Camera quality on FP compared with e.g. Iphone?

Hi,
How is the camera on FP compared with other smartphones?

Is the camera on FP as good as the one on for example Iphone?

I have been avoiding getting a smartphone because of environmental issues, but because I work as an illustrator I have to bye one to shown my artwork on the social medias. Therefore the quality of the camera is of importance before I choose …

Thanks :slight_smile:

While I believe the camera isn’t of the same quality as what you’d find in an iPhone, some people have posted some very nice pictures on these forums.

A side by side comparison would be nice though.

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Hi @ulrikka

As @Jerry mentioned, the camera isn’t the best on the market, which in my opinion isn’t necessay: it’s still a phone. You can also check out some pictures taken by Fairphone users in this topic (as @Jerry mentioned as well).

Kind regards,

Robin

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@Ulrikka, a friend is using an iPhone 4S and told me to send some pics to get an impression. He’s kind of a photo nerd and said they are OKish. At least for the money. However, the LED / flash is really weak compared to an iPhone, especially in the recent iPhone version. I was seriously surprised when someone pulled out her iPhone at a party and shot a video with the internal LED. I could not have done that with my FP1, as the ambient light was quite low.

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Hi, Thanks for contributing with your opinions!

I would say it compares very poorly with other smartphones, particularly the iphone, here are two pictures I took of the colour chart at http://www.ephotozine.com/articles/Nikon-Coolpix-P90-11320/images/nikon_p90_colourchart.jpg one with a galaxy s2 one with the FP1 both cameras on default settings. This demonstrates what I see with the FP, completely washed out colours, I’ve played around with settings but I still can’t match the S2 and it’s just an average camera.

appologies for the flare in the top left theres a window behind me.

Galaxy S2

FP1

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Yeah, it looks less ‘sharp’ and the colours are indeed washed out. But, and this is purely my opinion, if I want to take nice pictures I’ll use my DSLR camera and not my phone.

agreed, the phone camera doesn’t have to compete with a DSLR but it has to be at least acceptable quality, I’ve had to bin a lot of photos from the FP as it’s looked like I took them through a pane of frosted glass. I don’t know if it’s related but the S2 image size was 3264x2448 and was 3.37mb the FP image was set to 6mp which came to 3328x1872n but was only 516Kb could the FP have some extremely high compression setting on? Also it seems the image information is there, if I just pass it through Auto Levels on photoshop then the colour fidelity is perfectly acceptable, so the colour information is there in the image, eg see below

Try using HDR feature on the Fairphone, might give you better results :wink:

I don’t think theres an improvement, maybe a very slight one but I think thats more likely to be that the flare from the top left is gone

That at least seems to point towards a Software problem rather than a hardware Problem. Have you tried out different camera apps?

Cheers!

I agree with madde. Photo quality depends on (1) lens, (2) sensor (or film in the old days) and software (processing). Don’t think there’s any reason to believe that lens and sensor are of lesser quality in the FP than in other android phones, but FP’s default app seems to compress rather heavily. So looking at software (app) might be wise. I know of at least two free apps - Camera MX and Open Camera - that allows you to adjust image quality (=jpeg compression). Among paid apps there are a lot more, I guess.
And of course, make sure your lens is clean :slight_smile:

I mentioned this on another thread. When you talk about the Fairphone camera, don’t forget you’re talking about two things… hardware and software.

The standard Android camera app on the FP1 isn’t great. You’ll get better colour and white-balance control from something Camera ZOOM. The sharpness issue above could be improved with Camera ICS+ (although it’s still quite a basic app).

The actual hardware is pretty good, with enough resolution for the sort of photos you’re likely to take with a phonecam. The plastic lens cover is always going to add a milky softness to images; like lots of people, I used to remove the plastic disc from HTC phones… some people even used to have proper glass replacements made. Not sure I want to so that with my Fairphone, though!

Oh yes, as @kgha says, Camera MX and Open Camera are also worth a try :slight_smile:

open camera is my normal camera app when I end up going back to the FP, my intention was to give the OP an answer to how good the camera is. I posted the link to the colour checker so anyone can try it themselves, feel free to post results here.

Thanks for posting the photos of the colour chart and additional information :slight_smile:

I too am very disappointed with the quality of the pics on the Fairphone. My old Nokia with a 3.2 MP and a really good lens took better pictures. If its a software related issue could there be an update that improves this or am I just being hopeful?

Update to this, I just used a friends Fairphone and the camera was perfectly acceptable, while I checked the outside of my lens was clean I never paid attention to the inside and the inside of my lens appears frosted which would explain the terrible quality pictures I get, I was able to get a photo of it, looks like a quality control issue

@ozbizbozzle, I fear there might be something wrong with your hardware.
The Fairphone can generate this quality of picture…

… which is really okay.

While your photo is a bit out of focus, it seems as if there are droplets (of water?) on the inside of your camera cover. If you got access to silica gel (i.e. from an electronics store, leftovers from packaging, they often give you a handful), pack your camera into an airtight box with it and keep it in there for at least some hours, better: a day. Should be good, then.
Do not heat the phone, do not put it in a box with rice (people commonly suggest this).

Beforehand, use a magnifying glass to inspect the culprit. If it’s dust, not condensed water, then you would probably have to remove the back case and clean the cover with a Q-tip, dipped some warm water with a hint of a mild detergent. Be careful not to detach the cover, and to let the thing dry before reassembling.