Surface Pro 3 Fixed Focus Camera... can that even be improved?

[lucapinello]

Hey guys,
I made a 3d model that you can print to fix the problem.
You can find the link in my twitter page lucapinello or in my thingiverse page (I cannot post the link since I am a new user)

You can download and print it for free.
Enjoy!

Luca Pinello

 

[Tracy Rounds]

My primary problem is with the exposure settings, which are terrible. For a camera that is supposed to be high-quality, I could take a picture with a $20 kids camera from Walmart and get better resolution and white balance. You can see from these two pictures (taken on a $99 Samsung Galaxy Discover phone no less), that the exposure settings are ridiculous.

 

[humeston]

One of the reasons, being a minor one I purchased the Surface Pro 3 was for the front facing camera. I need to scan documents. Not many, one or two a week, and needed that camera. However, it is one of the worse cameras I've seen. I had an Android tablet and ran Handy Scan, which with the excellent camera on the tablet made perfect scans! Not so much with the Surface. I have to place the document on the floor and then hold the Surface about 3 feet above the document in order for the fixed focus to have a chance of getting a clean shot. Yes, it is workable, but Handy Scan is Android only, so that does not help. I use Genius Scan and it does a good enough job. I can survive, but then again, I only scan documents once or twice a week. You would think since Surface Pro 3 is designed for office people that Microsoft would realize that a decent scanning camera would be important.

But that is my only complaint so far. The Surface is replacing my laptop and my tablet, and coming close to replacing my desktop.

- Dart

 

[CitizenDee]

The issue is with the camera, and it is a ridiculous oversight from MS in an expensive, flagship product aimed at those looking to improve their productivity. A fixed focal range does mean you will get very blurry and unusable pictures from anything below the focal distance and no software sharpening can fix this as someone has already pointed out. Also this is a hardware limitation and cannot be fixed by firmware updates. I use my SP3 in a corporate setting and while taking handwritten notes in OneNote that are then OCR'd is a fantastic option, I often have whiteboard notes and printed meeting handouts that I need to capture. Using the SP3 to quickly snap those and add them right into the note would have been, I thought, a no-brainer. Instead I need to use a second device to take the photos, upload to OneNote, then go into OneNote, sync the SP3 and then cut and paste the image from the new note, to the old note with the handwritten notes.
Or I can buy stick on bifocal lenses from Ebay, sticky tape them to the SP3 which reduces the focal range to the right length, and then of course fight with OneNote 2013 not being able to recognise the inbuilt camera anyway, or use the OneNote Metro app which has none of the features of Office Lens so I get an awkward, low light, but in-focus copy (a colleague showed me Office Lens on his Win8 phone and it is truly marvellous and again I cannot understand why that tech isn't in everything MS has with a camera).
This is why in two decades Apple has gone from half the value of Microsoft, to double it. They work on all aspects and make them usable rather than MS who work on perfecting a few aspects and then shove any old crap in to fill the holes.

 

[mpbl]

I'm very disappointed with the camera's limitations. My old Samsung Galaxy S3 takes extremely good document pictures (I use it for receipts) and fires them straight into Evernote. However, it would have been really useful to use the surface pro and simple drop receipts straight into the appropriate folders in Windows Explorer instead of having to move them over from the Galaxy.