Database Develop

AT&T Tilt Camera White Color Problem (Way too bright)

Hello guys!
I have the phone for 3-4 months now, and I used the camera only 3 times.
I noticed that the white color is very bright, and the photo becomes bad (please look at the photos attached). Can you tell me if your camera is having the same problem, or it's only me ?
If it's only me - do you have idea how can I try to fix it ?
Notes:
I changed the ROM 3 times /No difference
I changed the brightness/contrast in the settings, but there is no big difference ( the photo becomes better if I use brightness+contrast = max, but still the white is very bright)

both of these images are backlit... this is very hard for the camera to do, because the foreground is a low light situation... try to adjust the angle of the shot to avoid this situation. In the attached photos I have demonstrated what I am trying to say. These are pics of my 20 year old Cocker Spaniel, Sheeba. Notice in pic 01.jpg, her face is blown out. But in the second it is actually better, and in the third (as I move further around her) her face is now clearly visible.
Remember this is a Pocket PC, with a camera chip. Not a camera with a Pocket PC attached. With that in mind, this camera does a phenomenal job!
Hope this helps!
Also it looks like your lens is dirty, and make sure that the blue plastic is pulled off inside the battery cover...
For the picture of the child tilting the camera down more would have helped the light metering compensate better, see all of the area above his head, that is where most of the metering is taking place.

here is another example

You can also try lowering the brightness down to -1.5 or to your liking. It might help a little bit (it does to me)

Thanks a lot for the tips guys!
From what I'm seeing here the Tilt has just bad camera...
My wife has Samsung U600(with 3MP camera) and the pictures are way better than the Tilt ones.I guess I'll just use her phone.
Thanks again for your help!

You should try the camera outside in the daylight with a front-lit subject before you condemn it.... post some pics from your wifes Samsung for us to view then

Here is how the camera would have metered it (photoshop profile) had you not included the area where all of the light was.

The camera does work pretty awesome with the proper lighting...

Notice in the first two, pointing the camera down, so that the car is the majority of the picture, the camera meters for the car, overexposing the sky. Put pointing the camera up underexposes the car, but the sky is brilliant blue, instead of white....

Now I am not saying that this camera doesn't have problems... on the contrary, this camera has a light leak.. which is clearly obvious when every picture taken has the same Spike in photoshop's histogram. But an ounce of prevention, in this case is truly worth a pound of cure! Play with the camera, experiment with all of the settings, find out what you like best. But most important, just pay attention to the screen and move the camera up, or down, left, or right ever so slightly and watch how the exposure changes... It won't take long before you can take great pictures with it!
Oh yeah, and clean that lens every time you use it!

Odd camera quirks

I've just come back from holiday where I found myself taking quite a few snaps with the Diamond's camera rather than my usual camera simply because it was more convenient.
I don't normally bother with PDA cameras as they're pretty much rubbish but for quick snaps the Diamond's camera is not too shabby. However, I noticed some very strange quirks:-
1. It seems to try and detect the orientation of the camera using the G-sensor and rotates the image automatically. Most of the time it gets it wrong - is there any way to stop it from doing this so I can rotate my images manually? it really messes things up in Album!
2. In really bright light (such as shooting directly towards the sun) everything goes dark blue and grainy. It's actually quite nice (I have a Holga camera so quite into that sort of thing) but I can't think of an explanation for such behaviour!
See attached for an example.
Cheers
Dave

I got a very blueish picture on a bright day (though not against sunlight) too... Though taking a picture inside then yeilded fine colors (well, average quality). Dont know what cause it, must be a flaw in the color metering.
I really wouldnt use the camera for anything other than snapshots or when you dont have a camera around. Even at 3.2mpx like my old Canon A510 (a budget entry camera, hardly anything high end), the Canon beat the living snot out of it. I wont even begin to compare it with my F40fd (again, a budget cam).
Though I must say its much, much better than my old 1.3mpx K600i phone camera, lol.

I've certainly heard that overexposure can lead to a blueish tinge. So you might want to try manually cranking down the exposure and see if that helps next time.
In this case its more than a tint though, there is pretty much no red or green in the image and the contrast is off the charts. Interesting and fun pictures though.

