Video Camera quality

[Chris G]

Neither take good video its too shoppy. Maybe the Surface 3 might be okay at that. If you check out my Surface 3 review I have a video sample uploaded.

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[Nigel Allen]

Thanks fir replying.  I didnt want to pay out as much as that for a tablet.  If I wad to go for an android tablet and not a dual boot one do you know of any ones which have a good video camera facility?

[Evan]

Unfortunately camera quality is one of those things that manufacturers don’t tend to pay much attention to. It’s easy (and cheap) to put in tiny image sensor with lots of pixels, but what you actually need is a big sensor (for more light-gathering) and a good-quality lens. For most purposes, an ancient 2MP sensor with a good lens on it is going to be a lot better than some shiny new 15MP sensor with a lump of transparent plastic between it and the world. Even on the “high-end” tablets, the camera/lens tends to be adequate rather than “good”.

How about getting something like a second-hand Nokia 1020 phone, just for video? They do have good cameras (huge sensor, optical stabilisation, top-quality lens) and they’re generally very cheap (Windows phones don’t hold their value). Not as good as a tablet for display due to the small screen, but that’d free you to get a tablet that’s good in every other way, and you can always connect the phone to the tablet and view the video that way.

[Nigel Allen]

Thanks for the reply.  At the moment i use my lg2 phone for videoing and the quality is fine but when you play it back the picture is just to small.  Its fine when I get home and can play it on the tv but I need to be able to show it to my daughter straight away so she can improve her performance 10 minutes later.  Many people use ipad s but I wont buy apple products.  My current tablet produces choppy dark videos and this is the main reason I am looking for a new one.  Someone suggested the cube talk 9x was better than most but I don’t know.

[Evan]

It might be worth looking at a second-hand “high-end” tablet (they tend to use slightly better cameras simply because $5 for a decent lens is less important when the tablet sells for $1500 than when it’s aiming for $150). I’ve been looking at a Dell Venue 11 Pro, which is Windows-only but it sounds like AMI’s AMIDuOS software will run Android apps pretty much perfectly. There are alternatives from HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, etc. Surely one of them has a decent camera!

People are also looking at putting Android on a lot of these x86 tablets, although it’s slow going.

 

Regarding Apple: Apple buys image sensors from the same suppliers as everyone else (normally OmniVision). Like the higher-end companies (Dell, Lenovo, etc) they tend to spend a little bit of money on a decent lens, but the iPad is still a pretty hopeless imaging device. If the aim is just to match iPad-level performance, that’s probably going to be relatively easy.

[Nigel Allen]

Thanks again for your reply.  Yes I am only looking at ipad quality for video recording.  I have looked at people using these and the quality is suitable for my needs.  What tablets do you think could give this sort of quality and are there any test videos on line showing the camera quality.  I think it would be really helpful to me – but maybe to much trouble for you guys – if someone could do some test videos with these tablets and put them on you tube for me to see.  To be honest though I am probably expecting to much for you to go to the trouble to do this as it would be a lot of work.

[Evan]

The challenge is finding someone who’s got all the tablets (keeping in mind that they need to be older versions, since you most likely don’t want to spend $1000+ on a new one) and can do testing in appropriate scenarios (I’m guessing well-lit indoors, which is nowhere near as much light as a sunny day outdoors, and therefore tends to reduce quality). There’s a Venue 11 Pro video here and a Surface Pro 2 video here. I’ve found just searching for “<tablet name> camera” on Youtube tends to find relevant videos. However, they all tend to be outdoors.

[Author]

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