(Archived) Taking pictures of text

[dvdmon 0]

Dave or anyone else, was wondering if you guys had had much luck taking pictures of text? It seems that you need to be at least two or three feet from something to take a picture that's in focus. I know the iPhone has/had a similar issue which is why Clarify made their case which helped modify the lens to take pictures of closer objects. Do you think they (or someone else) might make something similar for the Pre and partner with you guys? Are there any workarounds to doing this? My hope is that with a new update, we'll see better ability to focus on closer objects, but I fear that it's simply a limitation with the physical lens and so without somethgin akin to the Clarify case, we may not have a real solution...

[engberg 89]

Unfortunately, this is a problem for most camera phones. Even if they have a camera with a lot of "pixels", the focal length of the lens is tuned for taking pictures from a few feet out to infinity (e.g. distant mountains), which means that objects within a foot or two are out of focus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macro_photography

A handful of camera phoness have "macro mode" to avoid this problem. Supposedly, the iPhone 3G S will include this, but we'll have to see how well it actually performs compared to the Clarifi.

I haven't seen anything for the Pre that would be as convenient as the Clarifi. There are various lenses you could put in your pocket, but this may be more of a hassle than it's worth:

http://themobileexperience.blogspot.com ... ellar.html

http://www.about-nokia.com/blog/index.php?itemid=349

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2005/09/28/lens- ... meraphone/

[dvdmon 0]

Thanks so much, Dave, I didn't realize stand-alone lenses were available. Also found this one:

http://bit.ly/13RT9E

And I'm sure others are available as well. It's too bad that we can't have interchangeable lenses on phones like I have on my DSLR, but I guess these come the closest. In general I've been very inpressed with the Pre's camera, so it's disappointing that this one usage will be challenging. My old HTC Touch could take pictures pretty darn close with great clarity, but in general the images didn't look nearly as good as on the Pre...

[engberg 89]

Yes, it's unfortunate that the camera hardware on even the best phones is far worse than the hardware on the worst, cheapest standalone cameras. I've seen a few efforts to come up with cameraphones that are more camera than phone ... Sony-Ericsson in particular has made a few Cybershot phones, but these are uncommon in North America.

[dvdmon 0]

I remember there was also all this talk a while back of liquid lenses for cellphones creating much better and more flexible optics, but as far I know this still hasn't been implemented by anyone...