Automatic Photo taking - Nexus One Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

HI!
I would like an app that takes a photo every 10s, or a video that can record for an hour or two.
Basically i have some guys screwing around with me at work and wanna catch them out with out them knowing.
ie, set up my phone with the camera pointing at the 'bait' start recording, then walk away...
any ideas on if there is an app out there? or will i have to write one my self??
cheer.
Palitu

I don't think it's a good idea to take photos of people without them knowing. That will bring more trouble than you might already have.
...but you could do that using Tasker (http://tasker.dinglisch.net/)

heh,
no im not it trouble... they wont get in trouble either...
pretty harmless, unless they are doing things that are really unsavoury...
cheers for the tasker link.
Palitu

Related

Tilt camera very laggy in dim environment

I noticed that Tilt's camera is extremely laggy when using in dark/dim environment. From what I read it seems that it related to infamous crappy driver issue..
I know it's related to brightness, since when I turn the camera on a, say, lamp or a well-lit object - it speeds up by A LOT.
It seems that it's trying to process or compensate for darkness... Is there any way around it? Let it be dark, but hell - it's so slow it's unusable.
I have the same experience, but since the camera has no external flash or light source, you must ensure adequate lighting conditions to get the best functionality out of the camera. I think the auto focus and or the flicker adjustment get really jerky in low light conditions. I thought something was wrong until I figured this out. It takes pretty good pics, and great video considering its a phone once you get the lighting right.
compared to just about any other camera phone I've used, it requires a LOT of light. This thing is virtuallly unusable inside. I have never, ever, gotten the picture I want to get. If you are taking a picture of people you need to click the camera, say cheese, and still wait for the picture to take. No way to take candid shots as people have always moved by the time it snaps.
Forced to carry my real camera.
I know I know...it's a phone, not a camera. That's for sure...
DarkDvr said:
It seems that it's trying to process or compensate for darkness... Is there any way around it? Let it be dark, but hell - it's so slow it's unusable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I assume you didn't take the time to read the other 20 threads about the camera.
Go here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/search.php
I like using Sports mode rather than camera mode indoors. A burst of pics generally will yeild a couple that are tolerable.
I did search.
What I'm asking in this thread is whether somebody found a temporary workaround for this problem, like increasing brightness, turning off some kind of "low light compensation" in the registry or something of that nature.
The answer is YES. It is inside another thread. I dont recall the settings, but indeed there are options to adjust, new cameras to install. They are just in different threads that are already established and waiting on people with questions to explore, read and learn from.
Well, I'll run another search and dig through pages of posts.. =)
Try the Google search of this site as apposed to the "search" option on the forums. Google is easier to preview and decide how relevant the search return is. Use more than one search term. If you are looking for a solution to Wi-Fi, search for Wi-Fi, WiFi or wireless router, etc....
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=+site:http://forum.xda-developers.com&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all
Just be thankful there are pages of information here. Some of those "pages" are repetitive threads like "How do I".... or "Does anyone know what...." if there weren't so many repetitive threads, there wouldn't be so many pages to search through. Know what I'm saying?
Yup, I run my own forum and I know what you mean.
Anyway, no sense arguing, I'll see what I can find. You're right about one thing - there's lots of info here.
Good luck DarkDrvr. I've read a lot here and tried several things. Not much success for me on the camera. Improvment, yes, worth a darn, no.
I'm hoping that, as they said, the video drivers that someone may eventually come out with help the camera too.
Since suggesting use of the Sports mode rather than the camra mode, I've come to realize that the difference that I'm seeing may more be the result of the udated camera version I'm running (version 5.04 build 29195). See this thread for info:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=355587
found a fix
turn on the camera.. then hit the power button. the screen will go black. wait like 5-10secs. hit the power button again and it tricks the camera to turn off the low-light compensation. after that you should be able to shoot away. found it here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqJcmJc8y_s
found a fix
the answer is in the comment section
way to go on pulling up an old thread and posting a solution that has been repeated way too many times

