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iPod touch The Definitive "How Bad is the iPod Touch 4G Still Camera" Thread

revelated

revelated

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 30, 2010
994
2
How bad is it? You decide.

I'm going to post three sections: Indoors with full natural light, outdoors, and low light.

For this test, I took identical photos from four different sources:
  1. Insignia HD NS-DCC5HB09: 5MP
  2. Palm Pre Plus (Verizon): 3MP
  3. HTC HD2 (T-Mobile): 5MP
  4. iPod Touch (4th Gen): .7MP

Indoors With Full Natural Lighting

Because I like irony, I took a snap of the Zune HD's box. On the left is the iPod Touch 4g. On the right is the HTC HD2 from T-Mobile. The pictures are sized, according to Snow Leopard Preview, the exact same resolution pixel count. HTC HD2 at its peak is in the thousands due to the high pixel count, so smaller it comes out looking crisp and clean. iPod Touch 4g for some reason is zoomed in greater than it really should be, IMO. Even zoomed everything looks extremely muddy.

screenshot20100919at422.jpg



Outdoors

For outdoors I needed something with a little more color, so I chose my bottle of N.O.XPLODE which is quite colorful and glittery, standing out in the sun quite tremendously. On this test I paired up the Touch with the Insignia HD camera/camcorder (realized I forgot to mark these. The Touch on the left, the Insignia on the right). The Insignia is known for taking good quality videos, but subpar photos except at smaller size. Clearly from the photos, even direct sunlight isn't enough to save the Touch's camera. The Touch had greater detail than the Insignia due to the Insignia's focal point viewing (a feature the iPhone 4 also has but the Touch lacks). The Insignia, even with apparently is a dirty lens, still put out a superior photo (obviously, since it's an actual camera, but the point is to illustrate how bad the Touch's camera really is.)

screenshot20100919at429.jpg



Low Light Conditions

Time to call in the Palm Pre Plus as the lowest resolution camera device I've currently got access to besides my MacBook Pro. The room this was taken in is not pitch black, but it's a fairly darkened hallway. What stood out is that the Touch seemed to scrape for every ounce of light possible to compensate for the dark conditions whereas the Pre accepted and showed what the naked eye could see. Even with this compensation the Touch's photo was absolutely horrid.

screenshot20100919at438.jpg
 
Actually if u have the right lightening, u can take some pretty nice pics with the iPod Touch. Here are a few pics I took last week with my iPod.

IMG_0176.jpg


IMG_0196.jpg


IMG_0202.jpg


IMG_0175.jpg


IMG_0174.jpg


IMG_0182.jpg


IMG_0184.jpg
 
miles01110 said:
Wow, who knew a .7 MP camera on a music player would be outperformed by 3+ MP cameras???!!! What an eye-opener.

:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

The idea is not to illustrate out-performance, but to provide a measure of just how bad the camera is so that people can decide if it's truly an issue for them or not.

fel10, thanks for contributing those additional photos. Great for some, the noise in every one of those pics would personally bother me though.
 
fel10 said:
Actually if u have the right lightening, u can take some pretty nice pics with the iPod Touch. Here are a few pics I took last week with my iPod.
Click to expand...

Well they are "pictures". I wouldnt call them "pretty nice pictures" though.
 
It's better than nothing. There are plenty of options available to consumers. I think including a modest still camera that takes 720p video, plus a front camera for FaceTime, is going to make this product successful for Apple. If you need a music player with a camera as good as an iPhone 4, then you'll need to keep looking. And I think you'll be looking for awhile. :)
 
I don't think the camera is the main #1 reason people decide to buy the iPod touch. It's a nice little extra that can be handy when you're out and about and near a wifi zone and want to share something you just saw or snap something minor that they'll post about later when they do get to a wifi zone, but any serious photo taker has their higher megapixel camera.
 
Im satisfied with my Touch's camera. Especially the 720p video. It takes very nice quality video which is the main reason I got it. The still camera is fine. A bit grainy in low light but in regular light it's still ok. I wont be doing any serious photoshoots with it but that's ok.
 
Alaerian said:
If you want a high quality still camera ... then go buy a high quality still camera?

