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
    2015-01-03T03:19:36+00:00

    I like the work around were you put a lens in front of the webcam. I tried it with my reading glasses and a magnified glass. Both worked. I do remember the using this camera with a QR symbology (Quick Reference barcode). It work at first. The next time (weeks later) when I tried to use it, the image was blurry and the app did not work.

    I tried using both front and rear cameras and both were blurry. Trying to take a picture of a document with the front camera is difficult.

    Microsoft can send, to any one that asks, a lens designed to be placed on the Surface. It can be left on and with the ability to slide in or out as needed.

    I also considered buying a separate USB camera as suggested by some one else.

    I wish they had included only one camera (a good HD one, with auto focus) that swings around from front to back. Using the Surface with Skype creates the problem were the angle of the Surface Pro on a table is fixed but people are different heights. How could they have miss that detail of reality as, Microsoft? I guess they fixed this with the SP3 and the multiple viewing angles it can be set to.

    I find myself looking for anything to prop the rear of the Surface Pro so my Mom is centered on the screen.

    If the camera could swing I would not have to prop it up with anything. A camera I bought years ago does just that. But I notice Microsoft made some decisions based on esthetics and not practicality.

    Another example of this is the position of the speakers. I found that if you turn the Surface backwards you can hear the audio better. Oh but you would not want to see the speakers facing you now would you, yes MS I would have preferred that. I ended up buying a Bluetooth speaker because of the low quality speakers the Surface Pro has.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-01-02T19:06:17+00:00

    Like many others, I've come to learn a little too late how bad the camera is.

    My story:

    My wife has a document and wants the text from the document posted on a website.  She says, "I'm too lazy to retype all of this. Does your new Surface toy have any solutions?" and I'm like, "Yeah babe, my Surface can do ANYTHING! I'll just snap a pic of the pages and use OneNote's OCR to convert everything to text!!"

    So then I hold the Surface over the document (which is in size 12 Arial font) and I can't get it to focus.  Thought maybe I needed more light so I went to the most well-lit room in the house. Same problem.  Everything was blurry and no matter how much I tried, the best I could do was to get half of the document into focus.  Everything else was too blurry for OneNote to perform the OCR on.

    Feeling humiliated, I just typed out the document for her.

    Sidenote: Before resorting to typing, I even tried taking a picture with my iPhone (which focused well and gave great resolution) and saving it into a OneNote document. Not sure what was going on that day, but my OneNote wouldn't sync for some reason and the picture wouldn't upload to OneDrive.  Really weird day.

    Am I disappointed? Yes. Do I hate my SP3 now?  No... I still like it and I still think it's leaps and bounds better than an iPad.  But as others have said, for the $$$ I dropped on this thing, it should have a auto-focus on the camera.  My iPhone has spoiled me in this regard.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-01-02T18:45:39+00:00

    Has anyone tried using a USB document camera on the Surface Pro 3? I know it's crummy to have to buy another device after having shelled out the money for the Pro 3, but maybe it's a workaround?

    I saw this one on Amazon:

    http://www.amazon.com/IPEVO-Point-View-USB-Camera/dp/B002UBPBTC

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