REPRODUCIBILITY (% or how often): always
BUILD ID = OS VERSION (Settings > About product): 4.2.0.21
HARDWARE (XA2, X10, X10 II, …): X10 II
DESCRIPTION:
Taking pictures where the light source is in front of the camera makes the pictures very dark, much darker than on any other digital camera I’ve used. For example, if you try to take a picture of a bright green landscape at noon on a sunny day, you need to make sure the sky is not visible at all, otherwise the bright green will be transformed into near-black dark green. Using tap-to-focus to tell the device that the landscape is the important part only slightly increases the brightness of the landscape, but it’s still exceptionally dark. Each of the three lenses displays this problem.
There’s (probably) an example in the latest community newsletter: in the three pictures of the water, the sky is bright blue, but the water and the dock are almost black. Of course, the water doesn’t need to be bright blue, but if you take the same picture with the Xperia 10 II and with a different device, it’s obvious that the Xperia 10 II takes comparatively much darker pictures.
You can easily verify just how dark the pictures are by trying to take a picture of something on your windowsill. Unless it’s night-time and there’s no street lighting, you’re pretty much only going to see the silhouette of the object outlined against the window.