Front Camera of NOKIA N900
 

Before changing to N900, I used HTC Tytn II. When I travelled and sightseeing with my wife, we enjoyed using the front camera of my HTC to take pictures of ourselves. Of course, the quality of these pictures would not be good for printouts. For us, we only watched pictures from our phones or on computer and the quality of these pictures are reasonable. The biggest advantage of using the secondary (front) camera for self-picturing is, we don't have to border someone to shoot for us.

After purchasing N900, I found there is although a front camera but there is no application to use it. There is an app. called Mirror but it works as its name, just like a mirror but without capturing function and the quality of image is very poor.

I hope someone can work out an application to utilize the front camera of N900 and to provide low noise images.

TC

Re: Front Camera of NOKIA N900
 

I agree, I really miss a application to use the front camera at least to take simple pictures in a reasonable quality.

Re: Front Camera of NOKIA N900
 

The front camera is very low res, and was designed mainly for web-cam use (like Skype video calls). You'll never get a good picture out of it, since it's not designed to do it.

With the new FCam stuff you should be able to use the front cam to snap self pics, but it's still going to be grainy and low res. You're better off blind-snapping a pic without the display pointed at you. Or, start a video and video-shoot it. At least one of the frames it captures will be a nice picture at about the same resolution as the front camera. ;)

Re: Front Camera of NOKIA N900
 

I was talking to a Nokia rep and asked if it was possible to use the front camera to take pictures and the guy said yes. But i forgot to ask how :s

Re: Front Camera of NOKIA N900
 

Garen, I guess the Nokia rep was wrong. Not every Nokia reps. know their products thoroughly.

TC

Re: Front Camera of NOKIA N900
 

Woody, thanks for your suggestion. I know the front camera on mobile phones are having low pixels, providing low resolution images. The point is, I am quite happy with what I have captured with HTC TYTN II.

I read from somewhere that, quality of images depends on both hardware and software. If I can get acceptable and reasonable pictures with HTC TYTN II, why not with N900; all we need is some expects to write a decent firmware to do the job.

TC

Re: Front Camera of NOKIA N900
 

Mine has greenish vignetting and a bunch of hot pixels :(

Re: Front Camera of NOKIA N900
 

The following command records a snapshot from the front camera:

gst-launch v4l2camsrc device=/dev/video1 num-buffers=1 ! omx_jpegenc ! filesink location=test.jpg

Of course this totally missing the point of having a live view of the front camera before getting the snapshot. :-)

What is really needed is something that does:

gst-launch v4l2src device=/dev/video1 ! autovideosink

and then sits around waiting for the camera button to be pressed, and then runs the above command.

Any takers?

Re: Front Camera of NOKIA N900
 

Can't we have a live preview using the "mirror" app and, with that code assigned to a keyboard shortcut (with shortcutd) do the trick? :rolleyes:

Re: Front Camera of NOKIA N900
 

SSLMM,

Not a good idea. Have you tried the Mirror? The noise in Mirror is too heavy. We need an expert who can program an app to utilize the front camera and to capture images in fair quality (less noise).

TC