Re: Taking pictures with N800
 

Alright, nobody else seems to be willing to do it, so here we go.

I compiled the camera test app straightforward from the source at maemo.org and packaged it for the N800 application installer.

http://images.gulbsoft.de/hildon_ui.png

Works for me, but it becomes pretty apparent why Nokia didn't include a snapshot app with the OS in the first place - the indoor / lowlight performance of the camera is abysmal, it's really much better suited for webcam streams than for taking static pictures.

You can download it here, and see a few screenshots at your own risk, bla bla.

http://gulbsoft.de/doku.php/projects/n800

For some reason the picture always comes out rotated 180 degree when you rotate the camera, it seems that whatever auto-flipping support there is in the webcam app doesn't exist or work for the camera testapp.

I'll experiment a bit more with it and see if it's possible to add a few features, such as the auto rotate or at least improve the picture performance somehow (maybe the filters are part of the problem).

regards

-- Georg

Re: Taking pictures with N800
 

Where did I hear that before? :D

Re: Taking pictures with N800
 

Duh-duh-duh-daaaaaahh!
Are you in need of my assistance??

Re: Taking pictures with N800
 

ROFL! Captain Obvious to the rescue.

Re: Taking pictures with N800
 

Auto rotate is very easy to add. http://aksi.mdamt.net/node/174

Does anyone think the original camera demo updates very slowly? I made some sloppy changes to improve this if anyone is interested.

Re: Taking pictures with N800
 

I just wanted to shout out to the people working on this app... you have no idea how useful it will be. :]

Re: Taking pictures with N800
 

I'm also looking forward to the next version of this app. Hopefully with step-by-step installation programs for us new users :D

While the indoor pics may be low quality, I suspect outdoor pics will be fairly decent. For me, this would allow me to take a quick (ok, quicker than running home and getting the real camera) picture with my tablet of things that catch my interest. For example, when I was out shopping this weekend, I stopped by an outlet mall that had a gondola ride in the middle of it. Would have been nice to grab a quick shot to show the family I wasn't just dreaming it up :)

Re: Taking pictures with N800
 

Throw in my $0.02 for an updated camera app. I was messing around with it last night and realized that the low-light performance is so abysmal because the gain is turned up extremely high to get decent motion video (since it's really just a webcam).

If the camera interface allows bringing the gain down, the camera could probably take good indoor/night shots. It would be at the expense of slow shutter speeds just like any other el-cheapo cameraphone but the N800 has a built in tripod! (Bipod?) Add auto/manual exposure settings and 5 and 20 second timers and this little app is well on its way to being useful.

There is a program called CoolCamera (made by AtekSoft) for the HTC Windows Mobile phones. They offer an interpolated mode which takes a burst of 3 (or more, I think) pictures and pieces them together to reduce fringing. I don't know if they use a proprietary algorithm or not but they have some good ideas. I use their program in place of the built-in camera app on my Wizard because it's so slow to load it's almost useless.

Re: Taking pictures with N800
 

Great work!

Of course the camera app managed to crash my N800, but still ;)

We've been thinking of using the camera in the RoadWarrior app for taking photos of receipts when you enter expense reports. For that the picture quality seems to be OK.

Re: Taking pictures with N800
 

I have noticed that the focal range is EXTREMELY close on the camera, it gives great results from about 6" to 4 feet which is unusual but not unexpected since that is technically its working range.