[peter9477]

I love my blackberry but I also use a samsung galaxy S2 and by comparison these photos are not good. They seem quite flat and not very sharp. I look for the details in photos, the fine bits. I hope its just software!

Did you see the parts where I pointed out the lousy lighting available in most or all of the shots? Overcast, dismal winter day. Bedroom ceiling light. 13W fluorescent bulb.

I'm not saying the Z10 camera is better: I have no basis for such a comparison. I'm curious though if, under similar lighting, these other supposedly much better devices are really any better.

Also your post came just under one where I pointed out that imgur.com seems to be compressing these by a factor of 3x compared to the original. Perhaps that explains the lack of sharpness? (Or not... I'll disclaim again any useful knowledge of photography.)

[Italiannyc]

The pix are alright but compared to some other phones, they are average. Very decent. For the average user, should not be a problem at all. Most people usually take pix in alot of sunlight and everything looks good when taken in sunlight. For the most part, if you dont plan on blowing the pix up, they should be perfectly fine for your average use.

I will say, anyone coming from a bold will think the Z10 has the best camera ever lol.

My HTC amaze I use to have took some INSANEEEE pix.. Not so well in low light though. Low light is tough with alot of phones

[bizzyqu]

I love my blackberry but I also use a samsung galaxy S2 and by comparison these photos are not good. They seem quite flat and not very sharp. I look for the details in photos, the fine bits.(editor's note - emphasis added) I hope its just software!

excuse me.. BUT THIS IS A CELL PHONE CAMERA

what is the obsession here, these photos only need to be tweeted, facebooked, instagramed where they will be further compressed and used for the sole purpose of showing everyone what your dinner and dog look like. You can take any of these photos from any of these devices into photoshop or some other post processing software and up the contrast a smidge, adjust colors, and brightness and voila the photo looks good. I'm sure BB10 has a filter (think autofix) that does exactly this. If you care this much about how your cell phone camera pictures appear the moment they are pooped out just buy a lumina 920, the rest of us will use a big boy's/girl's phone.

Some of you are acting like the equivalent of an pseudo-audiophile quibbling over the audio quality of the packaged earbuds that ship with each of these devices (spoiler like all these cameras they suck)....... ugh /rant

[FSeverino]

Nice, thanks.

Put my mind at ease

[frfghtr]

Peter

The camera seems to have some decent specs and the pics posted look decent, but. I'm wondering what kind of user menu the camera has.

A F2.2 is a fast lens and should give you decent low light use but with a shallow DOF (depth of field) at close range. But, you also need contrast to focus in low light and ambient light will probably under-expose the picture unless you compensate for it.

So it may be ok if used with a bit of knowledge of photography and a bit more of the user manual.

And I think the pics are getting the crap compressed out of them. Plus a jpeg loses quality every time you save it.

Camera & video

Rear camera
8 megapixel auto-focus camera
Back Side Illumination for better low-light performance
5-element F2.2 lens
Dedicated ISP (image signal processor) with 64MB frame buffer
Flash, continuous and touch to focus, image stabilization
Enhanced Super Resolution Digital Zoom (5x)
1080p HD video recording
4 DOF (Degrees of freedom) video stabilization
Time Shift mode for pinpointing and adjusting individual elements of your picture
Front camera
2 megapixel fixed-focus camera
Image and video stabilization
3x digital zoom
720p HD video recording

[meganVee]

I think the pictures are great!
It just confirms that all of the b.i.t.c.h.i.n.g on the other blogs about the camera were, in my opinion, trying to sabotage the positives about BB10... Typical, of course!!!

Also... I found that my 9810 took better pictures then my husbands iPhone 4... I have not compared pictures since he got the iphone 5.

[bizzyqu]

Both taken with a BlackBerry Z10

[peter9477]

The camera seems to have some decent specs and the pics posted look decent, but. I'm wondering what kind of user menu the camera has.
...
[blah blah technical stuff that scares the programmer guy ;-) ]
...
And I think the pics are getting the crap compressed out of them. Plus a jpeg loses quality every time you save it.

