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Help Is my camera a lemon?

S

ShadowPuppetz

Lurker
I've had my 3d for about 3 weeks now, and I just haven't been able to get a decent picture in that time. I've played with all of the settings, and tried several tips and tricks from other posts, to no avail. Tonight I took a picture in my kitchen, with good lighting and no obvious issues. First pic is what the Evo shot after I did a reset of all the imaging settings, and everything on full auto. Notice it's blurry and basically out of focus, especially the chair at the top of the pic. Next I took the same shot with the wife's iPhone, and it came out much better.

I'm starting to believe there's a hardware issue with my camera. A simple shot in a well lit room shouldn't be so hard to get right.
 

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I think it's flaky software.

Why?

A few days back, I didn't have this problem. Earlier today, I went to take a picture to send to novox77 - and got the same crappy, out-of-focus, everything looks dingy results you got - that was before you posted this, btw.

I did a phone reset, settings reset, then did camera adjustments.

No soap.

Repeated the same - and the focus problem left.

Things that come and go, in my mind, tend more often to be software, especially when I see some of the better Evo 3D pictures.

I'm going to try a battery pull later and fiddle around a bit to see if I can't at least find a workaround.

I didn't have this problem the day after I got the phone, fwiw.
 
ShadowPuppetz said:
I've had my 3d for about 3 weeks now, and I just haven't been able to get a decent picture in that time. I've played with all of the settings, and tried several tips and tricks from other posts, to no avail. Tonight I took a picture in my kitchen, with good lighting and no obvious issues. First pic is what the Evo shot after I did a reset of all the imaging settings, and everything on full auto. Notice it's blurry and basically out of focus, especially the chair at the top of the pic. Next I took the same shot with the wife's iPhone, and it came out much better.

I'm starting to believe there's a hardware issue with my camera. A simple shot in a well lit room shouldn't be so hard to get right.
Click to expand...

Welcome to the forums!

Good comparison, and thanks for including your test shots. It's hard to argue that nothing's wrong with your camera in good lighting, especially when another phone's camera is perfectly capable of getting the shot right.

I'd say present these photos to your retailer and ask for an exchange. Perhaps have them give you a chance to take some pics around the store to see if the new one does better.
 
the first photo i take it is from the evo. it looks like hand shake to my eye. granted im not there to see you take it and from the outside looking in it looks like hand shake.

can you take another photo outside?

how do the 3D photos come out? what about video (2D)? are they blurry. soft focus?

yeah the 'vox has some good advice, a trip to the store is a good idea and you are within your 30 days.. keep us posted.
 
Yeah first pic looks like the Evo's shutter speed is way too slow.

In a typical camera, exposure is controlled by two main variables: shutter speed and aperture. With a cell phone camera, aperture may or may not be variable, so let's substitute it with ISO, which can be described as the sensitivity of the sensor to light.

Clearly, the Evo is choosing some combination of shutter speed and ISO that is causing the shutter speed to be really slow, even when the light is good. So you might be able to compensate by manually setting the ISO to something sensitive, like 400 or even 800, to see if the shot comes out sharper.

Clearly with the same amount of light, the iphone chose a faster shutter speed and yielded the better fully-automatic shot.

I chalk this up to stupid camera firmware on the 3vo's part. There have already been reports about hand shake issues even in pretty decent light.
 
I saw this issue on another set of forums for our phone. Just clean out the cam. It seemed to have fixed it for another user. Q-tip maybe? Not 100% sure! Also keep in mind the cams have screen protectors. Is it coming out? Just a few things to look out for! :)

Good luck!
 
cgardner said:
I saw this issue on another set of forums for our phone. Just clean out the cam. It seemed to have fixed it for another user. Q-tip maybe? Not 100% sure! Also keep in mind the cams have screen protectors. Is it coming out? Just a few things to look out for! :)

Good luck!
Click to expand...

clean out the cam??? with a q-tip??? now you got me curious. Can you post a link to this forum post that gave this advice?
 
I just did a 61 second battery pull - pictures before and after of the table scene, same settings.

Exposure problem fixed.

That's software in my case.
 
marctronixx said:
the first photo i take it is from the evo. it looks like hand shake to my eye. granted im not there to see you take it and from the outside looking in it looks like hand shake.

can you take another photo outside?

how do the 3D photos come out? what about video (2D)? are they blurry. soft focus?

yeah the 'vox has some good advice, a trip to the store is a good idea and you are within your 30 days.. keep us posted.
Click to expand...


I agree, does look like shaky hand syndrome...or maybe taking the photo mid focus?

And honestly that iPhone pic isnt extremely better at all.

I dont take much pictures, naturally just because Im never a photo person...but I have taken way more pics lately with the 3D than I have before with my Evo.

3D pictures come out great, if you catch the environment right.
 
For what it is worth, the camera quality in Android 1.5 on the Sprint HTC Hero was very good, but not great. After the Android 2.1 update, it looked MUCH better to me. Details were more apparent and it handled the ambient lighting with aplomb. The only drawback was slightly increased battery usage, but the picture sharpness more than made up for that.

The camera app can make or break the look of a picture. It certainly did get better on my Sprint HTC Hero. I am sure the same could happen with the Sprint HTC EVO 3D. We shall see if a software update can fix any issues people may have with it.
 
Saw EarlyMon's post, and for some reason I had never thought to do a battery pull. Did that and it seems to have made a big difference. Same picture as yesterday looks much better. Also, it would appear my flash is now working properly, as before the battery pull it often wouldn't fire even with the flash indicator set to on.

So chalk up another victory for the battery pull fix.:)
 
There you go. It's maybe not tip top, but two phones, same problem, pulling the Holy Battery of Antioch, that's gotta be software.

NeoteriX concluded before there had to be a software error on the settings, that gave me the idea.

Boy howdy, we need a stability update for this thing something fierce.
 
Compared to my EVO 4g my EVO 3D takes horrible pictures in low light on the same settings. I cant seem to get it to take decent pictures. I could take pictures in almost complete darkness with my 4G and the pictures would come out good, not great but pretty good. But the 3D is just about useless in low light let alone darkness. Unless the subject is real close to the camera you cant hardly see what the picture is supposed to be of. Anyone have any suggestions? Ive tried all settings and cant get anywhere near the quality of my 4G. Any camera apps that might help? :(
 
Moved your post here so you can see you're not alone.

I had the exact same experiences as you.

Mine changed dramatically for the better when I reset the camera settings, and pulled the battery for just over a minute. Discussions about that above may be interesting.

We are need of a stability update, in my opinion, to really fix this.
 
I'll try the reset and battery pull. BUt I noticed that when I updated to GB on my 4G I had the same problems in low light. If you are not literally a foot or two from the subject you are taking the picture in low to dark light, even with the flash on, you cant see what you are trying to capture. And the flash does go off. This is very unacceptable as isnt this one of the main marketing points of the phone, its camera?
 
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