I don't get the complaining. At all.
Click to expand...

Some people want their "singular" device. One that does it all, so they don't have to carry multiple devices.

I don't want my phone for games or movies, for example. But I do like my phone to do pictures and music. My Pre Plus's one technological shortcoming is the lack of autofocus on its camera. When supplemented with a magnifier it actually takes pretty good pictures. It also serves as quite a capable media player - though not perfect.
 
Well, my take is that is just plan stinks that it is different than on the iphone. I was hoping to have a nice 720P camera instead of buying yet another device, but it looks like I am going to have go get the Kodak Zi8 after all.
 
Apple Makes decisions based Entirely on profit like BP

It is the most disgusting example of Apples short sighted greed which always hurts a company in long term! Not only should they have not put a substandard piece of **** useless camera but they should have been upfront about it! They essentially lied about it and they has and will Hurt them. It's no different than blow out preventers from oil rig
 
It's better than not having the camera at all. I'm sure next version, Apple will put a better camera in there.
 
ascendedoshen said:
It is the most disgusting example of Apples short sighted greed which always hurts a company in long term! Not only should they have not put a substandard piece of **** useless camera but they should have been upfront about it! They essentially lied about it and they has and will Hurt them. It's no different than blow out preventers from oil rig
Click to expand...

haha, where did they lie? and how does this compare to an oil rig???? awesome arguments bro!
 
ascendedoshen said:
It is the most disgusting example of Apples short sighted greed which always hurts a company in long term! Not only should they have not put a substandard piece of **** useless camera but they should have been upfront about it! They essentially lied about it and they has and will Hurt them. It's no different than blow out preventers from oil rig
Click to expand...

Ya, by putting the resolution on their site they completely hid the truth right? How dare they put a camera in it at all! They probably caused deaths just like on oil rigs that explode too!
 
ascendedoshen said:
It is the most disgusting example of Apples short sighted greed which always hurts a company in long term! Not only should they have not put a substandard piece of **** useless camera but they should have been upfront about it! They essentially lied about it and they has and will Hurt them. It's no different than blow out preventers from oil rig
Click to expand...

I really hope your kidding. If not you are easily the most ignorant person I've ever met on this board.

And what if they hadn't included anything at all? I'm sure you would cry about that too and say something like "They should have at least added a 0.7 megapixel camera rather than nothing!!!"

There is no lie, the specs are right on apples page. Please take your trolling to another site. We have enough of them here already.

And before you post anything else, please find a magical way to engineer every feature you want into the exact same space the iPod touch has. Once you can outdo an apple engineer then you will have room to rant.
 
spblat said:
If you need a music player with a camera as good as an iPhone 4, then you'll need to keep looking. And I think you'll be looking for awhile. :)
Click to expand...

Nobody is expecting a camera "as good as" the iPhone 4. But 1.3-2MP isn't that much to ask. I believe the front facing camera is a higher res; if it was about the space in the body, the front camera would also be horrible. It's bad, but not nearly as bad as the back camera.
 
Bitcrusher said:
Wait, this comparison is between ipod 4 and cellphones? why not ipod4 vs mp3s with camera?
Click to expand...

Because no other MP3 players have camera's on them, and if they had them, it's probably gimmicky.

Unless you count the DSi and the 3DS (which both can play music, although only one specific type of file). In which case, the iPod touch still beats the DSi. The 3DS is arguable, because of the fact that it can take 3D pictures. xD

But other then that, the only real competition in terms of the camera for the iPod touch is in the cell phone market, because of the similar features to the iPhone.
 
revelated said:
Nobody is expecting a camera "as good as" the iPhone 4. But 1.3-2MP isn't that much to ask. I believe the front facing camera is a higher res; if it was about the space in the body, the front camera would also be horrible. It's bad, but not nearly as bad as the back camera.
Click to expand...

Front facing is VGA...which is lower quality than the back
 
When the Hubble telescope was first made it had a camera which took 800x800 photos (ipod touch is 960x720) so the ipod touch has slightly more pixels. But no one complained about the Hubble telescope at the time, and that took some pretty good photos......
 
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