Another noob question

anyone know how to take faster pictures with the att tilt? i mean my girl has a iphone and as soon as she hits the button to take a pictures it takes a good clear pic. but the tilt it and focus's and does all this stuff , and by the time its ready whatever your trying to take a pic off is gone. and another thing how do i stop these annoying alerts for the email poping up? I want to know when i have a text message but i dont want the alert for the email part
Darkmanx said:
anyone know how to take faster pictures with the att tilt? i mean my girl has a iphone and as soon as she hits the button to take a pictures it takes a good clear pic. but the tilt it and focus's and does all this stuff , and by the time its ready whatever your trying to take a pic off is gone. and another thing how do i stop these annoying alerts for the email poping up? I want to know when i have a text message but i dont want the alert for the email part
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for the camera try to take pictures with a half-press. It takes pictures very quickly when u are in area with good light.
for the message go to settings/personal/soounds and notif. find an option for the new email and untick to show on today
thats what autofocus is for..i dont believe iphone has autofocus
bapssystupr3m3 said:
thats what autofocus is for..i dont believe iphone has autofocus
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that was the first think that came to my mind. But I never worked with iPhone so was not sure if it has autofocus.
well the costumer service of htc (yes i called) gave me the advise to put the phone first in a dark zone and then in a light zone. Then in the light zone it has increased fps and it takes the picture way faster..
hope it helps
kuraki said:
well the costumer service of htc (yes i called) gave me the advise to put the phone first in a dark zone and then in a light zone. Then in the light zone it has increased fps and it takes the picture way faster..
hope it helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
u can make it easier by hitting the power button(to switch off the display) while u are in the camera app, and then switch the display on.
This "fix" was posted here on the forum a month ago. Looks like the HTC is lost without xda.
Mikulec said:
that was the first think that came to my mind. But I never worked with iPhone so was not sure if it has autofocus.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
iPhone does not have autofocus or any type of Zoom, plus no MMS capabilities, thats why I got my tilt
thanks guys.

[Q] Annoying problem with camera

This has happened to me now several times and it is annoying the hell out of me. I take a batch of pictures and then go to gallery to view them. On several occasions now the pics have not been there or some of them are there but not all of them. If i then go to my files, then DCIM there are two folders shown. One called camera that holds every pic i have taken wih my phone and another called thumbnails that also holds every picture but for some of them it holds up to 9 copies of it, all with different long no's associated with it. Then later or after a reboot if i go back to gallery all of the pictures are now available to be seen. One minute i love this phone and think it is amazing, the next it just bugs me. Another thing i hope someone can throw some light on. When i take a picture and then choose to share it via message, it seems to send as a 5 second video with play and pause buttons on screen rather than just as a picture. Have i messed up some setting on my phone. Any help appreciated.
Oh final thing, you can tell it has annoyed me today, i find the picture quality indoors to be worse than useless, even setting it to night settings makes no big improvements. Took some party pics and to say that everyone was underwhelmed when i showed them was an understatement, i was embarassed and scrabbling about saying i dont think i had it set right. A phone that cost me £380 and every one of my previous phones, costing a lot less blows it out of the water for pictures indoors.
p.s. yes i have a digital camera that i use as well but loved my previous Nokia N86 for being able to take pics any time i was out if need be.
Oh and by the way, happy new year, i am genuinely sorry for the rant, but would appreciate any help offered.
Cheers.
pps. i do feel better after that, must be therapeutic.
hmmm as for the first problem, im not pretty sure what causes that to happen
might include what firmware/rom ur running to help find the cause...
as for the second problem, id suggest moving from the phones camera app and download vignette from the market. why u may ask, software wise it might not be as user friendly as the bundled cam app but the results are much better, dont take my word but test it out and tell me how much better ur pics turn out to be.
in general yes the cam/software/processing is not better than those old phones (hell my old c905 SE outperforms the SGS's cam wether with flash or without)

[Q] Xperia T niggles list...