The Diamond camera needs a UV filter as the chip is too sensitive to the high side of the spectrum. Mine is not as bad as yours- and I was taking photographs similar to yours, perhaps there are different back covers that provide filtering- I have the original Diamond cover.

i also had blue pics when taking pics against the sun but with my 4 megapicsel casio camera. last time it happened there where also ppl, (blue) in the pic lol. so, maybe it is not a diamond related problem.
have you tried using the inbuilt setups for exposure?
if i have no other choice an have to use the diamond as a camera i am always take out the back cover. another thing to try

Thanks all for the responses. I actually quite like the blue pictures, and since the behaviour is at least predictable I'm not too bothered. Instant Holga effect
With regards to the G-sensor guessing camera orientation however that is really bugging me. And also I've noticed that the camera on-screen controls don' t flip to portrait mode either.
Cheers
Dave

davew said:
Thanks all for the responses. I actually quite like the blue pictures, and since the behaviour is at least predictable I'm not too bothered. Instant Holga effect
With regards to the G-sensor guessing camera orientation however that is really bugging me. And also I've noticed that the camera on-screen controls don' t flip to portrait mode either.
Cheers
Dave
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Yes, also i am bugged of this. I've take a shoot of a contact image with the PDA in Landscape (the photo was right in this position).
Now i have my friend photo ALWAYS rotated of 90° and, if i rotate the pda, the photo rotate itself and it's NEVER aligned.
Now i can't assign the photo until i don't rotate it by the PC

Exactly - you take the shot and then try to view it in Album. Then you end up wiggling the Diamond around to get the orientation right. In slideshows the orientation is all wrong too.
The only way to fix it that I've seen is to go into the MS "Pictures & Videos" application after taking your shots and rotate each image manually.
Most digital cameras I have ever seen just leave the image alone

Mine is also very blueish (MDA Compact IV here) and it also auto-rotates for me
Hopefully we can find a way to at least turn off the auto-rotation, with some tweaks or new camera software!

The blue-ish tinge in a normal situation is probably just the white balance being off (or overexposure as another poster pointed out).
To get those mad blue shots I had to stand in the surf at the beach and shoot directly at the sun. When I tried the same shot at sunset I got normal colours (though still some vingette effect at the edges).
Attached is a shot from the same day, same place just at sunset.

Camera Software

I'll be honest, i haven't really looked for any alternate software very hard... but what i have found, is either incomplete, or does not have the feature set im looking for.
I was trying to take photos today, and i realized, Auto focus is great for objects at about 7in to infinity distance.
But what am i supposed to do for objects that may be closer? it seems to focus on everything around the object, and totally ignore the subject to be photographed.
Now I'm curious, is there an application that could allow you to manually focus the lens? I mean, it is an electromagnet... and is is controlled by software... and I've seen the auto focus bring the subject in to focus, then loose it... so it make sense that it should technically be able to do it, right?
if there is a software out there that allows the control of the electromagnet in the raph, any ideas?
-Wyefye

I know that on a digital camera when you take a photo ~7in or closer you use the macro feature. Im not sure what that entails but you could try starting from there.

there might be something wrong with your device. i just tested mine (brand new, not even 1 day old yet) and i can easily take pictures as close as 2inches away from the subject and they turn out extremely clear and sharp.
this is using the camera app that comes pre-installed on the phone
see the attached picture, it was taken approximately 2 inches away
the curvature of the lens on the camera make it impossible to focus on all 4 corners of the SD card at that distance, but as you can see the top edge is almost perfectly clear

I just "Warrantied" my Fuze. The new (to me as it is a re-furb) unit doesn't take sharp pictures any closer than about 6 inches. That is a pain as I am a big WorldCard Mobile user but cannot get decent resolution of business card shots any longer.
I think - based on what I hear as the camera is focusing - that there is some mechanical issue within the unit itself.

Don't know if this is any help to anyone, but I've noticed (although it's kinda like common sense, so I'm not going to act like I'm intellectual ) that when I take a picture with my phone close up, in macro mode, it only turns out clear when I'm pretty much straight on with whatever it is I'm taking a picture of. This of course has to do with the fact that when the camera needs to focus on an object, it needs to basically pick a spot that is one distance away from the camera. As you can see with the sd card picture, it focused on the top, so everything out of the distance range cannot be seen very well. We do have to remember though that these are extremely small smartphone cameras, and not dedicated digital cameras

piratedninja said:
see the attached picture, it was taken approximately 2 inches away
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Verified. Stock HTC Touch no mods. See the pic.

Will changing radio improve camera?

Hi,
Something I've tried to to find the answer to, but so far have been unable to do so - the camera performance has always been terrible on my tytn2. I've tried a range of different roms, but none have made any difference to the camera.
My understanding is that it is important to have a radio that works with the rom you are using, but can I get better camera performance by using a different radio?
Currently I am using "07/10[Super Ram][CHOME][Manilla] Josh's Kaiser Roms+Kitchen "21929 Hybrid Light" - a great rom, and my radio is 1.65.16.25.
I would really appreciate it if anyone can give me any pointers with this or otherwise help me get better camera performance (the tytn2 is an amazing phone, the camera is the only problem I have with it).
Cheers

Moved as not ROM Development...
The camera is just whack anyway unless in ideal light situations.

