Although the Dell Streak's rear camera doesn't produce the finest video quality, it does a pretty nice job with still photos.
I've uploaded 24 unedited photos I took with the Streak to a photo set on Flickr. All the pictures were taken at the highest resolution and quality (2592 x 1944, fine quality) using the camera's default settings: automatic white balance and flicker adjustment, flash off, no zoom and brightness/contrast levels set at 0. The full-res images are grainy but the smaller versions look quite good. You can see some of them below, as well as find out more about the camera software.
All the photos in this post were taken with the Dell Streak.
In addition to the settings mentioned above, the camera also offers a multi-shot mode (four or nine shots), self-timer (2, 5, 10 seconds), and geotagging.
When I first started using the camera, I found it to be rather pleasant. Capturing shots can be done with the hardware button or the on-screen shutter button (choice is always nice), settings are easily accessed by tapping anywhere on the screen, and you can quickly switch between the front and rear cameras by pressing the Menu button.
As the day wore on, however, the camera app started to become unstable and wouldn't let me take photos unless I got out of it, went back in, switched to video mode, and then switched back to the camera. I don't know what caused this behavior but it still happens periodically and for seemingly no reason.
Reliability is an important feature of a camera, especially now that I have a baby girl, so I would feel very uncomfortable if I went somewhere and the Streak was the only camera I had with me.
Another thing that bothers me is the screen that appears after you take a photo. It can be very useful because it shows you a preview of the image you just took, gives you access to the photo/video app, and lets you share the pic (via Bluetooth printer, email, Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, Messaging, and Picasa), edit it (rotate & flip, crop, adjust colors, effects, frames, text, clipart, draw, and resize), set it as wallpaper or a contact icon, or delete it.
The problem is that it stays on screen for about 3 seconds [UPDATE: Pressing the Back button on the Streak will close the screen and go back to the viewfinder]. When you're just taking a quick pic here and there, a 3-second wait is no big deal. But if you want to take several shots of the same scene or just want to take a lot of photos, 3 seconds adds up and begins to feel like forever. The screen will sometimes take a while to appear, too, so the wait can be even longer.
Image quality at this size is pretty nice, though, right?
I'll continue to add photos to the Dell Streak photo set over the coming weeks and months, so please check there periodically if you want to see more examples of what the camera can do. If I run into anything particularly good or bad in the meantime, you'll find out about it here.
What is the shooting speed like? My G1 is practically useless to take a picture of anything that is moving. Also, burst mode sounds really nice. How far apart are the pictures in the burst?
Thanks!
Overall the quality of the quality of the pics are great. Hopefully developers out there will create some alternative camera apps that can fix some or not all the little quirks that seem to get in the way.
It takes about 3 seconds to go from pressing the shutter button to seeing the preview of the captured image.
Burst mode limits max resolution to 1280 x 960 and disables zoom. The pics are about 1 second apart.
Looks like sensor is a bit noisy (not surprising for a 5MP cell phone camera) and the application is using too high a compression level, resulting in blocking artifacts on noise and edges. If there’s a JPEG quality level control in the camera app, you might try increasing the quality level (for a lower compression level).
I noticed that it was pretty easy to hang the Nexus One while using the camera when memory got tight or had a synchronization issue between threads, while developing a camera app on it.
It’s already at the highest quality (fine).
Would you like a barebones (e.g. practically featureless) camera app that enabled very low compression levels? I can probably whip one up in an hour (though I can’t test it except on the simulator since I don’t have any actual Android devices currently).
Grabbed mine in the US this past week. One of the things I’m seeing – not sure about anyone else – is that the camera seems to have a hard time focusing on text. Just taking a photo of a magazine article for example, and the auto-focus strains and ultimately blurs the text.
Anyone else seeing this, or is there a setting in camera mode I’m not seeing?
So beautiful pictures!Lovely!Streak’s picture quality is not that bad! its nice.