Camera light on all the time except Photo mode

[jamie_f 0]

Hello!

It would be fantastic if the camera in Evernote remembered the last used flash setting. It makes it difficult to take a quick snapshot if you have to turn the flash off every time you take or retake a photo (and it messes your eyes up having the flash go off in your face all the time...). If 'Auto' works fine for most people the 'remember last setting' function would still work in the majority of cases, as they wouldn't change it from Auto anyway.

Hope you're all having a lovely day!

[southernforge 69]

Since the last update for the iOS Evernote client, when I activate page camera and set the flash to Off, the flash does not turn off when i take the photo. The intensity of the LED is lower than when the flash is set to On and a photo is made, , but it is still very noticeable and ruins photos of items that are glossy or highly reflective.

Has anyone else noticed this?

[LightingPete 0]

Yes, I've noticed this too, I thought it was a peculiarity of the page camera but it sounds like it might be a bug.

 

Glad it's not just me.

[southernforge 69]

Hello,

 

I am requesting that the ability to turn off the flash when making a photo in page view be added.

 

Currently the option shows up just like using the camera app alone, but this feature doesn't actually work.

 

The flash not turning off when capturing an image has ruined many attempts to add images to notes in the iPhone; it is beyond frustrating at this point, something I would classify as a real design flaw.

 

Thanks!

[BasieBand 42]

The ability to turn off the flash disappeared with a recent update.  I agree that it should be restored.

[southernforge 69]

It's almost as if the developers decided nobody would ever use evernote to take photos of anything the least bit glossy or reflective...

[Skip2It 0]

Agree, many business cards I receive have a glossy finish and the flash usually obscures some of the data.  

[southernforge 69]

Hello, Evernote??

[JimP 0]

Sign me up, too. Need the flash to turn off (for real).

[Hugo van den Beld 0]

Hello, I often add pictures to my Evernote notes through the page camera function. I rarely want to use the flash function. However, the flash functionality is always turned ON, so every time I have to switch it back to OFF, before I can take pictures that way I prefer. I CAN take multiple pictures with this setting. However, every new session I have to turn the flash setting OFF - therefore, I would prefer that Evernote would memorize the last setting. It would sure make this functionality a bit better. Thank you, Hugo

[wsp 11]

I agree. This causes real problems in libraries. Many research libraries are now fairly relaxed about readers photographing pages of books and periodicals, but they almost always specify that no flash is to be used. This means that the page camera is simply unusable in libraries. 

[jimmyc 0]

Yes a bit frustrating, a simple thing preventing me using the application to its full potential.

Bizarre that it was a 'feature' in a previous version.

Please change back Evernote team.

[Tony S 1]

The flash is always on when using Page/Document camera or Business Card camera. I can never capture anything without a big white spot in the middle. Every time I have to use a sd card to block the flash. I don't mind the flash being on by default, but at least give the users an option to turn it off.

[RonnieChia 0]

Hi

 

Does anyone has this problem that the iPhone LED light up all the time in Document, Post-it, etc except Photo. I have changes to OFF and the LED light still on.

 

Have deleted the app and reinstall - still the same.

 

Cheers

Ronnie

[mcheng 106]

Hi 

 

The LED light is ON with the Document, Post-It and Business Card cameras by design.  This is because in these modes we are trying to do edge detection, color detection and in the case of business cards, direct OCR of the information on the card.  To do this accurately we need good and even lighting.  The LED helps us accomplish this by ensuring the lighting conditions are as consistent as possible before the picture is taken and after, especially if the camera flash fires.

[mcheng 106]

Hi 

 

Please see this post about why we need the LED light on for Document & Biz card modes.  

 

For glossy & reflective pages or cards, tilt the camera at a slight angle.  The LED also helps in this case because when your phone is directly over the object  you will see a white spot from the LED on the surface.  If you tilt the phone at an angle, the LED light doesn't reflect back into the camera so you get the better lighting without the glare.  If you put the object on a contrasting surface (light documents on dark surface, dark pages on light surface) so that we can detect edges, this will allow our image software to also de-skew the image and make it square.  

 

See this video for business card scanning tips.  The techniques work the same regardless if you are photographing business cards or documents.  

[wsp 11]

Thanks for this useful reminder about taking photos with the document camera at something other than a ninety-degree angle, but that still doesn't solve the problem I mentioned earlier: the always-on flash makes it essentially unusable in libraries (and probably certain other public places). Why not just make the flash "on" by default but then give us the option of turning it off as necessary? As I recall, that's what the previous version of EN (iOS, that is) did. We users are intelligent enough to figure out that the document camera needs quite a bit of light, and if we're in a library (or whatever) that doesn't allow flash, we'll use light from another source such as a reading lamp.

[mcheng 106]

Thanks for the feedback.  We'll look into ways to better accommodate the library use case.  

[wsp 11]

I see that the latest iOS version claims that you can turn off the flash now, and that's true -- sort of. I find that it still produces a faint, residual flash. I'm glad we've made some progress on this issue, but why not let us turn off the flash completely? I might be able to use the document camera now in libraries, but I still have to worry that a librarian with exceptionally acute vision is going to chastise me.

 

Bill

[wsp 11]

OK, I've now done some further experiments, and I see that I didn't give an accurate description of what is happening.

 

On the iPad, the document camera seems to produce no flash at all. Nor is there, as far as I can tell, any way of turning on the flash.

 

On the iPhone, even if you turn off the flash for the document camera, it still burns very intensely before, during, and after the exposure. 

 

So what's going here?. I quote from the description of version 7.3.1: "Note editor should no longer flash when downloading new content." Does this perhaps refer to the ordinary camera rather than the document camera? If not, what does it mean?

 

We seem to be back to square one on this issue.

[dtwhite 9]

I have noticed I have this issue with Evernote on iOS7. The flash stays on when I want to capture on image in "page" mode. There is a toggle button to turn off the flash, or to set it to "auto", but when I hit these, nothing happens, and the flash stays on. The effect of this is on certain paper types there is a white "burst" on the image. I have reverted to just taking pages in ordinary photo mode to circumvent the problem (flash turns off in normal photo mode no problem.

 

Anyone else still experiencing this problem? I am running the latest version of Evernote for iOS, on an iPhone 4S.

[southernforge 69]

dtwhite:

I opened a support ticket with Evernote about this issue. Their reply was they'll consider the request for on-demand disabling, but it's apparently not a priority for them.

[mcheng 106]

Hi wsp,

 

Apple's iPads never included a flash.

[Ed Crabtree 0]

It has apparently been a problem for years. CardMunch did not have this problem and worked fine.

[BSquare 0]

This makes the feature pretty much unusable...just too many glossy cards out there and takes way too much time fiddling with it to still get poor results.  

[mcheng 106]

Hi BSquare,

We have added detection for glossy cards in the latest iOS client release to help warn you if the flash will be a problem.  It currently works primarily with very high gloss cards but we are tuning the detection algorithm to also accomodate less glossy card stock.  

In general, the light is a benefit as it enhances the quality of the picture and improves recognition.  The gloss warning we added reminds you to tilt the phone at an angle to ensure the light bounces off the card rather than flashing back into the camera.  CardMunch didn't have this issue because they used actual humans to transcribe the information.

[footballer 0]

The flash being on all the time for the document camera with no option to disable it, implies that Evernote has no faith in the end user's ability to judge appropriate lighting quality. I will never use any of the options that force flash, which cripples the usability of what could be a great feature. I have used the business card scanner twice and I hate the results because of the flash.