Camera refuses to take picture on 10 III (focus hangs)

Bug Reports
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#11

quick note about my workaround: if you use advanced-camera, you can set it to manual, and then (for example) point the camera at a rock the same distance away, tap to focus, and then move the camera back to the waterfall and snap it without re-focusing

however, if you tap-to-focus on the waterfall, even in manual mode, it will hang forever. i find that, in practice, i accidentally tap-to-focus all the time. im thinking of re-compiling piggz app to require double-tapping or long tapping to focus when in manual mode as a better workaround.

i cannot WAIT for true manual focus (which i hope will be part of any camera2 api SFOS impl). something ive always wanted in my phone but never had…

1 Like
#12

heh, it is EXTREMELY EASY to change advanced-camera to do long-press instead of click to focus. edit /usr/share/harbour-advanced-camera/qml/pages/CameraUI.qml as follows:

--- CameraUI.qml
+++ /usr/share/harbour-advanced-camera/qml/pages/CameraUI.qml
@@ -583,7 +583,7 @@
         id: mouseFocusArea
         anchors.fill: parent
         z: -1 //Send to back
-        onClicked: {
+        onPressAndHold: {
 
             if (settingsOverlay.panelOpen) {
                 settingsOverlay.hideAllPanels()
3 Likes
Camera capture button not working
#13

N900 had that, loong time ago…
Ok, ok, I am sorry biggrin

1 Like
#14

HAHAHAHAHAHAH where do you think i learned to want it? my n900 was the last time i actively liked a phone.

#15

Just take a break and chill out, man. All i’m trying is to be nice. Something positive to counterbalance the negative. And why wouldn’t it be fixed, my friend?

1 Like
#16

Maybe for the same reason as other bugs not fixed for years? Like e.g. this one, two years and counting:

#17

i was asking, with hopeful sincerity, if you knew of some particular reason it would be fixed.
because, afaict, they don’t fix camera bugs, ever. Xperia X still has a broken focus model, and they just abandoned it and moved on. not to be too snarky, but its not far fetched to guess that in 6 months, SFOS will only really work well on Xperia 11 Mark IV or whatever.

that being said, i was also extremely pessimistic about VoLTE ever being done, but jolla got it done a full month before my 3G got shut down, and it works GREAT. :smiley:

#18

Thanks for your bug report @teleshoes. I’ve created an internal report about it and tagged this as “tracked”. It’s possible that this is related to the Camera API 2 which has been discussed elsewhere, but either way it seems to be a valid issue. If I find out more about it, or if there are updates to share, I’ll do my best to post it here.

4 Likes
Xperia 10 III - taking instant photo with no auto-focus
#19

I’m quite sure it’s related to the Camera API: With Open Camera (an android app) you can select which API to use. With “Original camera API” the behaviour is similar to our camera app. With “Camera2 API” it behaves a lot better, i.e. it takes pictures even while moving the phone.

8 Likes
Slow Camera Response on xperia 10 III
#20

I think I started seeing this on X10II on my «add swap to relieve memory pressure» adventure.

When things become real swappy and laggy, chances of this bug triggering in Camera becomes exponentially higher.

#21

More diagnosis of the problem here. Not so much a bug but unimplemented Sony autofocus (and colour correction) features.

1 Like
#22

no. this is very much a bug, just not a SFOS bug.

it IS a vital defect on SFOS 10III, and not on android, however, since there is no native camera2 app AND jolla-camera implements only auto-focus.

jolla-camera could workaround this very serious bug by implementing a focus model similar to AdvancedCamera, which works much much better.

OR, as is already being worked on, develop camera2 api.

1 Like
#23

I’ve started having this issue on my Xperia 10iii recently. I’ve always had the odd occasion when the camera refused to take a photo but it seems more prevalent recently. This seemed to coincide with the 4.6.0.13 release however that may be a red herring.

It is very frustrating.

#24

that is a red herring. this bug is not a regression in any sailfish version, because it is actually in the android firmware drivers from sony. in fact, this bug is present on AOSP, and even the native android image, fresh out of sony’s package.

however, the bug only affects the camera1 API, and most android apps use camera2, at least by default. that is why the ‘fix’ is for jolla-camera to use camera2

2 Likes
#25

FYI: I have this also sometimes, depending on the subject.
I have the tripple camera toggle installed from Chum, tnx @nephros , and found that the wide angle camera doesn’t have this issue.
So at least i can take pictures reliably that way if needed, although image quality is worse.

1 Like
#26

Does anyone have a view on whether the Jolla C2 camera is likely to be better than that on the xperia 10 iii in terms of general quality?

The camera on the 10 iii wasn’t bad, infact it made some nice images, but the camera on nearly-10-years-old lumia 950 has it whipped in a lot of situations: even when I was using Open Camera.

#27

As a person who rides bikes quite often, I can confirm this applies to any situation while moving with my Xperia 10 III (this is done on empty rural roads, where you have a controlled and therefore quite safe ‘hands-free’ situation, only, if anyone’s wondering): The picture isn’t taken until you come to a standstill. Which is annoying at times. Depending on what you have in focus it happens when you sit in a car as well: Pictures of things going on inside the car tend to work, while landscape photos are at least taken with high latency. Not always but considerably more often.

1 Like
#28

I found just the same on the 10 III:
If the rate of change within the viewfinder was greater than a certain %, (so, if you were taking pictures at an aquarium, where the light was constantly moving), then it just wouldn’t release the shutter.

The problem seems to affect all 10 IIIs with SFOS.

Considering that only one of the three cameras is meant to work at-all in SFOS, I felt that this was a limitation that should’ve had something done about it.

OpenCamera works better but its image quality is a bit odd in some situations.
In certain lights, it wasn’t exposing faces anywhere-near properly, which when you want to take a picture of family, is a bit of a drawback.
If you set it to Camera API-1 then the images were all bleached-out and very pale.
Setting it to API-2 worked a lot better.

In any event, I found myself carrying my old Lumia around for photography and, the 950 also works better, just as a phone - it doesn’t drop calls, doesn’t refuse to place or answer a call, and it has the visual voicemail that works well.

So, it was quite nice just to go back to that and have a bit of a detox because the Edge browser is hopeless nowadays.

I’m hopeful that the C2 community phone is going to feel a bit more “together” than the 10 III on SFOS, because there were lots of basic things that didn’t work right at-all.

#29

Not only the focus,but sometimes the picture is so dark its barely visible.Because of these behaviors I must use OpenCamera via appsupport.Camera its not a problem for me(Sony/Tamron combo) but cannot carry all the time so big and heavy camera with me :slight_smile:

#30

Are you sure API-2 works better than 1 in OpenCamera? From my experience it’s the other way around, any app using the newer API produces pale images

1 Like