Motorola Droid Video Recording Samples

Not bad for a PHONE. I have a camcorder that doesn't take video this good!

That's not bad at all. Sucks that i won't take good photos from what i've heard. Now I know it will play movies with ease unlike the dare which would lag at times.

from what i read the reason the droid doesn't take good pics is a software issue. that the auto focus is off. i read people complain that they see a good pic and than it gets some what blurry than it snaps a pic. its only what i read not experienced.

these are from a website

We don't know who to lay the blame on, Google for poor software or Motorola for poor hardware, but clearly the 5-megapixel camera on the DROID is capable of pushing out some great shots. It's the poor handling of light indoors and the nearly nonexistent autofocusing that gets the DROID's camera in trouble. If it's a software issue, we're hoping a firmware fix can work wonders but we're not hopeful. So if the DROID's camera never gets addressed, remember: outdoors, perfect weather and perfect lighting is your strength. Stick to it.

I was at Fedor v Rogers last night, had fighters from UFC in the audience taking pictures. I tried with the droid and it was a hot mess... I feel it can only take pictures in daylight well. Everything gets out of focus. I try using Shop Savvy and the camera cannot focus the barcode well enough to scan it.

droid pic


Shot at 2009-11-08

iphone pic


Shot at 2009-11-08

heres the same droid pic with 2 photoshop attemps with pic

original droid pic


Shot at 2009-11-08

photoshop 1


Shot at 2009-11-08

photoshop 2


Shot at 2009-11-08

I have heard that it was the software not taking full advantage of the sensors. Hopefully someone might write an app to actually use the full 5mp.

Hmmm...my droid takes pretty good pics. Show two pics taken in complete darkness and see how they turn out just curious?

It"s so wierd that the video is so good and the pics are so bad.
It stands to reason that te optics are good.
I'm sure there will be a software fix.
Hopefully soon.

Sure looks like the camera app has issues. They need work on faster autofocus and proper white balance. That SHOULD be a software issue only.. unless we're really seeing the limit of focus... hard to believe, given an actual glass lens with an actual focusing mechanism. But possible.

Some of the video samples (haven't played with it myself yet, but I'm a hardcore videohead, and certainly will) look decent. In the light, without the need for zoom, we should be getting an honest 720x480. There have been plenty of consumer DV camcorders that worked from fewer effective pixels, so there's reason to hope for pretty good video here.

I hope the camcorder and video applications have independent code for some of these things. I have played with a number of digital still cameras with video features, and they usually make the mistake of using the same autofocus algorithm for stills and for video. This is always wrong. For stills, you need to nail focus as quickly as possible, lock it, take the shot, done. For video, it's fine to nail the focus quickly, but you can't keep the rapid focus seeking behavior most DSCs will show you when not taking a photo, or the video will be messed up. The original firmware in the Panasonic DSC-TZ5 had this pretty bad... it was fixed a bit in an upgrade, but still an issue.

In fact, I kind of wonder if maybe the DROID doesn't have this inverted... using a slower-focusing algorithm intended for video on the stills. Hopefully this is something that can be addressed in an application update, and won't require an OS revision.