Idea for fixing the OIS issues that plague some devices - Nexus 6 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey All
I bought my N6 used back in early September. Everything seemed to check out fine, including the camera which I had tested outside. and late at night. All was good.
Then very quickly I started to notice issues with blurry photos. I did some Googling and found that it appears that the N6 suffered from a bad OIS module that many people had fixed or replaced under warranty. Obviously, that is not an option for a used device.
So I Googled turning off the OIS... no dice, it seems that the hardware is set to always use it.
I decided to experiment. (I'm a photographer by trade and also teach the highly technical side of photography at the college level.) I haven't done a rigorous test, but my initial experiments revealed the issue: Shutter shock. This issue plagues many cameras that utilize a stabilization system (including Mirrorless systems). Shutter shock happens over a small range of shutter speeds when OIS is enabled (on the N6 that would be always). It most usually manifests itself in unfocused images. Sometimes with a slight ghosting. Other times, just part of the image with be out of focus.
It appears that the troubled shutter speed range for the N6 is between 1/40-1/60 (more rigorous tests must be performed to ferret out the most troublesome speeds, however)
I'm wondering if it's possible to software limit the device (even with a hack) to just not use these speeds?? Thoughts? Another possible solution is to use something like Camera FV5 or Open Camera where you can set the shutter speed. I'd prefer the hack, personally to avoid the annoying problem without thinking about it. Many times I will open the stock camera for a quick snap (when manually setting the camera would take too long)

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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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.

camera shutter speed issue

I thought I'd got used to the Z3c camera -- after battling it for weeks I finally figured out how to get decent (though not stellar) performance from it. But then last night for the first time I had to take a bunch of people pics in a dimly-lit room and every single one of them came out blurry to some extent. With flash, without flash, different scene modes used, no scene mode, different focus modes, auto, manual... nothing I did resulted in a decent photo. This did not seem to be an autofocus issue -- nothing in the frames was sharp at all. It seemed more like a shutter speed issue, like the camera was just selecting a shutter speed too slow to freeze even minor movements. Anyone else have this problem? Was I doing something dumb?!
I borrowed a friend's iPhone 5s and every single photo came out perfect. This Z3c camera is seriously starting to bug me. I just seem to be constantly fighting it to get acceptable results. It almost makes me pine for my N4 camera, which is saying something!
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pipspeak said:
I thought I'd got used to the Z3c camera -- after battling it for weeks I finally figured out how to get decent (though not stellar) performance from it. But then last night for the first time I had to take a bunch of people pics in a dimly-lit room and every single one of them came out blurry to some extent. With flash, without flash, different scene modes used, no scene mode, different focus modes, auto, manual... nothing I did resulted in a decent photo. This did not seem to be an autofocus issue -- nothing in the frames was sharp at all. It seemed more like a shutter speed issue, like the camera was just selecting a shutter speed too slow to freeze even minor movements. Anyone else have this problem? Was I doing something dumb?!
I borrowed a friend's iPhone 5s and every single photo came out perfect. This Z3c camera is seriously starting to bug me. I just seem to be constantly fighting it to get acceptable results. It almost makes me pine for my N4 camera, which is saying something!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
check capturing speed with this app >> CameraW
it can be application bug
if the capturing speed is normal with this app then u need to repair firmware to reinstall system app like Xperia Camera (By PC companion)
:good:

Time to take picture (camera launch speed)

