Help HTC EVO poor picture and poor sound quality

[Super Noob]

That's probably why my pics were grainy. I tapped the screen to snap the pics, but that made it focus in an area too far in the background. That explains why my pics were grainy and had unknown artifacts in them.

The following are from our local Twin Peaks restaurant car wash (taken at lunch today):

I found out that the "white balance" was set to "florescent" on the pics above, so I don't know if that's why those came out tinted blue.

I took the following pics today and after I got back from lunch, I noticed the white balance was on a preset for whatever reason.

These are with no flash, taken indoors, with resolution set to 8 megapixel. I will try using 5 megapixel next time and see if I get better pics.

 

[wrchad23]

The camera on this phone blows.

It's great for outside type pictures but for everyday pictures my Blackberry Tour and my Palm Pre both took better pictures.

 

[pwnst*r]

^That.

 

[novox77]

@Caloy:

I fiddled with some of the manual settings of the camera last night and came to the following conclusions:

1) ISO 200 is still damn grainy. I decided to keep ISO on auto because I'd rather have a grainy pic than one ruined by hand shake / motion blur.

2) I turned contrast down 1 step in an attempt to get more dynamic range out of the camera. For whatever reason, very slight reflections on my dinner table were showing up completely peaked/washed out in the shot. With lower contrast, it was not so bad.

3) I set the metering to center area. spot and average metering weren't working out for me.

4) I set the brightness down 1 step. Most of the time, my pics were coming out overexposed. Based on my test photos, brightness is really just exposure level: the proof is that the washed out areas are still pure white and not some shade of gray.

5) Increasing sharpness also increased noise, so I left this setting alone. Saturation +1 seemed to oversaturate the photo when compared to my eye's view, but I kept it at +1 to give the pictures a more postcard quality.

I'm pretty happy with these settings. Thanks for inspiring me to make the most of my cell phone camera, lol

PS, I don't ever recall saying that the Pre takes better pics. Never owned that phone. Maybe it was another poster.

 

[WhiteNoise]

The biggest complaint I have with the camera is the AWB. The White balance on this is terrible - which is where that lovely blue tint came from in the images above...

If you set it up manually (usually sunny works best outdoors for me - and either flourescent or incandescent depending on lighting - works best indoors...) it works like a charm!

What setting do you use in low light outdoors? cloudy?

 

[stickysteph]

I can't be sure, but try using ISO 200 brightness at 0, saturation +1, contrast +2, metering = center as a starting point. If the pictures comes out too dark, play with the settings again.

I tried these settings, tweaked a little bit and saw some improvement (thanks!) but the shots were still just OK.

As mentioned by others, I find the AWB to be just terrible, but worse than that, the flash just kills a shot. totally blows out the foreground and leaves the rest in the dark. Oh, and there isn't a white bal setting for flash, so flash shots often end up blue in addition to the poor exp.

I don't expect dSLR quality or control, but would love to get shots that I could at least post to facebook without photoshopping. Any suggestions??

 

[rkpayto]

It's not the camera, it is the software. I down loaded 'pic say', with this software and the aria camera, I take much higher quality photos.

thanx