Surface Pro 3 camera quality

Anonymous
2014-06-23T00:43:23+00:00

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.

Surface | Surface Pro | Sound and camera

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Anonymous
2014-12-08T09:51:06+00:00

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

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Anonymous
2014-11-02T17:11:37+00:00

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

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-02-26T23:51:37+00:00

    Agree.  Really poor design of the Surface Pro 3 (does anyone know if they fixed it on the 4?).  Shame on you Bill Gates.  You now are officially a short-sighted manager.  No longer should you ever be considered an engineer.  With that said, I took a picture with my WONDERFUL Galaxy 7 Edge phone, then "shared" it with my email and finally got the document I needed to attach it to an online form.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-02-27T10:37:02+00:00

    Bill Gates? He is no longer CEO since decades... and I think he was (when he still was into it) quite a genius as an "engineer"; he invented software engineering (i.e. getting resonably functional software out of programmers with average talents). Additionally, he was a very capable programmer, while the famous Steve Jobs never wrote a single line of code himself.

    Nevertheless, I agree that the useless camera of the surface pro 3 was a stupid decision; the suface is an optimal  "Notebook", i.e. a device to take notes; for this, you want to be able to add photos, especially scan documents and document enigneering. A camera with a focus fixed to infinity is weird.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-02-27T12:43:50+00:00

    Interesting info on Steve Jobs, I never knew he did not write code. I could never understand the logic behind the Apple OS. It was and is not intuitive to me despite hearing so many people say it is easy. I was a school teacher and worked as an IT in the school. I was exposed to Apple computer Steve Jobs put them there. To me this meant having two different OS, one I could use and one I had to figure out, ended giving up on Apple OS.

    The camera on the original Surface Pro was useless for documents, the quality of the image is that of a very cheap camera. Shame, I spent over 1 thousand on it and my $123.00 smart phone has an auto focus camera that takes high quality close-ups and great pictures. I read so many complaints before the Surface 2 came out, I was sure they would fix it before that but it seems they did not listen to us.

    Even a manual focus would have been acceptable.

    I would also prefer a camera that you can swivel or tilt instead of trying to find the right angle for the entire tablet. I have to prop mine up from behind on the kick stand, to get it in the proper position so my short mother's head will be centered.

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