Camera - xperia s - focusing problems and poor images

[#1]

Firstly this phone is fantastic and I have already conmverted several friends from apple to sony.

Last night I though I would really test it out - went out with a few mates, each with different phones and every time the Nokia N8 took better pictures.

Honestly - my xperia took ages to focus and 5 out of 9 shots were very very poor. In direct comparision the N8 - once he had it set up, took photos faster and each one was in focus - non of this waiting while it figures out what its doing,.

In day light - mine wins no problem - in pubs and low light areas I found this phone to have major problems with focus, and tiime delay in pressing and actual capture of images --- dont get me wrong - I can take it out of my pocket - press the button and hey presto - a photo very very quick --but what is the point when its not in focus and then I have to try again, then again, by which time, my mates are laughing as they have unlocked their phone, aimed and took a good photo.

SONY -- please look into this --  is this my handset or systemic?

Looking at the response this is systemic - if this is a software issue then please sort it, if hardware - recall and replace.

For those of you with the problem - the best photos I can get are to disable face detection, scenes to OFF,,focus mode - have it on touch or infinity, metering centre. At least on these settings I get more than 1 out of 10 photos which I can use.

THIS IS STILL AN ISSUE!!! SONY PLEASE RESPOND!

Message was edited by: batman1056

[Bearings]

I believe the irk of all this focusing issue is due to "Scene recognition - The camera determines which scene is most suitable." (as per manual discription) Whenever you start Lauch and Capture, the camera will go into this mode automatically. There is no choice for you to stay with your manually adjusted settings. I think the processing is taking at least 2-3 seconds to determine which of the 8 scenes is the best option for the picture - Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Night Protrait, Beach and Snow, Sports, Party and Document, I believe this is causing the blurry images as we all thought the camera will be fast enough to recognise the scene.

I turned the Lauch and Capture to Lauch only to negate this flaw. Until Sony can produce a split second Scene Recognition, either you wait for the camera to choose the scene or do it manually. Takes great pictures though.

Oh, this goes for video taking also but less two scene, Night Protrait and Document. You have just got to go manual on this one.

Guess trying to be too smart is counter productive :smileyplain:.

[Torek_Oshin]

Couldn't agree more with you. I don't mind having to press several times to get the focus when taking photos because the dedicated shutter key is very easy to use--and it's fast. The main problem is that it keeps hunting the focus while recording; and it's so annoying that when it's finally got the focus on an object, for some reason it re-focuses again and again and takes about 7 seconds to get back on focus on such object.

Having multiple 7 seconds of blurry recording, are you kidding??

[Xperian]

i agree with Bearings... when i tried taking photos with manual mode (normal with scene of choice) its better with close range shots... but not very good on bit far obejects. that was still the portrait mode on when i changed to landscape got bit more better . NOW WHEN U ZOOM IN IMAGES AND SEE EASILY BLURRED EVEN WITH 50% ZOOM , ALL THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE IMAGE COMPRESSION SONY USED. The max size i got with this xperia s is (doesnt matter 9M or 12M) 3.49mb which is too low for such pixels and where samsung or iphone gives us...

                                          IMAGE COMPRESSION IS OF COURSE IS SOFTWARE RESTRICTION USED  WHICH CAN BE REVERSED IF SONY WISH. I THINK WE NEED TO PUSH SONY FOR THAT RATHER THAN  MERE FIGHTING HERE . IT ALSO AFFECTED THE VIDEO TOO . if u check xda there is mod  that allows to record video @ full capability of this camera where 1080p will be recorred @ 20mb/s bitrate from 14mb/s and 720p to 15mb/s from mere 6mb/s.. So surely image compression used is very high to get a low file size where you have 25GB available space . WHY DONT YOU SONY LEAVE THIS TO USER END TO DECIDE THE QUALITY

[Xperian]

i will add some good pictures taken by my xperia s . first one just 1.75mb n second 3.49mb too low for 9M pictures

[Garret141]

I agree.

Bitrate in ICS is increased to 20Mbps .

Image size of IPhone 4s is the same as Xperia S. Image size of Xperia  should be 30% more if used same compression.

[Xad]

The problem exists in manually set mode also. Scene recognition mode is understandably slower (and unfortunately you can't override settings permanently in "instant capture" mode), but the focussing problems exist irrespective of which mode you're in.

As to it being a definite software problem because the hardware's the same, the sensor is the same but the focussing is done by the lens and i don't think Sony provided the entire camera hardware to a company like Apple, rather just the sensor; from photos of internals you can see they're different. I'm hoping it's a software issue, but no actual info has been provided by Sony or even any info on whether they're working on the problem or not. Some people have had success with 3rd party software, but others haven't.

As already mentioned, when the focussing problem kicks in during video mode, it's especially bad as it'll focus in and out very slowly without locking on and sometimes just stay out of focus for a long while before it decides to start refocussing again, by which time you could have missed the very thing you wanted to record.

It's ironic how much of a struggle it can be to capture a moment with this phones camera when it was advertised as having this "instant capture" feature.

[#8]

Facing the same problem " focusing problems and poor images"

[#9]

If we get replace our phone than the camera problem will get sorted out with new phone ?

[Uliwooly]

after you'd posted pictures on your 4 or 5 threads, there isn't an issue with your phone, it's like another digital camera, you can't point and shoot and expect amazing pictures, if the conditions are bad (low light) you need to adjust the settings to get the best out of your camera, don't let paranoia take the best of you, the sensor on a smartphone it's quite small, the amount of pixels doesn't equal excellent DSLR quality.

[#11]

So all you want to say is it doesn't have any problem with camera ?

These all pictures that i have uploaded is captured by my phone (Xperia S) and if we have to change the setting with condition than Why SCN AUTO is there ?

And yes i have uploaded photos only on TWO threads and i am also using SE Neo V some time photo captured by that one is really good and that one which we can expect !

Thats why i have to come to this FORUM.

Today i visited Sony Service Center any they tell me that phone have some problem so they giving me a replcement !

Thank you for your support.