEF02
Phone FW Ver : TBEC28

 

[Hawker]

Mine is SCEF02/TBEC28
I dont get as poor quality as that for sure.
In poor lighting conditions its not particularly good, but on sunlit days such as the example in your photo, its pretty good.

I've found firmware dated April 2012. I believe the version we are on is circa May 2011.
I'll give this a go to see if it works. Last time I attempted this it totally buggered up the camera, so here goes. Fingers crossed I don't live to regret this and take one for the team...

Well that worked.
I am now on Cam+Phone FW VCFA01

Too early for me to say if it's made any difference, so perhaps you may want to give it a try.

VCFA01 Camera Firmware

I STRONGLY recommend you dump your current camera FW version first and back this up. This creates /data/RS_M5LS_dump.bin

Unzip the VCFA01 file and copy RS_M5LS.bin to the root of your /sdcard and then flash it.
If it doesnt work or is worse, then copy your dumped version to root of sdcard and rename it to RS_M5LS.bin and reflash it back

by the way, I'm not sure what this Camera and Phone FW actually represents.
I've just copied my original dump back onto sdcard and it now reports
CameraFW VCFA01
Phone FW SCEF02
So without any flashing, its "detected" SCEF02 on the phone, so perhaps there was a TBEC28 on the phone somewhere to flash? I don't know.

Anyway, I'm putting my original firmware back on now to compare....

Initial tests for me seems to be SCEF02 is MUCH better compared to VCFA01.
Close-up macro shots are blurred on VCFA01 but very sharp on SCEF02

I think these firmwares could be ISP specific. My ISP version is Fujitsu M5MOLS.
Perhaps there is a better Camera FW out there but I dont see how we can really know for sure.

List of GT-I9100 camera firmware

Right I've been talking to myself for far too long on this post. It's about time someone else chipped in!

 

[DavidB737]

Mine is SCEF02/TBEC28
I dont get as poor quality as that for sure.
In poor lighting conditions its not particularly good, but on sunlit days such as the example in your photo, its pretty good.

I've found firmware dated April 2012. I believe the version we are on is circa May 2011.
I'll give this a go to see if it works. Last time I attempted this it totally buggered up the camera, so here goes. Fingers crossed I don't live to regret this and take one for the team...

Well that worked.
I am now on Cam+Phone FW VCFA01

Too early for me to say if it's made any difference, so perhaps you may want to give it a try.

VCFA01 Camera Firmware

I STRONGLY recommend you dump your current camera FW version first and back this up. This creates /data/RS_M5LS_dump.bin

Unzip the VCFA01 file and copy RS_M5LS.bin to the root of your /sdcard and then flash it.
If it doesnt work or is worse, then copy your dumped version to root of sdcard and rename it to RS_M5LS.bin and reflash it back

by the way, I'm not sure what this Camera and Phone FW actually represents.
I've just copied my original dump back onto sdcard and it now reports
CameraFW VCFA01
Phone FW SCEF02
So without any flashing, its "detected" SCEF02 on the phone, so perhaps there was a TBEC28 on the phone somewhere to flash? I don't know.

Anyway, I'm putting my original firmware back on now to compare....

Initial tests for me seems to be SCEF02 is MUCH better compared to VCFA01.
Close-up macro shots are blurred on VCFA01 but very sharp on SCEF02

I think these firmwares could be ISP specific. My ISP version is Fujitsu M5MOLS.
Perhaps there is a better Camera FW out there but I dont see how we can really know for sure.

List of GT-I9100 camera firmware

Right I've been talking to myself for far too long on this post. It's about time someone else chipped in!

Thanks for your detailed reply,
I don't really know about trying VCFA01 after your review of it, I'd be glad if you could provide me with some of the testing photographs.
Some good news however: I took out a 2GB micro SD card that was plugged into my S2, I took a few more outdoor pictures in about the same time of the day, they looked much better than before, there's a lot more detail showing that was previously missing. Upon trying to move these to my PC I accidentally deleted them, but I will take new pictures and upload them ASAP for you to judge if that's what images taken with the S2 should look like.

Thanks again for all the time you've spent and the risk that you've taken to try and help me, I might try the firmware after-all if my problem doesn't get solved.
By the way the link you've provided to the firmware appears to be broken right now.

