As we all know there is a persistent firmware bug in the A70 Camera app. (Version 11.0.16.34). Unfortunately Samsung has not fixed this issue during the past 36+ months.
Planned obsolescence of hardware for a greener planet comes to mind.
Today I downloaded a new version of "Open Camera" version V1.51.1. It turns out with some tweaking it is possible to take macro shots (within 5..10 inches of the subject) in low light conditions that are razor sharp.
The tweaking consists of going into the main "take a picture screen" of OpenCam. Then press the three vertical dots (top of screen). A menu shows up that allows you to select a few preset autofocus modes: AF (AutoFocus), Infinity, Macro and Lock mode.
Now in my case when wanting to take a close up macro picture, the trick is to first activate infinity mode , wait a few seconds then switch to macro mode. Result was a razor sharp close up in low light conditions. I have not extensively tested this,however it seems you sometimes have to switch focus modes a few times to get to a sharp non-blurry Macro shot with OpenCam. Maybe the OpenCam focus mode switching workaround also helps under different conditions.
Under the same lighting/makro/distance conditions the standard Samsung camera app is unable to focus on the subject, thus absolutely useless. As reported here for years it keeps going in and out of focus.
It is really hard to understand why the Samsung Android firmware engineering team responsible for "legacy hardware" like the A70 has been unable to fix this issue for it's customers?
#A70 #camera
