BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

BlessN900 provides high-quality zoom, blur and noise free photos in low light, HDR imaging and more.

New version (0.41) is released (it's in extras-devel now).
Changes:
+ compatibility with PR1.3 (still works with PR1.2)
+ much higher quality of zoom (however, it's slower now)
+ zoom levels x1.5, x2, x3, x4
+ self-timer
+ shooting of series of images: burst, exposure bracketing, focus bracketing
+ shallow focus (beta) - take pro-like portrait images with the subject in focus and the background out-of-focus
+ settings: white balance, expocorrection, ISO
+ geotagging (beta)

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Great update for this app. Dont have now time actually test it, but it looks so much better and is much faster than earlier version.

Cool!

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Whew! Quite an update and some.....
Overall better image quality IMO. Still playing but so far a bug i that screen blanks and won't come back to blessn900. Closing lens cover or using screen lock slider does the trick.
Kudos again.... still shocked :)

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

tested it and as above said, one of the bug is the screen wont come back when it get blanked.

also, is it normal that hq mode resulting in pictures divided with boxes ?

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

could you please post an example?

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

looks like i accidentally enable an option for that.. sorry for the confusion.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

this doesn't show up in update in app manager, i have devels enabled and blessn900 installed

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

This is looking really great. I just did some 'good light' testing, for the zooming and the shallow modes. This evening I'll do some low light and HDR testing.

How does the 'shallow' mode work ? Where to take the focus from ? Or is always middle of the screen ? I did some experimenting with holding the focus key and moving slightly away from the focused object but I got not so good results.
Do we have to keep all centered for now ? No spot focus selection possible ? Or next version :D

Anyway, great new release. Little bug after returning from blanking as said before but easy manageable. But I did have a few times Bless crashing on me though. No messages, nothing to the user. Just closed. Gone. Bizarre...

Looking forward for the fixes/newer versions.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Same here - App Manager only shows v 0.35-1 on mine. Any ideas?

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Some very nice improvements to this very useful app - every N900 should have this!

I particularly like the way the multiple images are displayed whilst the app does its thing and combines them.

Some great speed improvements, and seems quite stable so far.

Now if you could do the same for the video camera...

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

I'm looking forward to using this application, but I think I will heed the warnings of the Extras-devel wiki page.
I've installed the fcam drivers. I will just have to exercise the patience of waiting for the new version to make it's way into the regular repository.
I will be following this thread for updates.
Love the idea of making thin shots with bokeh effect for portraits.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

If you could include functionality to disbale the red LED light then I'd jump on board; I know lfocus does this, but I find it quite buggy.

On a side note, is it possible to disable this through a conf. file?

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Love the improvements, and the UI is really good.
Good work.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

This sounds fantastic!

I have a question regarding the zoom: does it achieve better results than taking a normal photo and then cropping/resampling using a quality algorithm? In other words, does it use sensor tricks to get better results than can be achieved in post processing?

If the geotagging will add latitude and longitude if a GPS fix exists without demanding a network connection, it's a huge improvement over the default camera app.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

In 'Shallow Focus' mode the camera auto-focuses as usual. So you should just focus on the subject, as usual. The background should be far enough behind the subject (about 3 or more times further than the subject).

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Yes, it achieves much better results than upsizing a crop with any algorithm.
It takes a quick sequence of shots, combines the frames and performs so-called super-resolution processing.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

How does this program compare to fcam?

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

fcam is the API, i believe you mean fcamera, one of the example programs for the fcam API

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

I have to say I havent touched this app in some time, but the new gui and the quality of photos really impressed me when I tested this new version. Great stuff.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Upgraded yesterday. Impressed at first sight. Interface easier to understand. However, quite instable from last version.

It happened once that most of the screen became black out in Shallow mode but returned to normal by switching to other mode. Also several times the screen freezed when half-pressing the shuttor; also resumed normal by switching mode.

Hope there would be another upgrade to fix those bugs before going for vacation end of next week.

Planning to leave digital camera home and to count on the N900 to capture memorable moments.

TC

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Can someone show me some example shot in low lighting with this app.. pretty please?? Thanks

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

I have take few shots now and it seems nice, only thing i have it that the camera freezes quite often when i press camera button. Then i have to wait for a while or shut down the lens cover and open it again.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

here's one shot i took yesterday, not a very good example but for me is incredible how bless managed to capture details.
http://twitpic.com/33vbw8

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Edit /etc/mce/mce.ini and remove the LED pattern concerning Webcam.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

This seems to be an interesting camera app.

Apparently it is not open source (though it utilizes fcam-drivers...) and source code is not available.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Good improvements...lot of new features now..Thanks a lot..!!!

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

For some reason BlessN900 refers to the Fcam-drivers as "Nokia drivers", which they are not, giving the impression that they are part of the platform, which they are not. Instead the README of the Fcam-drivers states that:

"Modifications/additions to the kernel source code are:
Copyright (C) 2010 Stanford University

This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
published by the Free Software Foundation."

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Good stuff amazed at the zoom and working thought the different settings. Amazing to use this, fcamera and the default camera makes the camera on the N900 a powerful tool.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

http://fcam.garage.maemo.org/index.html says:
That's why we referred to fcam-drivers a "nokia drivers". Probably we should change the text to avoid confusions.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

A couple of quick shots on this rainy day here in Hong Kong,

- Shallow mode : http://twitpic.com/34bjl5

- HQ Zoom X 1 : http://twitpic.com/34blka

- HQ Zoom x 3 : http://twitpic.com/34bm3q

Liking improved photo quality and UI.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Exposure bracket mode rocks. Now I can't live without BlessN900 :-)

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

the Images i took using blessn900 does not appear in the photo gallery.. anyone experiences this? but after i reboot the phone, viola! the images i took are there.. but the when i delete the pictures, a corrupted like image thumbnail is displayed that says its a read-only file.. help anyone? :(

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Great job eugene! low light mode & HDR perform as advertised :)

I have an issue with the image viewer app, showing BlessN900 pics' thumbnails as mostly grey blocks. The pics themselves look fine when shown, just the thumbnail is corrupted. Any ideas? How could I regenerate the thumbnails?

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

One I took of my little boy today. HQ taken at sunset.

http://min.us/icFK7Q.jpg

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Its good but it takes for ever in HQ mode to process almost impossible to take photos if for example you have a function like a B'day or a just a get together, anyone else experienced it?

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

does this still conflicting with Fcam driver?

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

It works fine now. Worth installing.

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

The focus is on the background. Is it default in BlessN900?

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

Liking this bokeh shot I just took.

http://twitpic.com/34pb9v

Re: BlessN900 - better camera for N900
 

It takes 6-10 seconds if not more... reasonable for me considering the process involved.
but I usually use BlessN900 in challenging conditions and in such case the stock camera app is pretty useless as well (bad color shift, limited color range, bad noise, etc.)