Surface Pro 3 camera quality

Anonymous

i posted this as a question so that the Microsoft techs can have some visibility of this issue

Frankly, I am lividand disappointed at the quality in this product. at first I assumed it was a firmware issue and/or a hardware issue but after performing all of the steps the tech support people have instructedand having been instructed to go the store and exchange for new hardware, I get the same issue.

so this leads me to believe it may just be the quality of the cameras microsoftshipped out on all of the devices

now these were releasednot too long ago and maybe there is a firmware fix out there but until then I am going to share the photos I am able to capture with everyone here

now I am a student and I bought the pro 3 to be able to take a picture of a document or whiteboard and be able to write on it in onenote. the picture above is of a small target, a barcode, but even taking pictures of a full sized paper with standard size text, it is still almost illegible!

to compare the photos with another device I brought out another moble device: my ipod. the quality of the camera on the device I use to listen to music should surely be about the same quality of camera in the $1600 ten times the size of an ipod device I just bought right? NOT EVEN CLOSE

the first super clear picture is not from the pro 3 but from my ipod WHICH ALSO has a 5 MP camera. as you can see you can easily define everything in t he picture not only to include the sticker underneath the barcode , but the number in that 2D barcode as well. very good job!

the next horrible picture is the BEST PICTURE I could get from the rear camera on the Surface Pro 3. as you can see this is horrible, you can see it’s a bar code, you cannot tell those are numbers underneath. you could guess but you wouldn’t be able to identify any single number

the last picture is the BEST PICTURE I could get from the front camera, which is strangely odd since it is markedly better than the rear camera, although still severely sub-par. you can at least identify some numbers and see that there is a sticker underneath the barcode.

So there you have it. this is the horrible picture quality we can expect from the surface pro 3's cameras and how it compares to equivalent-megapixel MP3 players

Microsoft, If you can address this with a firmware update to make the cameras auto-focus, I will be a happy customer;even half the quality of my ipod I can work with. but this? this is unacceptable.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

On Sun, 7 Dec 2014 21:06:04 +0000, OAKNOVA wrote:

>>I am quite disappointed with the camera on the Surface Pro 3 and its inability to focus and take sharp pictures of documents. These days even the most rudimentary and basic phone or camera can take sharp images that can be save, printed. I have to now take a photo with my Samsung phone and then email it to my account and download it as a saved image. Microsoft learn from Apple and create flawless products the first time around. I think I have wasted my money on the Surface Pro 3. Any fixes out there or should I just sell this product?

there is no software fix for this. the camera is fixed focus. here's what I did

as a kludge

http://digitalmediaphile.com/index.php/2014/09/23/get-glasses-for-surface-pro-3-for-clear-documents-take-2/

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Barb

Windows Entertainment and Connected Home MVP

My Blog - http://digitalmediaphile.com/

Please mark as answered if this answers your question

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

There is no zoom. It is a fixed focus camera.

0 comments

276 additional answers

Anonymous

2014-08-22T20:35:55+00:00

"BAND-AID SOLUTION" - Ok, so here is the "Band-Aid" solution if you are interested. To re-iterate, the camera on the current surface pro 3's have a fixed focal length. If I recall, in my own personal testing, items won't come in to focus until they are at least 3.5 feet away from the camera. This is too far for an 8.5 x 11 inch A-sized piece of paper with only a 5 Mega Pixel camera. So the focal length needs to be changed.

From the research on the internet that I have done, it looks like the only way to change the current focal length for the surface pro 3 internally would be to change out the hardware. Obviously Microsoft isn't going to do this for us. So this means we have to use something external to accomplish this task. The answer can be found in a cheap pair of reading glasses. I did some investigation. I went to Walmart (because I figured most people likely have one of those around by their city). I sampled a a few of their reading glasses, specifically Foster Grants. I wanted something decent, not too expensive and not too cheap. I paid about $16 for mine. You can get $5 dollar reading glasses and they might work just as well. The reading glasses are marked by magnification, with numbers starting at about +1.25 and going up to about +3.50. Anyways, this is what I found with the Foster Grant glasses:

+2.50 seem to be best for general picture taking of 8.5 x 11 inch papers - this is what I bought.

+3.00 and higher are better if you want to get up closer to something that is smaller than an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper.

+2.00 and below are better if you want to back up a little to take pictures of something bigger than an 8.5 x 11 paper, such as legal and B-sized papers.

When I got my glasses home, I used a small jewelers screwdriver (which can be purchased from Home Depot or Lowes) and removed the swivel sides (temples) from the glasses. So now it's essentially just a pair of lenses connected together. They cannot not be worn I placed tape on one of the lenses to remind me to only grab this lens. Fingers will leave oil and I wanted one lens to remain clean and clear. Thus, I use the lens without tape to hold right behind and up next to the camera of the surface pro 3 as I take pictures. I have included a picture that I took of an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper with small print so you could see how well it turns out. When I inserted the full image, this website compressed the picture and consequently made it look worse than it was. So I cropped out the worst looking part, magnified it, and inserted it below. As you can see, even the worst part of the page is still very legible.

One thing to remember, make sure to hold your surface still, as I took one of my pictures with a little "shake", and because it came out blurry, I thought the glasses weren't working. However, they were working well. Good luck out there !!!
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-08-26T20:29:42+00:00

Honestly a 5MP camera should not look this bad at all, fixed focus or not. Microsoft should issue a recall on all Surface Pro 3's, replace the cameras or issue new units with better cameras. It is most likely not fixable with firmware, I'm sure if someone wanted to open a class action lawsuit of some sort it would probably be the only way to get them moving. It's a shame I paid so much for the i7 version, top of the line model, and my iPhone takes better pictures. Thanks a lot.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments
Anonymous

2014-08-26T20:32:05+00:00

Honestly a 5MP camera should not look this bad at all, fixed focus or not. Microsoft should issue a recall on all Surface Pro 3's, replace the cameras or issue new units with better cameras. It is most likely not fixable with firmware, I'm sure if someone wanted to open a class action lawsuit of some sort it would probably be the only way to get them moving. It's a shame I paid so much for the i7 version, top of the line model, and my iPhone takes better pictures. Thanks a lot.Y

I also own a Dell Venue Pro 8 and it auto focuses just fine. Very well actually.

Well if they do a recall they need to fix that WiFi as well, but I highly doubt it.
Was this answer helpful?

0 comments No comments