post your hermes phone camera pics

[Guest benzo]

I thought it would be interesting to see the images the Hermes camera is capable of taking. List your Hermes variant and a bit about the resolution the photos were taken at.

The following were taken with my Vario II- the small picture taken at small resolution with 8x zoom, the big pictures at large resolution at 1x zoom.

The picture is of a famous indian actor who was filming some scenes next to where I work.

Overall I am pleased with the cameras performance when it comes to capturing images of objects that are only a few metres away. When the object is 10 metres or more away, everything goes out of focus.

[Guest richard_d]

I thought it would be interesting to see the images the Hermes camera is capable of taking. List your Hermes variant and a bit about the resolution the photos were taken at.

...

I've only got two on the phone (Vario II) at the moment - both shot without zoom. The first one is with oblique early morning light so has some lens flare, the second a dullish evening. They could do with an unsharp mask applied, but as is I'm not unhappy for a camera on a phone:

I had a play with the macro mode and that seemed quite good - I'll try and find something interesting to photograph!

Richard

[Guest]

You have got to be kidding if you think thats a good camera

i previously had a k750i as my main phone and yes the hemes is a different monster entirely and i wouldnt give it up for the world. but the camera on the k750i was actually very good and usable while on the hermes its gone back to being slightly gimmicky although in good light its OK but not on the same planet as my sony old phone

and i presume no where near as good as the new sony k800i for inbuilt camera

K750i (Spinnaker Tower Portsmouth) (yes the exif says photoshop but i only turned it round and nothing else so i can use it as a background on my PC)

Vario II (taken with macro mode on and in good light)

as you can see when zoomed in you can even read the lowepro logo at all and its generally a bit blurry (and yes i held very very still till after it was saved)

As i said no comparison although HTC devices are getting a lot better than they ever were and the 2mpx is a whole world away from the older 1.3 mpx devices but lets face it we dont buy these devices for their camera abilities!!

JEREMY

Edited September 6, 2006 by Guest

[Guest benzo]

I've only got two on the phone (Vario II) at the moment - both shot without zoom.

They are pretty good.

My photos look terrible in comparison!

[Guest Dr Who]

Still not sold on phone/camera convergence. Useful once in a blue moon, but the sort of shots I use it for it makes no odds.

[Guest]

agreed

however the camera is very usefull for contacts photos and for those one off need a picture of this but dont have my real camera to hand shots

JEREMY

[Guest Pandemonium]

agreed

however the camera is very usefull for contacts photos and for those one off need a picture of this but dont have my real camera to hand shots

JEREMY

I used to find it useful for taking pictures of price tags of products so I could compare the prices online at my leisure.

[Guest noodles-21]

yep, the cam on the vario 2 isn't as good as my w800i. Saying that, I have just taken IMO some good shots in macro mode.

Edited September 8, 2006 by noodles-21

[Guest richard_d]

Had a play with the macro function (thought I'd stick to the Lowepro theme :D ). I still think it's pretty good in Macro mode (although you have to get pretty close - I guess it's designed to be at it's best for copying documents).

For outdoor photos without macro switched on I guess adequate is probably the fairest description - I'd say it compares fairly well with the 2mp Nokia cameras (although the 3mp ones, the SE K800i etc. easily show it up and I agree the K750i has the edge). Even the pretty good K800i or N73 aren't good enough to stand against stand alone digital compacts. On the positive side the shutter button is perfectly positioned for landscape shots, and I like the camera interface. I haven't tried printing any of the shots yet but from the onscreen shots I suspect it will produce reasonable 5x3's or 6x4's in decent light. As Jeremy rightly says you wouldn't buy this device for it's camera capabilities but I don't think the results are terrible for the occasional 'wish I had a camera with me shot'. Anyway here's another example - taken at lunchtime at 1x in reasonable light (converging verticals are not the fault of the lens, it's my fault for not being taller :D ):

Richard

[Guest richard_d]

yep, the cam on the vario 2 isn't as good as my w800i. Saying that, I have just taken IMO some good shots in micro mode.

Nice shots - I don't think many phones would take much better close ups. I think they show that the Macro feature is pretty good.

Richard

[Guest Loconinja]

Tip: By default the camera software has sharpening turned on. I discovered this when I noticed some sharpening style artefacts and borders in some of my pictures. I haven't tried turning it off yet, but I suspect the quality of shots will be better without it.