There! Something just happened! Did you take a picture of it? Rate this thread to express how fast the Sony Xperia Z5 can go from "zero to picture". A higher rating indicates that launching the camera app and taking a photo is extremely fast such that you never miss an important moment, like when your cat attacks the couch again.
Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!
I felt bad when tried at showroom, it took a little bit of time to save picture. But when I bought it and be installed latest 5.1.1, the time to take and save a picture is less than 1 second.
I think camera app start-up is reasonable but the shutter lag is unacceptable. I once photographed a seagull standing on a bridge and it was still standing when I pressed the shutter but the sensor captured it flying away...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j5hcj2jeazzjs77/DSC_0988.JPG?dl=0
Not good. App takes too long to start, can't take quick bursts of photos and the images take too long to save. It's a real shame.
Sent from my E6653 using Tapatalk
I agree. Really not good at all, especially since many other phones on the market take photos in the blink of an eye.
Long time Sony fan. App launch and shutter lag pathetic. Sometimes it takes 3 - 5 seconds to actually take the picture!
It's really bad with Flash ON/Auto, much quicker if you switch it off.
Since Marshmallow it's a little bit better, but it's still way slower than the Galaxy S6/S7. Even my old Galaxy Note 3 was faster. I expected better from that phone in the camera department, and I don't blame the sensor... I think the app is the culprit. Compared to Samsung, LG, HTC and Apple, Sony probably has the worst stock camera app
I think the only way you can minimize it is using the shutter button. Using the on-screen button will slow it down cause more lag because it autofocuses once again. The thing is the Z5 always captures the frame directly after "capture" instead of the current frame. I had an old Sony point-and-shoot from over 10 years ago and it was able to pause immediately to save the frame the moment the button was pressed.
It's even worse on third-party apps because taking a picture causes the camera to autofocus first and struggle for a considerable time before taking the picture.
It's probably poor optimization but I highly doubt Sony will fix it, even though it seems to have improved in the X/X Performance. Now they're claiming 0.6 shutter response from standby and "nearly instantaneous" normal shutter response.
apart than camera launch time, that is depending on various parameters, disable the "photo analyzer" app. The picture save time will be increased dramatically as the phone will not search for faces , etc
Timing to take picture is fast,there is no phone on the market that focusing faster than Z5.Only when you taking bigh resolution photos 23/20 mpx phone needs about second or two to save it.
Sent from Galaxy S5 +
Depends on conditions. The camera is very slow at auto-focus. In daylight and a stationary target, there's no noticable shutter lag. At night and/or moving target, it can be a few seconds enough that you miss whatever you were trying to video. Video seems to always take a few seconds to start recording. The camera also does not seem to support zoome of any kind. If I attempt to zoom at all, the picture quality seems to become horrible for some reason.
As for time from screen off, it seems to vary. sometimes the camera app is up in less than a second, sometimes I have to wait a second or two.
last day I worked with my friend's LG v10 fast and smooth UI and great Pictures that I never had chance to took with 23 megapixel z5!
SOC 810 IN Z5 and 808 in v10 and 23 megapixel against 16 , something wrong that Sony can't fix this ! yet.
eng3 said:
Depends on conditions. The camera is very slow at auto-focus. In daylight and a stationary target, there's no noticable shutter lag. At night and/or moving target, it can be a few seconds enough that you miss whatever you were trying to video. Video seems to always take a few seconds to start recording. The camera also does not seem to support zoome of any kind. If I attempt to zoom at all, the picture quality seems to become horrible for some reason.
As for time from screen off, it seems to vary. sometimes the camera app is up in less than a second, sometimes I have to wait a second or two.
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Can you show a screen-recording showing there's no shutter lag? Many users here have noticed - take a picture of cars passing by and you can see it always skips a frame (I would estimate 1/20 of a second).
Xperia X boasts 0.6 second capture from startup yet they won't bring such optimizations onto the Z5. perhaps some of it is due to the hardware, but just about EVERY other high-end phone has nearly no shutter lag, even those with 20+MP sensors.
I said " In daylight and a stationary target, there's no noticeable shutter lag." A car passing by isnt stationary so the auto-focus has to do some work. I don't think 1/20 of a second is noticeable to most people. I mean most movies are around 1/24 of a second and you dont notice. I think for a real camera, 1/6th of a second is about average. 1/20th might be for pre-focused.
I dont have another camera so I can't time it. I tried using a timer on my laptop and taking a photo of my screen while clicking my mouse to start the timer at the same time.
If my phone is in the right mood, using the camera button, I can get a photo off in just less than 2 seconds.
The shutter lag seemed to be about 0.3 seconds. Now if I repeatedly tapped the shutter button, it seemed to be as fast as 0.1 seconds.
So in the right conditions, I think it is pretty fast. In the wrong conditions, its horrible.
eng3 said:
I said " In daylight and a stationary target, there's no noticeable shutter lag." A car passing by isnt stationary so the auto-focus has to do some work. I don't think 1/20 of a second is noticeable to most people. I mean most movies are around 1/24 of a second and you dont notice. I think for a real camera, 1/6th of a second is about average. 1/20th might be for pre-focused.
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Click to collapse
I already half-pressed the shutter button so that autofocus is locked - it still captures the frame after the screen flashes. Using manual mode at 8MP with sports mode speeds things up a little bit. Some people on this forum have disabled thermal throttling and the lag is significantly reduced, but is still present. The final capture press after autofocus is determined should be virtually instantaneous regardless of conditions, as it is on iPhone, Samsung Galaxy and many other phones. While there is still some input lag (which is something like 5ms) and the autofocus also slow things down, this is what companies call "zero shutter lag" - even if it isn't 100% true it is still reasonable. Sony Xperia always skips a frame after the shutter button is pressed and that is your final image. This may seem like nothing but for action shots this is unacceptable. And it's not because the sensor is higher resolution as HTC M9+ Supreme Camera Edition has a 21MP Sony sensor that is just as fast as the iPhone 6 or Galaxy S7. So currently, the Z5 is a terrible choice for instant action shots.
It's even worse for video - it always takes me 1-2 seconds for the phone to film the first video. A second video is much faster, but videos showing the Xperia X has much faster video capture on the first go.
I remember Kit-Kat times and Sony burst mode.
Some users now what i am talking about...
Guys what is going on. Software should be faster and faster... I personally bought z5 mainly because of the promises that camera is top nodge and now i can see that is not... Period and i am sory to say that, as huge Sony fan.
Bottom line is that you can have all MP in the world, fancy smancy auto focus, addons and so on, when post-processing is bad, user experience is bad allso.
I'm also annoyed that video and camera buttons are not on the same interface, and you need to swipe. Some people prefer it because they accidentally film video instead of taking a photo, but it would be better if they gave an option, since the initial release had both on the same interface.
And I can't understand why there is no burst mode... Some claim the hardware is too slow but my friend said he had it on the Z3, and HTC M9+ Supreme Camera has it as well (I only tried briefly). I was deciding between the HTC and the Z5 and went for the Z5 because I thought the camera would be better and also because it has quick-charge and runs on a Qualcomm SoC (I was well aware of the overheating issues, but I'd rather have an SoC that is reliable with updates - the M9+ is still on Lollipop in many places!)
No matter what settings I use my camera is very slow, slow to launch and slow to take picture. I normally have to hold the phone still for a second after I press the shutter to make sure it has take the picture properly. It is not terrible but certainly not as quick as other flagships on the market.
I am going to to a master reset of the phone today to see if it helps, I shall report back!
I have taken the plunge and did a factory reset on my phone. It's too soon to tell whether it's had any effect on camera launch speed but let everyone know once I've used it for a bit longer.

