Ipad 2 camera grainy

These forums are an extremely valuable resource for lots of people. Of course you should post problems, solutions and work arounds, That doesnt change the fact that there are limits to what can be done by fellow users. I was specifiacaly referring to HARDWARE problems, which you seem to have ignored in your reply. If what you need helpm with requires Apple Technical support and you post here, well, you may not get the help you need but, hey, it's your time that your spending.

Best of luck.

It is not strange coming from a user who has been repeatedly abused by the apple "support" system and it is not strange in light of a post that supports the forum support structure that I am solidly against because it assumes that there are no user problems that are not caused by the users.

I'm here because of the users and their needs and the knowledge that no problem that is beyond the ability of users to address will not be resolved here. The feelings in these posts also contain the hope that it will additionally publicize apple's uncaring attitude toward users.

The best case scenario for this forum is that it continue to be used by compliant users who's blinders hide the fact that it's primary purpose, from apple's perspective, is to divert customers

Thanks for the link, but I will not use it as I already have an overflowing collection of "feel good black holes" that have no documented evidence that they do any good for any user problem.

Beverly Howard

>> I was specifically referring to HARDWARE problems, which you seem to have ignored in your reply. <<

Hardware problems are user problems and this is not a unit specific hardware problem and it appears to be a design problem.

I agree that I over reacted to your post, but the basic premise of my rant stands... it doesn't matter what the problem is, apple should be responsive in any arena and I fault them for not being responsive here.

Beverly Howard

I think I had realistic expectations about the camera on my ipad2 but when the pictures from my blackberry bold2 (known to take really bad pics) turn out to be better than the ipad ones you begin to wonder why such an expensive device that was designed to share media can take such awful pictures... I still love my ipad but I will not expect pictures from it to be used more than a simple reference....

In fact, I thought I was using some sort of digital zoom because that's what it looks like, like when you overzoom with a digital camera....

Completely agree with you. I thought the graininess was a defect at first.

I have no plans to use my iPad 2 as a camera or videorecorder, but the picture quality is clearly very poor. I love the iPad, but the camera is a problematic. This needs to be greatly improved in the next generation! (Not as important as Flash missing, but it's substandard in my opinion.)

I know this is months and months after the original post, but after observing the camera results from the iPad 2, I'm inclined to agree that it probably IS a software/fixable issue... to a degree. I mean, it's a pretty crummy camera. Less than a megapixel. But the graininess is something else. Note that the 720p video doesn't look as grainy - and it is from the same camera.

What I *suspect* is that, in order to make more 'usable' photos in even lower light or shaky hands, Apple set the default/locked-in sensor sensitivity really high. (Think ISO 1600 or so) for the stills. This means that you're going to get a noisier photo, but one that is less blurry. I do not have an iPod touch to compare with, but It makes sense that they'd worry more about blurry photos from something as unwieldy for photography as an iPad vs something that can be held easier, like the touch. Since blur isn't really an issue for video, they could drop the ISO down to something more reasonable when recording.

The best fix they can probably do is to put ISO controls in the Camera app, to let the user choose if they want blur or image noise. If you've got the iPad standing up in a case and it is stable, blur won't be an issue anyways. That's when you'd set it to a lower ISO. If you are hand-holding it, you'll probably find that the grainy photos are more usable than the blurry ones. I'd have preferred much better cameras, but failing that, ISO controls are about all we can hope for.

Looking a bit further, it seems that the Touch and the iPad 2 both use Auto ISO, but I would still suggest that the iPad2 is a bit more aggressive in upping the ISO based on available light vs allowing a shower shutter speed. I'd still love to see some ISO/shutter speed control options!

holy god... did i literally just scroll through 4 pages of devout apple fans justifying why theire ****** ipad camera is okay?

i just bought a new ipad 2 a few days ago and probably would have opted for getting a higher capacity original ipad for less off of craigslist.... maybe even have saved a few hundred dollars... BUT, sadly the camera was one of the features that roped me in.

720p is misleading.

enough said.

boom.

on a lihter not i have to mention that the iPad is still the best tablet money can buy... i'd glady take a 16bgb over any other ******, choppy microsoft or android device on the market.

Embedded in those replies are some techie posts that conclude that the problem is in the software rather than the camera... 720p is a pixel count rather than a quality indicator, so, they get away with it.

Find some high power lights... they will improve indoor shots significantly and outdoor shots on sunny days are also acceptable.

I share your pain although know that there are many other places where having the camera is a plus ranging from barcodes to facetime.

Beverly Howard

bevhoward wrote:

>> I was specifically referring to HARDWARE problems, which you seem to have ignored in your reply. <<

Hardware problems are user problems and this is not a unit specific hardware problem and it appears to be a design problem.

I agree that I over reacted to your post, but the basic premise of my rant stands... it doesn't matter what the problem is, apple should be responsive in any arena and I fault them for not being responsive here.

Beverly Howard

A rant is a rant, the premise changes nothing.

I find that the cameras are grainy as well. Even when I visit the website, it says that the camera takes HD 720p video and Pictures. What's up with that? I rarely use it anyways but it'd be great if it actually took great pictures and video. Why do they advertise it in the 1st place right?

It isn't FALSE advertisement. It takes pictures, and it shoots 720p video. The video is pretty useful - I have used I to shoot training videos for work, and I could see it being useful for interviewing someone as well. The still camera feature, as has been said, is pretty awful. Low resolution and grainy. The iOS 5 upgrade didn't really help that. Best use I can see for it would be of quick snapshots of things you are working on that could be added into something like Evernote notes, snapping a quick shot of a whiteboard in a well-lit classroom, etc... I have been using it here and there to get snapshots of boxes/labels in an ongoing inventory project I am doing at my work. Basically anything where it doesn't have to look NICE... Just where you need the information.

What this discussion is missing seems to be a response from Apple regarding their marketing research. Why was the decision to use a poor quality camera made? Was it because the cost would drive up the device price to a luxury level that very few people could afford and they wanted to be sure the masses could afford one? Or is it a matter of thinking about the bottom line and keeping the stock price up? It's a great invention, but my guess is that saturating the market so they dominate it was a top priority. Therefore, complaints about the inferior camera are a small price for Apple to pay since they will "correct" it in future models and we will gladly (or begrudgingly) pay for it. Let's here it for capitalism. Hip hip hooray!

These are user-to-user forums, they are not monitored by Apple (there are too many forums/threads/messages for that to happen), so there won't be any response from them.

The cameras on the iPad are mainly aimed at FaceTime and Skype type calls, the iPad is too big to be used for photos or videos.

My main complaint is that the FaceTime photo quality looks nowhere nearly as good as in the Apple advertisements promoting the feature - even in good light. In that sense, I think it is deceptive.

doug