I get lost on all the depth-of-F-stop and over-exposed ambience stuff, just like you guys do if I start to talk about megajoules per fortnight and other battery stuff. ;-)

On the compression: it seems imgur is to blame for that. Aside from the upload to imgur (with "auto resize" set to None), they have not been saved anywhere since the camera saved the original.

For the menu part of things it's the same as what I suspect has been reported numerous times based on the Dev Alphas: Shooting mode (Normal, Stabilization, Burst), Scene setting (Auto, Action, Whiteboard, Night, Beach-or-Snow), Flash auto/on/off, and Aspect Ratio 16:9 or 4:3. Hmm... that reminds me, the 4:3 is, I believe the highest quality, and to make the 16:9 it has to throw away pixels, so I suppose using that might be better in some situations where you don't care about having the "HD" ratio.

[peter9477]

Both taken with a BlackBerry Z10

I don't understand that... you're just showing one of the photos, re-touched?

[peter9477]

If someone can suggest a free place that's convenient to host to the original files without imgur's compression, I could stick them there. Just please don't make me the victim of spam by having to register on some shady site, or having to jump through hoops to do it.

[bizzyqu]

I don't understand that... you're just showing one of the photos, re-touched?

my point is that with that right retouching a photo can look better and I believe BB10 has built in editing that does just that, and software updates can also address the output of the camera.

Update So yeah I confirmed there is enhancement options, Peter why don't you try to play around with it and see how you can get that photo to look (don't use filters but more contrast and exposure settings) and get back to us

[ShaneN.]

look way better than my 9900 camera, who cares if it takes bad photos in the dark with no flash, like who does that anyways :P

i was thinking the same thing

[Omnitech]

Thanks for these examples.

While it may not have the best camera in the market on a smartphone, these seem quite passable. The whole thing with the 99xx not having any autofocus was just intolerable - all the apps that featured the ability to do things like read barcodes or scan business cards to import as contacts were pretty much useless with that thing. The closeups here put to rest that problem, this is a nice improvement. Thanks everyone for the images so far.

[info600]

excuse me.. BUT THIS IS A CELL PHONE CAMERA

what is the obsession here, these photos only need to be tweeted, facebooked, instagramed where they will be further compressed and used for the sole purpose of showing everyone what your dinner and dog look like. You can take any of these photos from any of these devices into photoshop or some other post processing software and up the contrast a smidge, adjust colors, and brightness and voila the photo looks good. I'm sure BB10 has a filter (think autofix) that does exactly this. If you care this much about how your cell phone camera pictures appear the moment they are pooped out just buy a lumina 920, the rest of us will use a big boy's/girl's phone.

Some of you are acting like the equivalent of an pseudo-audiophile quibbling over the audio quality of the packaged earbuds that ship with each of these devices (spoiler like all these cameras they suck)....... ugh /rant

I think we can blame that comparison article on Gizmodo for all this pointless fears of the Z10 camera's quality while comparing with other phones...
But really, I think all that is overated, as long as I can take decent photos for showing, I'm happy.


...otherwise I would've be an owner of a DSLR for the past two years.

[peter9477]

my point is that with that right retouching a photo can look better and I believe BB10 has built in editing that does just that, and software updates can also address the output of the camera.

Update So yeah I confirmed there is enhancement options, Peter why don't you try to play around with it and see how you can get that photo to look (don't use filters but more contrast and exposure settings) and get back to us

Oh, I get it now. :-) But I'll leave the retouches (aside from my first one, that I just thought looked cool) to other people and threads. I don't want to take away everyone's fun! :-)

For the record, when looking at the two photos in your post, I believe the un-retouched photo actually captures the reality of that day much better. It was really quite a drab day, with medium dark grey clouds. There were no vibrant colours at all, and although I'm no expert in judging, I think the camera might have captured things perfectly in that one.

[knrd]

Yeah, these are unfortunately not up to par with the market. Yes, they are decent enough and they are better than the ****ty 9900 "camera", but that's not saying much. Every single image shows a lot of noise/artifacts and if you were to put together a random list of cellphone pictures, I doubt anyone would have any trouble whatsoever spotting the Z10 ones. Disappointing that in 5 years RIM first moved backwards and now is moving sideways. Though I wouldn't even be surprised if my 9700/9780 and 9800 took better pictures..