Poor camera or do settings need to be adjusted?

Would really appreciate any tips that anyone has utilised to improve the camera settings (as its the one thing bugging me on an otherwise brilliant phone).
I was trying to add something to an Instagram story earlier via the camera on Instagram and everytime I took the picture, the actual shot would move slightly each time and cause the picture to blur (despite repeated attempts and me holding the camera dead still). It was like the camera was being nudged each time I pressed to take a picture. I used the stock camera (default settings) at the weekend and found the experience to be quite mediocre. A few came out quite well but generally they seemed to be a bit blurry or appear as though my dog was moving (when he was actually just sitting still).
I have a few Youtube vids saved to watch from. Another thread that have tips on how to get the best out of Photo Pro so will check those out later when I have time. I'm not a camera expert and Photo Pro seemed a bit overwhelming with all the options but happy to give it a go.
From what I have seen and read it seems the phone is exceptional in the pro app with lots of adjustment if required however the auto mode is a just ok.
It's a shame as clearly the potential is there and many people still want a great camera they can open up and shoot a decent picture without all the messing about.
Just don't know why they haven't improved this. There are lots of fans who like other aspects of a Sony phone but just don't want the messing about with the camera. It's a 'nice to have option' but I also want decent reliable results straight off the bat.

Question Camera focus issue

Hi all friends, camera of my S21u (SM-G998B/DS) has had a focus issue for around 4-5 months now. When shooting the camera fails to focus on objects or humans around 1 meter away or more. The image comes out blurred. My temporary solution is to shake the phone a few times at medium strength against my palm before taking photos. This helps a lot, but not always. Moreover, when using between 3x and 10x zoom, the screen displaying the image is shaking terribly. When more than 10x, no more shake. However, when shooting close-up it is very good and never fails to impress. I can get as close as 1cm and no intervention at all.
I always update my phone to the latest version available from Samsung, hoping that it would fix this issue. But issue still remains.
Same here, I noticed this a few months ago, always updated firmware, never hard drops (few small drops with case).
one solution is to give a little bump to the camera corner and the focus works.
Some say blocked OIS sensor, others say after certain firmware update, I don't know yet the correct answer.
Thank you mcbyte_it for sharing.
I feel this may be a software issue. I hope Samsung will fix it soon; otherwise this will be my last Samsung phone for me.

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