Typically the camera will either work or not work at all depending on the Radio, unfortunately the Kaiser's camera (and all cellphone cameras in general) is not the greatest in low light so you are pretty much stuck with what you got.

Thanks for the responses. It's not so much the camera performance in terms of picture quality, but the terrible lag when taking pictures - there is a two second or more delay between pressing the camera button and the picture taking. This always results in pictures that are extremely blurred.

Turn off the full press and also the shutter noise...

I tried everything possible with my tytn to improve camera , however it was all pointless since it could not be done.

Well not quite. In my frustration with a few things which aren't perfect in Shifu's latest ROM (hey, it's pretty darn nice for the most part, even M2D is running well for the first time in my experience of over 20 WM6.5 ROM versions, mostly on the Elfin, 3 on this Kaiser), I did some searching for a camera video frame rate solution. Found one. I've already forgotten the link (since reading it this afternoon), but it's so simple there's no need to go looking. Here's the procedure. Works in any lower light situation, as in not broad daylight. Haven't test it it outside in daylight yet, but it might even work there, will find out tomorrow.
1) Open camera application.
2) Put hand over lens to create a black screen.
3) Turn off power. (This part is a bit of a stumbling block for those with slide to unlock or a password active - have to have those turned off for this to work.)
4) Keep the hand (or whatever, doesn't matter so long as it blocks light) over the lens for at least a second.
5) Take off the hand.
6) Press the power button again.
7) Start shooting when you like.
8) Enjoy what looks like 30fps video, much improved autofocus and shutter response times, and unfortunately, darker images. So still not a great low-light camera, but indoors in average conditions or even somewhat dim light it's not bad at all for a phone camera. Took me a few tries to nail down the procedure and be able to reproduce the effect every time, but five minute's practice at most.
Apparently the vast improvement in frame rate and general responsiveness globally in the camera's operation and settings dialogues is over-ridden if one points the camera at a light source or brighter reflective objects. I find it stays stable during a session even if I point it directly at a 20W halogen light from 6 feet away, but your mileage may vary.
Another tip would be to avoid the double-take of the autofocus algorithm. Bloody thing focuses on a half-press, then focuses all over again, blurring out then returning to sharpness, on full shutter press. So either go to half-press shooting, or use the D-pad centre button to shoot pictures and videos, as this is a single-stage switch.
In my case, running Shifu's latest ROM from December and his recommended radio, and just this evening flashing Kaiser-HardSPL-3.56, I find the video frame rate to be about 2 to 3 frames per second without this trick, and well above 20fps with the trick. Awesome. A little bit irritating too, having to do this silly little button sequence thing, but it's better than having to go hunting for my 'real' camera when a video opportunity presents itself and the Kaiser will take less than 10 seconds to get ready, and getting the proper camera will take over a minute of walking and digging and powering on... As has so often been said in web discussions of phone cameras, it's not so much the quality of your best camera that's important in everyday use, it's whether you have a working camera with you that counts. And this little trick makes the camera I ALWAYS have with me a whole lot more usable.
Now, if only there were a way to get Resco Audio Recorder to make clear 2-sided recordings of my calls. Worked like a dream on the HTC Touch Elfin. All I hear is remote, static-distorted voices with this Kaiser. Seems from discussions that this is a hardware limitation. Hope not. And it'd be nice too if the device weren't cranky about my 8GB microSD. Seems a tad unstable at times. Same for considerable numbers of other users, so maybe another hardware limitation? Hope it's drivers, and that some genius presents an update.

GerardSamija,
Yeah that's an old trick but not perfect as tends to dim the light and when hit by a large light flips back to the slow fps another one is to remove the plastic cover on case covering lens.
I gave up using camera unless outside & it's the same issue on Touch Pro even with the built in flash "well light really"
2 Side Voice Recording on Kaiser **WORKS**

Thank you very much for that stylez. I'm reading through the pages of that thread, and while so far the latest CAB there hasn't quite made decent quality two-way recording for my Kaiser, it's considerably improved from what it was yesterday. Nice.
Trying the 'old' camera trick (sorry for re-publishing ancient news - I've only had this Kaiser a few days, so just getting caught up. On testing it this morning I found a number of tries didn't work at all. Not sure why. Then just now I tried it again and it worked fine, though delivering only about 15 to 20fps, not quite smooth. I did back to back tests without and then with the trick, and there was about a tripling of framerate from A to B. Guess I'll just have to keep practicing to get it down solid.
And I probably will remove part of the shielding over the camera lens, carefully. The lens in the body itself has a flat glass cover so no real risk of damage there, as it's recessed behind the battery cover. Occasional cleaning of dust is necessary anyway with a pocketable camera, so this just adds the step of slipping off the battery cover to do that. The phone I have was used for a few months, then left in an office drawer for over a year. Not a lot of wear, but obviously some fine scratching of the coating on the camera lens protective filter. Removing it will improve imaging, and the glass lens cover beneath is about the same as on my old HTC Elfin. That one has held up very well.