[Abrante]

Yeah, these are unfortunately not up to par with the market. Yes, they are decent enough and they are better than the ****ty 9900 "camera", but that's not saying much. Every single image shows a lot of noise/artifacts and if you were to put together a random list of cellphone pictures, I doubt anyone would have any trouble whatsoever spotting the Z10 ones. Disappointing that in 5 years RIM first moved backwards and now is moving sideways. Though I wouldn't even be surprised if my 9700/9780 and 9800 took better pictures..

I do agree with the 9780 possibly having better looking pictures. On the flip side, the OS itself made a huge leap in improvements so that is something we should be really happy about. A perfect product? doesn't exist. So considering that this phone has features that are above par in comparison to others (i.e. time shift and screen share) I am fine with sacrificing a bit of image quality though not that bad in an era where most instagram users take "clear" pictures to then add image noise and blur effects. lol

With that said, when we do get instagram, Blackberry can advertise the Z10 by saying "you wont have to edit your pictures, the camera alone adds the image noise and the blur"... That is what Apple would have done, and then said that it was "innovation"

[coolpowers]

People are getting way too caught up with comparisons. Sure, an iPhone can take better pictures. But then you're not using BB10. Sure, a top of the line Samsung can take better pictures. But then you're not using BB10. Sure, a Lumia 920 can take better pictures. But then you're not using BB10. Want me to go on?

Leave the spec fights to the Android people. Leave the "I've seen better" articles to the jaded reviewers. Focus on the vast improvement to YOUR overall experience.

[SixStringMadness]

don't know where some of these pix are hosted but I can only see a few on my work machine.

The one's I see look really nice, have to check the other out at home, but very cool what I can see

[peter9477]

don't know where some of these pix are hosted but I can only see a few on my work machine.

No idea what's up with that but in case it helps you see them all, they're hosted in an imgur.com album I made here: BlackBerry Z10 photos - Imgur

[jbrians]

some points:
I have a 6MP Canon S3 that takes pictures that have been published in print magazines. I dare anyone with a phone to get pictures as sharp with the same contrast range as you can with a well made REAL camera.
There may be some on the forums who would be OK with their wedding photographer showing up with his iphone...I can hear it now...."Good thing you didn't bring a Z10...I want quality, Man"
The reality is that "good enough" has been more then met with the Z10...and with the ability to back out of blinks, nose picking, etc, I think we have a real knock your socks off winner.

[Abrante]

Apple sold millions and millions and more millions with a crappy and I mean very crappy front facing camera for several years. Just work on bringing some big name apps (which is one of the maain reasons why people have stuck with Android and iOS to this point) and all will be well. Good pictures are taken nowadays with cameras just to enhance it with sepia mode and upload to instagram. Lets get over this!

[kazmi]

Sorry if I missed it but how is it in capturing documents/text? The main reason I had to ditch the 9930 was due to the poor camera capabilities with regards to capturing documents; I currently use an app on the iphone where I take a pic and it then converts it into a PDF - you literally cannot tell the difference between that and a page scanned in using a regular scanner. Really wondering where the Z10 would stack in that regard?

[kbz1960]

This image represents about 40% of a regular 8.5"x11" piece of paper (so about 5" by 8.5" as shown), taken in an otherwise dark room with a 13W fluorescent bulb in a desk lamp place just beside the camera. I turned it from the Auto setting to Whiteboard since it looked too yellow otherwise. The lens was about 7-8" away from the paper.

http://i.imgur.com/qnehUZe.jpg

Sorry if I missed it but how is it in capturing documents/text? The main reason I had to ditch the 9930 was due to the poor camera capabilities with regards to capturing documents; I currently use an app on the iphone where I take a pic and it then converts it into a PDF - you literally cannot tell the difference between that and a page scanned in using a regular scanner. Really wondering where the Z10 would stack in that regard?

[bizzyqu]

Sorry if I missed it but how is it in capturing documents/text? The main reason I had to ditch the 9930 was due to the poor camera capabilities with regards to capturing documents; I currently use an app on the iphone where I take a pic and it then converts it into a PDF - you literally cannot tell the difference between that and a page scanned in using a regular scanner. Really wondering where the Z10 would stack in that regard?

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