You can see the effect of sharpening in the clouds in this picture taken with my Vario II:

Edited September 6, 2006 by Loconinja

[Guest noodles-21]

Nice shots - I don't think many phones would take much better close ups. I think they show that the Macro feature is pretty good.

Richard

Thanks, I'll try and get some outdoor shots soon. :D

[Guest NikLP]

Tip: By default the camera software has sharpening turned on. I discovered this when I noticed some sharpening style artefacts and borders in some of my pictures. I haven't tried turning it off yet, but I suspect the quality of shots will be better without it.

Where can I find such wizardry on the device? (I can't be arsed to look...)

[Guest Loconinja]

Where can I find such wizardry on the device? (I can't be arsed to look...)

Camera->Options (little spanner in the bottom-left)->Advanced (another little spanner, this time bottom-right)->page 2->Adjust->Sharpness

There are also settings for "Hue" and "Saturation".

[Guest gurujockstrap]

Reducing the sharpness down to 1 (don't think it can go any lower) makes a big difference in my eyes!

What should Hue, Saturation and Contrast be set to?

[Guest richard_d]

Camera->Options (little spanner in the bottom-left)->Advanced (another little spanner, this time bottom-right)->page 2->Adjust->Sharpness

There are also settings for "Hue" and "Saturation".

Thanks for that - I'd naively assumed sharpening would be off by default. I'll have to have a play.

[Guest richard_d]

Following Loconinja's helpful post pointing out sharpening is set to high by default I've had a bit of a play. First Macro mode:

With default sharpening (7):

Lowest sharpening (1):

Not a great deal to choose in these shots - (oh focusing wasn't helped by being taken in a pub garden after a couple of pints :D ...).

[Guest richard_d]

Landscape standard mode comparisons (this time without the aid of alcohol):

Default sharpening (7):

low sharpening (1):

low sharpening (1) with contrast reduced to (1):

From these results it seemed switching sharpening as low as it will go noticeably improves things. Setting the contrast at 1 rather than the default 5 also seems to help.

Richard

[Guest richard_d]

And three more:

Default sharpening:

Minimum sharpening:

Minimum sharpening and contrast:

The difference between minimal and default sharpening are again fairly clear. Differences between default contrast and lowest contrast are less pronounced, but I can't see any advantages to leaving contrast at the default setting.

Note - for both these and the previous shots I tried to ensure lighting conditions were the same for each shot, but cloud does have a habit of moving. This test is in no way scientific or definitive!

Richard

[Guest richard_d]

A couple of shots to show the flash:

Not great for portraits (or PAWtraits - sorry):

but powerful enough for macro:

Richard

[Guest]

not bad shots

so ive reduced the sharpness to one do people think that reducing the contrast to 1 makes the pictures look better

i mean i can always sort out contrast in photoshop

JEREMY

[Guest richard_d]

not bad shots

so ive reduced the sharpness to one do people think that reducing the contrast to 1 makes the pictures look better

i mean i can always sort out contrast in photoshop

JEREMY

Thanks - Reducing the sharpness definitely has a very positive effect. I played around a bit more with the contrast function (sorry I didn't save the photos) and reducing it to 1 seems to have a very slight benefit in some shots and never made a shot worse so I think I'll be leaving it at 1. I'd be interested to see other peoples experiments though. I haven't played with Hue and saturation at all - my instinct is that they're unlikely to have any negative effects, but I'll have a play at some point. I need a bit of time to play with the other functions - the five rapid shots function might be good for minimizing any camera shake for example. I think once the settings are optomised the camera will produce quite reasonable shots for a 2mp built in camera. I don't know whether higher sharpness and contrast would be better for copying text - I'll have a play with that some other time (uhhmm I wonder if ther's any OCR software that will read jpegs...).

Richard

[Guest Wam7]

Thanks for that info Richard. There is a world of difference with the sharpening and contrast reduced. The photo's are actually now quite decent.

[Guest richard_d]

Thanks for that info Richard. There is a world of difference with the sharpening and contrast reduced. The photo's are actually now quite decent.

Thanks - but it's Loconinja who deserves the credit for spotting the default over-sharpening.

Richard

[Guest jaso2005]

where is the setting to turn the sharpness down? i cant seem to find it anywhere?