I hear windex helps.

ChumleyEX said:
I hear windex helps.
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lol ya i gave up using the camera really, i know im just caring around a big brick, with the advantage that its touch screen and has a keyboard... otherwise its not used much for anything else, unfortunately there are a million other phones that would meet this basic need, though im not getting burned by HTC again or any other phone maker...

I'm getting better at the timing with tricking the camera into responding quickly for stills, and getting 15fps and better almost all the time. This afternoon was fairly sunny here, and I shot a few videos of my son at the playground. Checking them later on my Asus 901 they look quite good. And contrary to many comments saying pointing at bright light kills the effect, I was able to shoot almost directly into the sun without losing frame rate.
Oddly, VLC gives an audio codec cannot be found error. Guess I'm off for yet another codec hunt. Windows 7 has mostly been pretty solid in supporting things like that, but I guess VLC stands apart from the OS in terms of codecs.
Windex? Nah, bit of a rub with a shirt end is fine. It's not a camera for making museum grade images. It's convenient, when I don't want to carry a bulky HD camera with proper optics around with me.

[Q] What would make Google Cardboard rotate constantly?

I picked up a Google Cardboard for some fun, but the picture constantly rotates while trying to use it on my XZ. The axis of the rotation is that of going from portrait to landscape (Y axis??)
I've tested the accel, compass, and gyro using the service tests and they all seem to be fine. My XZ is completely stock and up-to-date (OTA).
Not sure what the problem could be? It works fine on my SGS5. I'd appreciate any feedback as the XZ looks and fits inside SO much cleaner than the SGS5, plus its not my daily driver so I won't have to take it out often.
I vaguely recall the same error happening on an app a long time ago, can't remember for the life of me what it was.

Hey. I also play with VR for almost month now(got two vr goggles with are WAY better lenses and quality than cardboard)
And also I have this problem of rotating screen. And to be honest its all depend on app and orientation provider. Most of the time app use indirect/direct sensor fusion but this method just suck...
I found only one solution for that and its to put phone on flat surface for few second with screen face up, and then phone calibrate sensor itself.
Of course its not helping for too long, but its always something...
My favorite VR game: Corridoom is best example for problem that we have.
Fast movement of device constantly move gyro starting point to one direction and when you sit in chair and look straight after a while you need to almost turn 180* because device lost this starting point. App does provide only simple calibration in main menu and Dev that I write about that said that for now its not gonna change this option.
So even if gyro in our xz is really accurate, because i use it as a VR goggles for PC gaming thanks to app Trinus VR
Only real solution for that is actual app that have option to block or reset roll effect. For example my main movie app for watching VR movies Cardboard Theater have such option and for most of time I dont have this problem when I watch movies.
I also tested it via service tests and you can see this problem, when you start app and this Rubik's cube is faced to you green move phone right and left and after few moves its not facing green, but red or blue... And for that app should have that option to reset yaw and roll when you stop moving, but for now most of devs that create VR apps and games just dont think to put such options.
And its not only XZ problem I tested it with galaxy S5 and galaxy Grand Prime and its also have that problem but not that often, mostly when I move my head very fast or for too long, screen start rotating.
maybe it would be possible to fix that in device it self to reset that roll effect but I dont think that anyone with knowledge would like to check that... :/

Trackers are pretty sensitive without some kind of reference point such as a camera. I expect a small amount of bias error over a duration, but using cardboard movie theater the screen turns 180 degrees (roll) in less than 10 seconds. The sensor tests are nowhere near as inaccurate.
Obviously any phone will have the issue over time though, they are cheap parts in small housing. There's multi thousand dollar systems with small degree of wander that are only IMUs. It's the severe amount the xz has that bugs me.
I'll try the laying it flat so it can reset its bias, might work. I noticed yesterday that when facing west it wasnt half as bad.
If you were actually able to enjoy a movie without locking the orientation then yours is far better than mine. My sgs5 I might have to adjust the orientation once every 30 minutes, the xz I have to reset it every seconds lmao.
Thank you for the input!
update:
Letting the bias adjust helped immensely. Thanks for the advice!

Hi did u manage to sort it out. I have xperia z and have same problem. I can play some games but everytime i use 'view in cardboard ' on youtube the screens spin, also when i use googke cardboard apps. Maby its a google problem and not our phones? Like you iv testedband recalibrated my phone byt to no avail
If you got it fixed giz a shout mate
Cheers