 

[Hawker]

The link is fine. I think the web site must have been down temporarily.

VCAF01 autofocus:

VCAF01 macro:

SCEF02 autofocus:

SCEF02 macro:

 

[DavidB737]

Thanks for the images, the difference is huge, however I believe that the pictures you took with the VCAF01 were blurred because you held the phone significantly closer to the object and the camera just could not focus on an object that close, I think the minimal distance is 15 CM for most phone cameras?
Anyway, I will check if that SD card had indeed affected my camera, hopefully I will post some pictures on this thread before the end of the day.

 

[Hawker]

Thanks for the images, the difference is huge, however I believe that the pictures you took with the VCAF01 were blurred because you held the phone significantly closer to the object and the camera just could not focus on an object that close, I think the minimal distance is 15 CM for most phone cameras?
Anyway, I will check if that SD card had indeed affected my camera, hopefully I will post some pictures on this thread before the end of the day.

No, that makes no difference. Its the firmware

 

[vantiveman]

Hi Hawker,
Wow! SCEF02 looks sooooo much better. I'd like to try it but it isn't mentioned on the firmware link.
Actually, my camera (S2 international) is pretty much broken, as most of the time when I start the default camera app, it loads the app but the camera view is black, and there's a faint 'ticking' in the background that I have to kill the app to clear.
It's why I want to try more firmware options.

By the way, does any of the latest camera firmware solve the 'pink spot' problem?
Thanks for all the great info.

 

[Hawker]

I dont get the pink spot problem.
If I remember rightly, I obtained SCEF02 about a year back through the Samsung Store software update. It may be worth you going down this route before flashing manually.

 

[vantiveman]

Thanks. I'll take that advice and see if I can find something better there.

David, I hope you get your problem fixed.

 

[DavidB737]

Hey guys, sorry that it took me a while but as I promised, I now post a few images I've taken, I noticed a significant increase in quality after removing that SD-card, perhaps the camera was compressing images for it?

Anyway, please do tell me if this is the quality I should be expecting from the SGS2 camera.

Also I am still a little bit concerned that 1080p videos shot with the S2 are much more clear than 8MP photographs, could this be a problem?

 

[Narzal]

Sorry to bump this but I am having the exact same issue, my pictures look identical to the bad quality one in the first post. Did you ever find a fix?

 

[vantiveman]

I sure never got a fix, though I'd still like to try SCEF02, as I never found it on Samsung's site.
Hawkey, do you have a zip of SCEF02 that I can try flashing manually (I am rooted on Siyah kernel)

 

[Hawker]

I sure never got a fix, though I'd still like to try SCEF02, as I never found it on Samsung's site.
Hawkey, do you have a zip of SCEF02 that I can try flashing manually (I am rooted on Siyah kernel)

SCEF02_TBEC28 FW Rename to_RS_M5LS.bin

 

[vantiveman]

Thanks Hawker (sorry - I messed up your user name before!)

 

[vantiveman]

Oh, Hawker, I forgot to ask, what do I do with the bin file? I though it had to be a zip to flash with recovery. Do I just copy it to a system folder?

 

[Hawker]

Oh, Hawker, I forgot to ask, what do I do with the bin file? I though it had to be a zip to flash with recovery. Do I just copy it to a system folder?

I've already explained how to flash above mate

 

[vantiveman]

Yes, I found it, but I have no idea how to dump the original camera firmware. From what I have googled it seems to be an adb command, but I haven't used this before. I could just flash the new version, but I really would like a way back in case things get worse.

 

[Hawker]

Yes, I found it, but I have no idea how to dump the original camera firmware. From what I have googled it seems to be an adb command, but I haven't used this before. I could just flash the new version, but I really would like a way back in case things get worse.

enter *#34971539# into the dialer and select the cam-phone fw dump option
this writes current camera firmware to /data/RS_M5LS_dump.bin

 

[didi768]

When you enter *#34971539# what do you hit next, Call? Or green button like you are making a call? Mine says some kind of error and my phone clearness seems to change on it's own, sometimes great view, sometimes horrible, but most pics come out very pristine.