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

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.

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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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276 additional answers

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-06-24T00:13:36+00:00

    To add some more to the subject.  It sounds like the surface RT had a regular camera, but the surface pro's for some reason have a fixed focus camera.

    Sources:

    social.msdn.microsoft.com

    forums.wpcentral.com

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-06-23T18:26:49+00:00

    Hello coolmik89

    Thank you for being part of the Community and for reaching out to us on this subject.  I noticed that you had posted both a Question and a Discussion on the same subject.  For housekeeping purposes, I have merged them together here.  This is in order to keep all troubleshooting and commentary in one spot. 

    We really appreciate the level of detail on the troubleshooting that you have already done.  Thank you for your feedback and for bringing this to our attention.

    Do ensure that you have all available updates installed, restart twice afterwards.

    Best regards

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-06-23T18:02:20+00:00

    Yea, after further experimentation it never seems to focus reasonably on a page of text.  It looks like if you had a 12 point bold face it might be readable, but anything less is too blurry.  And my phone does take a better picture as well.

    If I tap on the screen it takes a picture (where my phone would attempt to focus on that point), so I'm not sure if there is a way to "manually" focus.

    The scanner bit was more of a "playing devil's advocate" sort of thing.  I have an app on my phone that is supposed to replace a scanner (though I haven't used it).  Good point about snapping a pic and just attaching it...it absolutely should be human readable.

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