Why is the N900 image size so small? - Page 5 - maemo.org

ARJWright | # 41 | 2009-12-14, 00:00 | Report

Comparing the 3+years of development that went into the N95 to the just implemented feature of the N900 seems at one instance unfair and another speaks to the teams at Nokia that might not have talked enough or shared enough lessons learned to make such compairsons moot.

Anyone want to get a N95 Carl Zeiss programmer in here so that an attemppt to fix things follows those lessons learned?

lma | # 42 | 2009-12-14, 01:12 | Report

Originally Posted by jessi3k3 View Post

In that case, I wouldn't mind a command line only camera application

Well, it's all v4l2 and gstreamer under the hood. You can use something like "gst-launch v4l2src device=/dev/video0 ! ffmpegcolorspace ! pngenc snapshot=1 ! filesink location=photo.png" for starters...

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attila77 | # 43 | 2009-12-14, 02:53 | Report

I was kind of contemplating to write a small front-end to tweak the things available through the config file, that, at least, should be fairly non-destructive (and safer than having people editing config files and restarting daemons). Kind of worried to release it to Extras though, people might think it will turn their N900 into a DSLR, which it most certainly won't.

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RevdKathy | # 44 | 2009-12-14, 08:11 | Report

Two things: first, did anyone have the n95 at first release? I did (first day) and the camera sucked. The colour balance was waay off. It was dreadful. Took a couple of firmware updates before they really improved it.

Secondly, I have seen at least one person getting amazing photos from an n900, so a lot of it is down to usage. If someone who was in Barcelona can identify Thomas (sp?) who was taking a lot of pics, for me and point me to his board username, I'd like to ask him to write us a wiki page on how to get the best out of the camera.

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kryptoniankid17 | # 45 | 2009-12-14, 08:49 | Report

Originally Posted by Bratag View Post

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33420

Read that thread.

And as I said this is most likely NOT a software related issue, there is only so much that can be done in software (if I get another idiot emailing me about my camera app in Android not having a flash - Like I can code a goddamn flash into your phone when it doesnt have one - I may lose my mind). There may be tweaks that can be applied via software, image format and compression etc. But ultimately we are talking about a small aperture and most likely a small sensor as well. Remember this is a PHONE - the camera part is a small component in an otherwise large set of them. Comparing it to a dedicated camera etc is pointless.

nokia has plenty of phones with cameras with amazing quality. so i should except a step backwards? have you ever owned a nokia?

HugoSon | # 46 | 2009-12-14, 10:37 | Report

It takes good pictures; but of course you cannot compare it to a digital camera – even having fewer pixels. I.e. the distance between the (very, very small) sensor and the (plastic! a mobile phone is supposed to be light; so nobody would accept glass lenses) lens is just too small to get a good parallel light signal on the sensor. You can do quite a bunch with software – but there are limits.

DaSilva | # 47 | 2009-12-14, 10:45 | Report

Originally Posted by RevdKathy View Post

Two things: first, did anyone have the n95 at first release? I did (first day) and the camera sucked. The colour balance was waay off. It was dreadful. Took a couple of firmware updates before they really improved it.

Secondly, I have seen at least one person getting amazing photos from an n900, so a lot of it is down to usage. If someone who was in Barcelona can identify Thomas (sp?) who was taking a lot of pics, for me and point me to his board username, I'd like to ask him to write us a wiki page on how to get the best out of the camera.

Do you mean Tomaszd?

sennyk | # 48 | 2009-12-14, 12:37 | Report

Originally Posted by CharlieCharlie View Post

While we're talking about images, is there a way to timestamp images as I need a time and date on photos for work purposes??

The images are stored in the EXIF file format. There is a tag in the EXIF header that can be used to fill in the time and date. My N900 fills this in properly. If you have a debian based system, you can install an app that will spit out the EXIF tags. The command line app is called exif. Type "sudo apt-get install exif" to install it.

Before this app came out, I wrote an app to change the name of all of my jpegs to the date and time the picture was taken. Attached to this is the source for this.

Attached Files

rename_pics.tar.gz (1.1 KB, 63 views)

deakhead | # 49 | 2009-12-14, 12:52 | Report

Originally Posted by Kieron View Post

Just looks a little grainy(er) or something - i dont know, hard to explain. Thought it might be related. Looks pretty good though, for a phone:

taken on my desk a few minutes ago of a buzz i have lying around!

The grainy are digital noise of camera sensor due to insufficient lighting. I say this because JPEG compression artifacts appear differently. Cellphones generally have small aperture (the hole where light goes in) so it is difficult to take good pictures in dim light -- this includes N900. I was kinda disappointed but well this is not a professional DSLR, so I guess I had too high of expectation from N900. You can get a pretty good quality image in day light though.

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Bratag | # 50 | 2009-12-14, 14:08 | Report

Originally Posted by kryptoniankid17 View Post

nokia has plenty of phones with cameras with amazing quality. so i should except a step backwards? have you ever owned a nokia?

Um yes I have actually - and I didn't mention anything about you having to take a step backwards - I was simply pointing out in the post you quoted that there are a limited number of things that can be fixed in software.

That being said - comparing one Nokia to another without knowing the exact hardware in each is as stupid as comparing the N900 to a dedicated camera. Just because one Nokia had a certain set of HW doesn't automatically mean the next one will have the same or better.