Version 1.29

Version 1.29 is now released. Improvements are:

• Proper support for continuous picture focus mode. Previously continuous focus mode was always using the video mode, which isn't optimised for taking photos. Also taking a photo now waits for any in-progress focusing to complete, and there's a graphical effect to indicate when focusing occurs.

• Fixes for Camera2 API - the flash now works much better (at least on my Nexus 6), sluggish zooming was also fixed. There are still known issues (sometimes flash auto results in pictures where the photo isn't lit even though flash fired for focus - I reproduced this sometimes happening in Google Camera too; and I realised that touch to focus regions and face detection doesn't work properly when zoomed in, that'll be fixed for the next version!), but it's good enough now on my Nexus 6 for me to be using as standard. Other devices may differ though - on Samsung devices for example, flash doesn't seem to work properly still (precapture never starts), and I've had reports that video recording doesn't work.

• Various UI improvements and bug fixes.

I'm not sure why I left support for continuous picture focus mode for so long. I think I had a bad experience of it from my first Android device, the Galaxy Nexus - using the Google Camera, at first my thought was "wow, this takes pictures quickly", then I realised photos were often out of focus, and I thought being quick to take photos was simply a consequence of not focusing, so it was better to explicitly focus. Trying again now on my Galaxy Nexus, I still see it has the problem that continuous picture focus mode doesn't focus often enough, but it's much better on my Nexus 6. I now use this mode all the time - it means that the scene is almost always in focus automatically, photos are quick to take, and it also eliminates any risk that photos are out of focus because the autofocus fails.

If you are having problems with Camera2 API - or indeed if it's working fine - it'd be interesting to hear about it; also what are your experiences with other 3rd party camera apps that use Camera2 API?

To improve the behaviour in v1.29 of Open Camera, before precapture I first set CONTROL_AE_PRECAPTURE_TRIGGER to CONTROL_AE_PRECAPTURE_TRIGGER_IDLE and call setRepeatingRequest() with that, before then doing a capture() with CONTROL_AE_PRECAPTURE_TRIGGER set to CONTROL_AE_PRECAPTURE_TRIGGER_START. This is based on what Google Camera does. I'm still a bit unclear on what the correct method is to wait for precapture to have occurred - i.e., when to take the photo - everyone seems to be doing this differently (even Google's various examples/apps don't agree).