Hi all,
I've had my T for a week now after upgrading from an iPhone4. Originally I was eyeing up the 5 and the S3 then I spotted this little underdog that I hadn't even heard anything about. After scouting around for reviews it grew on me and after seeing it in the flesh I was sold and managed to get the last one in the Vodafone store.
I've never had an Android phone before, so I was a bit wary, but so far it is pretty much everything I expected it to be and I am really happy with it...
But I have spotted a few niggles and I'm wondering if other users have had noticed similar issues?
1) Auto brightness seems to jump around randomly at time and makes the phone look like either a. it's struggling to cope with what it's handling or b. it hasn't been implemented right and for some reason jumps between levels instead of smoothly raising or lowering the brightness. This doesn't happen all the time, mostly on the net, but I've also seen it while navigating the OS.
2) The camera is really slow to take any decent images. Quick launch boots to the camera pretty quickly but then it sits there trying to focus for the next few seconds and makes the quick launch seems pointless as it hangs fo so long after it has launched. Also any movement seems to blur the images pretty easily. Took pics of my 3 year old and my wife while we were bowling and even their arms moving as they walked back blurred!? The rest of the pic was great but it's not like they were running past the camera or anything.
3) When using Chrome does anyone else have it duplicate the last letter of every word you type? Alll off myy wordss weree lookingg likee thiss wheneverr II typedd anythingg. This wasn't happening anywhere else on the phone and after downloading FireFox I've got a decent browser, but I'm intrigued as to whether or not it was something I was doing?
4) Whenever I copy a video across I am only able to play 2-3 minutes of it even though it says that the file size is correct. All of my videos are .avi and whenever I try to copy them the phone my PC asks if I want to convert the files so that they are compatible with the phone. When I click yes my PC takes 45 min's-1hr to convert it and the file appears on my phone as a few hundred Mb but next to it the time dislpays 2-3 minutes duration. When you play it it cuts out at the 3 minute point. Is anyone else suffering this?
5) The storage capacity of the handset is only showing up as 10.8 Gb of which 1.08 is reserved space. Aren't these handsets meant to have 16Gb? Those figures are shown through the PC Companion and the settings tab on the phone.
So is anyone else experiencing the same niggles as above?
I still love the phone and I'm more than happy keeping it. I know some of the issues are down to my education but others definitely aren't and they'll end just being qwerks of the phone. If there's any way to resolve them then I'd be greatful to hear your solutions.
Cheers,
Stu.
Macflurry said:
5) The storage capacity of the handset is only showing up as 10.8 Gb of which 1.08 is reserved space. Aren't these handsets meant to have 16Gb? Those figures are shown through the PC Companion and the settings tab on the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's 10.8GB for the data/storage partition. They left 2GB for app storage only. 13GB total after formatting + OS seems about right.
I have the duplicate letter/word, think it's a chrome thing.
---------- Post added at 08:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:40 PM ----------
But I prefer it to my galaxys3
Sent from my LT30p using xda app-developers app
I thought id ask this here..
Does anyone notice when playing back recorded videos on the device, there is a weird knocking / grinding sound while the lens is focusing?
I will upload a few videos, you can actually hear the device focusing, might be normal, but, it was never like this with my arc....its apparent on multiple set scenses, with both the UK Generic and UK O2 firmware.
I've not tested video recording yet, but the camera module is very close to the left microphone (the phone records in stereo). I am guessing you can hear camera noise on the left channel when playing back?
Macflurry said:
Hi all,
1) Auto brightness seems to jump around randomly at time and makes the phone look like either a. it's struggling to cope with what it's handling or b. it hasn't been implemented right and for some reason jumps between levels instead of smoothly raising or lowering the brightness. This doesn't happen all the time, mostly on the net, but I've also seen it while navigating the OS.
4) Whenever I copy a video across I am only able to play 2-3 minutes of it even though it says that the file size is correct. All of my videos are .avi and whenever I try to copy them the phone my PC asks if I want to convert the files so that they are compatible with the phone. When I click yes my PC takes 45 min's-1hr to convert it and the file appears on my phone as a few hundred Mb but next to it the time dislpays 2-3 minutes duration. When you play it it cuts out at the 3 minute point. Is anyone else suffering this?
Cheers,
Stu.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
#1 try an app called Lux.
#4, try using MxPlayer, not the stock player... Also you don't have to convert the files.
#1, my Galaxy Note was the same until an update. Remember this is a brand new device and the software will get better with time. Apple don't get it right either but that may have been because you were holding it wrong
papped said:
#1 try an app called Lux.
#4, try using MxPlayer, not the stock player... Also you don't have to convert the files.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using MX player and haven't had any problems regardless of what I throw at it (so far).
#5, a trick manufacturers use is to quote storage as 1000 bytes = 1kB, 1000kB = 1MB when the system reports actual memory based on 1024 bytes = 1kB, 1024kB = 1MB, etc so you get less reported than in the marketing specs.
Thanks for your input guys.
So far:
1) Autobrightness turned off and everything is good.
2) Still not too impressed with the camera. It takes too long to focus and do anything useful.
3) FireFox is still working perfectly compared to Chrome.
4) After deleting all the videos and copying them in from scratch, unconverted, they play perfectly with MX Player.
5) The memory thing makes sense but its a poor sales tactuc on the manufacturers part. In reality the customer is only concerned with how much useable memory a device has where in reality the Xperia T has a third less than you would expect. 1-2gb wouldnt be as bad but thus is over 5gb difference!!
Thanks again guys.
Noticed the camera lag seem slow when taking the pictures but whenever I look back on them they don't seem blurred.
So far I reckon Ive deleted between a third to half of my photos due to blurring.
Macflurry said:
So far I reckon Ive deleted between a third to half of my photos due to blurring.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Might sound a silly question, but how are you taking the pictures?
I ask because I started off using the camera with the screen off and just pressing the camera button (utilising the quick shot feature). In this scenario I had blurry photos and rubbish results half the time.
I changed the camera button behaviour to just launch the camera app and then press it again (or use the on-screen button) and my photos have been good pretty much all the time.
Hold either camera button to focus.. I rarely get any blurry photos
Sent from my Xperia T
Quickshot seems borderline useless for image quality. But on standard photos after I wait for it to focus, even the slightest movement seem to really blur the image. On other photos it can take that long to focus that you miss your shot.
I've tried taking the ISO settings off auto today to see if that helps.
So far it's the only thing that I feel lets the phone down compared to what you would expect it to be like when you read the spec.
Macflurry said:
Quickshot seems borderline useless for image quality. But on standard photos after I wait for it to focus, even the slightest movement seem to really blur the image. On other photos it can take that long to focus that you miss your shot.
I've tried taking the ISO settings off auto today to see if that helps.
So far it's the only thing that I feel lets the phone down compared to what you would expect it to be like when you read the spec.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only other thing I can suggest is there might be a fault with your phone. Do you know anyone else with a T? Do you have the same problem if you take pictures with their phone?!
Hi,
great thread! This phone is one of my favourites now that I'm considering a new handset. Feel free to share any issues that those lucky enough to have one encountered. Thanks
emuX said:
The only other thing I can suggest is there might be a fault with your phone. Do you know anyone else with a T? Do you have the same problem if you take pictures with their phone?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm going to go and have a play with another one in the shop over the next few weeks when I find time just in case it is my phone but some how I just think it's the way it is.
So far it's my only remaining issue but it's not a deal breaker I still love the phone and look forward to JB next year.

