I agree. I wouldn't go so far as to call it "garbage", but I was a bit disappointed with the Note 2 cam when coming from a iPhone 4S. Sometimes it is as good as the 4S cam, but I find it far less reliable. My "fast draw and shoot" photos would usually come out surprisingly well on the 4S, not so much on the Note 2.
I'm hoping the camera loads faster on the Note 3 as well. How is the cam load time on the Galaxy S4, by the way?
EDIT: Actually now that I've tested it a few times, it seems to me that the camera load time on the Note 2 has improved since the OTA firmware update recently
I've noticed that the landscape/portrait has become more realible and doesn't freeze anymore since the update, perhaps cam load time is related? Because it seems to go through a gyro orientation test each time the cam is started, regardless of whether the phone's orientation has been changed sine the last time the cam was open. Has anyone else noticed this? (Sorry for derail.)
EDIT 2: I'm an idiot, forget everything I said about the camera load time. I hadn't tried turning off animations in the developer options... Now the camera starts up so much faster, holy crap why haven't I done this before? The whole phone feels so much faster now