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

[Torek_Oshin]

He said that because you were asking about Xperia GX or Z to uliwooly instead of arguing on this focusing problem of Xperia S.

Well, I think it's crystal clear  that all the Sony Xperia S users have one request: We just want Sony to responsibly and officially tell the truth what's going on with our phones so that we no longer have to keep wondering what the issue is; and that we want Sony to officially state the solution as soon as possible if they don't want us to dump this phones in the trash.

Come on, this thread has been on since April. Does it need more time for a big company to find the solution? Ridiculous if it does.

[Garret141]

It appears there are focus issues with Xperia S. In my opinion there are three possibilities.

One: Some cameras are defect, some not. So it's hardware related.

Two: People don't know how to use a camphone.

Three: Expectations are different. Some expect a perfect point&shoot camera and some people know the limitations of a camphone.

To end discussion on brand X is better than brand Y, I will try to make a comparison between different phones. I will  taking pictures with HTC OneX, Iphone 4 and 4s and XperiaS. Hard thing is to take photos under exactly the same conditions. I will try to post them within a week.

I'm very curious.

[#4]

Hi,

I've been asking Sony support team by chat (after flashing to ICS) and the solution they gave to me for fixing this problem is to visit:

http://developer.sonymobile.com/wp/ (I don't know what do they prettend with this) and also flash again the phone. Brilliant support.

Still waiting for iPhone 5 launching day. Wishing to throw the Xperia S to the trash can. This is the last Sony product I'm going to buy for a long time.

[Dunciboy]

My privious phone was a HTC Desire HD also had problems focusing but what i always did was tick on the screen and then the camera started focusing again also works while your shooting a video just tick the thing you want to screen before you shoot the shot on don't just push the button full but half and then full same for touch screen pres the button wait to release it, this works for me. Also when fast captureing you can do exactly the same. But however I did not had any bad focusing while taking pictures. Anyway my previous phone also had those problems because i wanted to take the photo too fast. Hope i helped some people if not so be it 😕

@Wayfactory good for you that your buying an Iphone 5 but i did not buy a phone for the camera if i want to take allot of screenshots then i buy a photo camera. Anyway what sony says i think is to unblock your bootlocker and then use custom rom or custom cam software or install a fix

[Torek_Oshin]

Unfortunately that doesn't work on Xperia S especially on video recording.

Yes you can absolutely half press the shutter key to focus on some object but it is only on photo mode, not on the video recording mode. Actually you can set the focus at the beginning through the shutter key or the screen before recording. But the problem is: during recording, it often loses its focus to the object being shot, and it takes ages to re-focus on the object that I have to waste seconds recording a blurry scene. The worse part, it loses focus when I move the camera to another object, especially a tiny one. The phone won't let us to manually take focus while recording through the screen nor the shutter key. That's the issue; and it's annoying.

[pixate]

Your Description of the problem is spot on. It's the hunting for focus while shooting video which is the real problem with this phones camera. I'm in the UK so no sign of the ICS update yet. Does anyone with the ICS update still have this problem? When this thread first started, months ago... It was suggested by one of the sony reps that the ICS update would have the camera fix.

[#8]

Oposite to your opinion I think that the strong point of this phone should be the camera, with it's 12Mpx, fast capture method, etc

As you can see this is only marketing, because on paper the results are very poor.

[#9]

I have ICS and they haven't fixed anything about the camera focus problems.

Also pictures still very noisy with low light conditions and colours are like watching The Simpsons.

On the other hand taking photos outside at day are brilliant.

[Dunciboy]

Well what you say is correct Sony indeed promises Hd fast capture its a sad point that is true. if what they promise does not work good

[boosengsiew]

I am very dissappointed with Sony Xperia S camera quality and Sony's responses to resolve the problem. 

The focus problem, blurry & grainy picture, until now the problem still un-solve ~

With this kind of quality (both phone and the company) How's Sony going to be competitive with others company like Apple, Samsung?

Sony Xperia S to me, is a big disappointment!! I felt like being con by Sony Commercial (trying to tell us how good is the camera)