Question Terrible Camera

I know I could turn off the HDR settings. However, I normally like it. The Note 20 I had was fine, but the colors on the S21 are sooo amplified that everything looks like it was taken with a bad filter. Nearly every photo is complete crap. Video is fine, just the pics are an issue. I usually don't have the scene optimizer on. Anyone know of other fixes? I saw that the May update includes something for the camera, but I have no idea what. Does anyone know if it addresses this issue? Thanks!
jaybird779 said:
I know I could turn off the HDR settings. However, I normally like it. The Note 20 I had was fine, but the colors on the S21 are sooo amplified that everything looks like it was taken with a bad filter. Nearly every photo is complete crap. Video is fine, just the pics are an issue. I usually don't have the scene optimizer on. Anyone know of other fixes? I saw that the May update includes something for the camera, but I have no idea what. Does anyone know if it addresses this issue? Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Major issue I have is with skin tones. Before I take the pic, it looks detailed and after it processes it, it turns into a beauty filter mode, smoothing everything and killing details. I figured mine was HK variant so it's doing what people like there, but on my wife's Note 20U (again, HK variant) it doesn't have that drastic issue.
I got the May update, and it hasn't resolved it. Anything even slightly moving will crush all details in indoor light.
I always use Gcam...and it's by far the best alternative to anything apart from Pixel phones, for stills. Video is always stock.
Did you click the magic wand and turn off the filters?
nixnixnixnix4 said:
Did you click the magic wand and turn off the filters?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, there are no filters on.
These always interest me. It's like we all have different phones....or maybe it's preferences.
I have none of these 'issues'. The skin tones are something I've really appreciated per past Samsung processing. Very natural finally. Mine has seemed good out of the box
jaybird779 said:
I know I could turn off the HDR settings. However, I normally like it. The Note 20 I had was fine, but the colors on the S21 are sooo amplified that everything looks like it was taken with a bad filter. Nearly every photo is complete crap. Video is fine, just the pics are an issue. I usually don't have the scene optimizer on. Anyone know of other fixes? I saw that the May update includes something for the camera, but I have no idea what. Does anyone know if it addresses this issue? Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never ran into the "issue" you're talking about. Nearly every photo I take on this phone is a keeper.
If you're seriously saying the 'nearly every photo is complete crap', then I guess your preference for photos is something very different from the average joe.
If I were you, I would first check with other people around me who have the same phone and compare cameras to confirm that my phone didn't have an issue.
If only your phone takes crappy pics and theirs are fine, contact Samsung for a warranty replacement/repair.
However, if you think even their S21U photos are crap, then you can either shoot in pro mode and do post-processing to tune images to your liking or just change to some other phone. I don't think the camera on this phone will improve very much with future software updates, if the current level is "crap" in your opinion.
Personally, I have nothing that needs "fixing". It's a great camera in my opinion.
Just to be clear, I'm not bashing on you - you gave your opinion and I gave mine. We don't have to agree. But I'm genuinely trying to help.
I would honestly consider trying out the comparison test with a few mates to figure out if something's wrong with your device.

Categories

Resources