Camera Focus Time/Ability

[exninja]

I've got a request for someone willing to indulge me. My wife and I bought our phones in Dec., which was after the initial "ZOMG THIS CAMERA SUCKED BUT NOW IT'S NOT AS BAD!" update. However, our phones still seem to take their sweet time focusing, if at all. My wife has a harder time, but i'm not sure if it's due to her phone or because most of her pictures/videos are of our toddler and he's not going to sit still to wait for the phone to focus (nor do we want that because usually we're trying to take a picture of whatever cute thing he's doing at the moment). Sometimes when she tries taking a video the camera says screw you guys, I'm not focusing at all! and the whole video is stuck with a macro focus and it's totally out of focus. My request is: can someone upload a screen capture where they're playing around with the tap-to-focus in the camera? I'll post one later tonight when I get a chance. I'd just like a benchmark to see what someone else's looks like, esp. if it's a latter model to know if we exchange our phones there might be an improvement. Thanks!

 

[Omar Days]

Could be lighting. Are you still having trouble focusing in broad daylight?

 

[exninja]

It's definitely worse in low light, but the fuzzy video that i'm thinking of wasn't exactly dark...I know the camera isn't incredible, I'm just hoping to find something to compare ours to. I'm not sure if previous phones were focus-free, but I've never had a camera phone take so long to focus like this one.

 

[GuitarG20]

I've found that after tapping the spot I want to locate it usually takes less than a second to focus in good light, and between 3 and 4 for low light situations. This is fairly in line with what I have seen in smartphone cameras before. What kinds of times are you taking? Or did i misinterpret and this is not your issue?

 

[exninja]

I've uploaded the video here: camera focus - YouTube It's not bright sunlight, but the light is decent. The beginning shows the most frustrating part: it doesn't focus and doesn't try. It usually got it right when using the tap to focus, but it had trouble focusing on the table. Sounds like the time to focus isn't bad compared to others, but the refusal to focus is annoying. Sometimes when trying to make a video the entire video is like that. It sucks to "lose the moment" because the video is blurred. I'm wondering if this is par for the course, or if an RMA might help.
Thanks!

 

[exninja]

Oh, and don't judge the mani/pedi kit

 

[chukka63]

If your wife is mainly taking photo's of the nipper,why not buy a cheap compact camera and get some decent shots.

 

[exninja]

If your wife is mainly taking photo's of the nipper,why not buy a cheap compact camera and get some decent shots.

Not really helping for two reasons:

1. You have the phone handy so that's why there's a camera on it in the first place. It's easy to pull it out and take a picture/video and not have to carry something else with you.

2. I'm not asking if the phone is the best way to take photos of our kid. I'm asking if it's working as well as everyone else's. If so, then fine I won't press for a replacement. If yours is working BETTER than this, then mine is defective and I'll get it replaced.

But thanks for the suggestion. Yes we have other cameras.

 

[chukka63]

If you have it set to HDR,try getting rid of it and see if the quality is good enough for you.

 

[exninja]

HDR is off in the video