Extensive smartphone camera test including the new iPhone 4S and several Android smartphones.

david-andrew:

Prime Seats. Shot with Samsung Epic 4G.

Lightbox Photos, connect the Android camera with social networks – something existing apps haven’t achieved to the same extent. I’ve seen a demo of the app and it works very well. Instead of requiring a constant network connection to show photos backed up onto the Lightbox servers, the app will run in background to sync your photos so you can can use Lightbox Photos while offine, thus making experience identical to local browsing.

Lightbox wants to be Android’s new camera app, raises $1.1 million from Valley players

The video-editing software, which was announced by Google chief executive Eric Schmidt during a speech at Mobile World Congress, is designed to expand on a phone’s ability to capture images. People can use Movie Studio to combine still images and videos to create broader video that can be shared online. People will also be able to add musical soundtracks, fade to black at the end of the video and add effects like panning.

The Sprint Epic 4G version of the Samsung Galaxy S launched on August 31st.  In testing so far of this touchscreen Android phone my summary is very much positive.  It is a productive and fun device to use.  Beautiful Super AMOLED screen, intuitive user interface, fast processor, qwerty keyboard, 4G the list goes on; however, this is not a full review of the device.  I’d like to concentrate on a review of the camera application for taking both photos and video.  This is the native camera app and I think you’ll see it has many features and options, in line with most modern point-and-shoot cameras.  In future posts I will also be reviewing other Android camera apps, such as Vignette.  So let’s get started.

The Epic 4G has a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera on the back with 3x zoom and an auto-firing LED flash.  The Epic 4G also uniquely has a front-facing camera which I’ll be touching on in future reviews of video chat apps such as QIK.

(Note: some screenshots contain remants of the previous screen, such as icons.  That is just a bad side effect of the screen capture app.)

The screenshot above shows the main camera display after launching the app.  The camera will auto-focus anywhere that you touch in the scene. Auto-exposure is also occuring which you can see by moving the camera between dark areas and light areas.  The upper left of the screen shows the megapixel setting (size and quality) as well as the metering mode.  Battery level and shots left on the memory card are shown at the top right.  

The tab with an arrow on it allows the options overlay to be displayed or hidden. Starting upper left and moving down the options overlay screen includes Shooting Mode, Flash settings, Exposure setting, Camera Settings (gear icon, see more below), Photo/Video toggle, Shutter, and Playback.

To take a shot there is an onscreen shutter button or on the Epic there is also a dedicated camera button at top of the device when holding it in landscape mode - just like a point-and-shoot.

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