Treo Pro's Camera: Lighting is the Key to Decent Images

With any camera, lighting is an essential element in taking good pictures. The better the lighting, the better the image and this holds true with camera phones. WMExperts commented that the Treo Pro’s camera performed well until you tried to it where lighting was dim.

I decided to take a closer look at the Treo Pro’s camera to see how well it performed in various lighting conditions, how it compared to other devices and what features Palm included with the camera application. While adequate lighting may not allow you to capture shots like above, it will enhance the performance of the Treo Pro’s camera.

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Features/Performance

The Treo Pro sports a two megapixel camera that has an electronic shutter that reads the available light and achieves proper exposure by the duration the electronic shutter stays open. The Treo Pro comes with a rather extensive settings menu that allows you to determine the size/quality of the image, metering, storage, special effects, exposure compensation, and white balance. The camera captures not only still images but also video. You have custom settings for sports, portraits and panoramic shots.

I’m still skeptical of camera phones and see them more as a novelty or for emergency use (e.g. documenting a traffic accident, emailing shopping lists, etc.). I did like some of the features on the Pro’s camera application; I found it to be a mixed bag when compared to other WM camera phones.

As mentioned, the Pro’s camera is noticeably darker and you really need a good bit of light for it to properly expose an image. Camera phones don’t have apertures in the traditional sense (parts on a regular camera that is used to regulate exposure and depth of focus). Instead, the aperture and the camera relies on the shutter speed to achieve proper exposure. Somehow, in either the exposure controls or physical design of the Pro’s camera, average lighting situations are underexposed a little. You can use the exposure compensation or brightness control to add a little digitally brighten your pictures but in doing so, the quality will decline a little.

Here are a few test shots from the Pro. The only processing that was done to these images was to resize and adjust sharpness for publication. The first is taken during the day time using only available light. The second was taken at night using only normal night time lighting conditions (one central room lamp).

Treo Pro with good, daytime sunlight

Treo Pro with single incandescent light

In addition to the under-exposure, I’m also finding white balance issues where a color cast is present on the images. This is where the ability to change the white balance settings on the camera comes in handy or you can adjust it with image processing software such as Photoshop Elements. Things do improve when you shed some light on the subject. Here's the same night picture with another lamp turned on in the room.

Treo Pro with added indoor light

Compared to other cameras

I was curious how the Pro compared to other WM devices and snapped a few shots with the Treo 750 and Motorola Q9h. First the Treo 750;

Treo 750 with good, daytime sunlight

Treo 750 with single incandescent light

Now the Moto Q:

Motorola Q9h with good, daytime sunlight

Motorola Q9h with single incandescent light

The Motorola Q9h has an added “advantage” of a “flash” next to the camera. It is a perceived advantage in that it isn’t a flash (LED light) and really doesn’t help exposure at all.

I can see an improvement in image quality between the 750 and Pro with regards to saturation and sharpness but exposure seems to be equal, except at night where the 750 is clearly better. You're probably seeing better on-board processing to account for the better color saturation and sharpness but I was surprised at the exposure issues. Both required adequate lighting but the Pro needed a second light source to shine.

While I thought the Motorola Q would have performed better than the 750, it appears that the Q slows down the shutter speed more, causing motion blur (your hand moving the camera) to be more noticeable.

A little more on the Pro’s Settings

As mentioned, the Pro has a decent settings menu allowing you a bit more control over the camera. You can take a photograph without any effects, capturing the natural colors.

Or if you like, you can choose from one of four effects settings; Grayscale (black and white), Sepia, Cool (color temperature of the image dialed down) and Negative.

Additionally, the Pro has a portrait setting to better frame pictures that will be used with your contacts and a panoramic setting to help you stitch together landscape shots. The pano setting works left to right and after the first image, the right portion of the image is displayed transparently to line up the next shot. After the third shot, the three images are stitched together. I like this method a little better than the cameras that have grid lines to line up but you really need to have distinct landmarks for the overlay.

If you don’t line up the overlay well enough, ghosting or double images will occur (areas circled on the sample images). Outdoor shots were more challenging in that the screen was difficult at times to see and line up the overlay correctly.

Final Verdict

The Treo Pro stacks up nicely for taking pictures in a well lit room or outdoors. Otherwise, the camera struggles. I like the depth of the settings menu to give you a little more control over the camera.

I did run into one snag in testing the camera. In really bright situations, the phone locked up after the picture was taken. Sometimes it required a soft reset to get things back to normal and a few times, the reset was done automatically. I don’t know if this was caused by the camera’s exposure control software being overloaded or just a random bug in the machine. The Palm Customer Service Rep I talked to believed it was a database conflict. The lockup wasn’t consistent but enough to be annoying.

Camera Phones offer a level of convenience and with recent advances can produce decent images. Lighting is an essential element with any form of photography and with camera phones; it becomes all the more important in capturing good images. I found the Treo Pro’s camera to be slightly better than others but noticeably more dependant on ample lighting.