More of my Free software: Wifi Remote Play ~ Erebus RPG
Open Camera is an Open Source Camera app for Android phones and tablets. Features:
(Some features may not be available on all devices, as they may depend on hardware features, or the Android version.)
Nokia X users can download from Nokia Store!
Open Camera is completely free, however if you wish you can show your appreciation and support future development by purchasing my donation app from Google Play (note, not available for Nokia X). You can also donate through Paypal (Paypal account not required, supports debit or credit card) or Bitcoin (Bitcoin address 1LKCFto9SQGqtcvqZxHkqDPqNjSnfMmsow). Thanks!
Open Camera Blog ~ Discussion Forums ~ Code Repository (Git)
System requirements
This requires Android 4.0 or better. I've tested this successfully on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Asus Nexus 7 (2013), running Android 4.3. The auto-stabilise feature may not be available if the app deems there is not enough memory (RAM) available (technical explanation: requires 128MB of "large heap").
Quickstart
Simply point, and press the blue camera icon 
to take a photo.
The camera will automatically focus before taking the picture. You can also focus at any time by touching on the screen. If
your device supports focus areas, you can touch the part of the screen you want to focus. Touching an area will also
(if your device supports it) control the exposure level (e.g., so clicking on a bright area will adjust the exposure
so that it becomes less bright). To zoom, either
press use the zoom "-" and "+" control buttons, use the slider next to those buttons, or do a multi-touch "pinch"
gesture. You can also control via the volume keys on
your phone or tablet - by default, pressing them will take a photo, but can change this to zoom in/out from the
Settings.
You can press the gallery icon to view your photos
(by default saved in the OpenCamera folder) - it will show the most recent image or video. The gallery button's
icon will also show a thumbnail for the most recent image/video. Note that there is also an option
in the Settings to "Pause after taking photo" - if ticked,
then when you take a photo, the image will be displayed - to keep the photo, touch the screen (or take another photo). To delete it,
press the trash icon 
. To share an image, press the share icon
.
The screen display is kept on when Open Camera is running as the foreground app (if you want to switch off the display, do so on your device manually).
On-Screen User Interface
A white square is shown (depending on the focus mode), which turns green to indicate that the auto-focus was successful, or red if it was not.
Switch camera - Switches between front and back camera (if your
device has two cameras).
Switch to/from video - Switches between taking photo mode, and
recording video mode. When in video mode, the take photo icon will change to the record video icon
.
Flash mode - Click this to cycle through the available flash modes. Popup
text will explain what each mode is. (Only available if the camera supports flash.)
Focus mode - Click this to cycle through the available focus modes.
Popup text will explain what each mode is. (Only available if the camera supports different focus modes.)
Exposure compensation - Clicking this will bring up a
slider and plus/minus buttons which can be used to control the exposure compensation. A higher value increases
the exposure, so that pictures come out brighter in low light; a lower value makes pictures darker. Set to 0 for
the default exposure. To get rid of the slider and buttons, either click the Exposure button again, or click
elsewhere on the screen. See Exposure compensation.
(Only available if the camera supports control of the exposure.)
Gallery - Click to launch the Gallery app, to view the most recent photo/video (by default saved in the OpenCamera folder). If you get the message "No Gallery app available", then you should install a Gallery app (e.g., Gallery ICS).
Settings - Click to open the Settings. (If your phone/tablet
has a hardware menu button, pressing that should also open the settings.)
The on-screen display also shows the remaining battery left (green/red status bar in the corner), and optionally
the zoom level (if zoomed in), the remaining free storage space on the device, and the current angle orientation
of the camera. If "Store location data" is enabled (off by default), then a small "earth" icon
will appear next to
the battery indicator when the location is available (you can still take photos when the earth icon doesn't show,
it's just that location data won't be stored in the photo). A dot shows to the top-right of the earth icon to
indicate the accuracy (green for accurate, yellow for less accurate). If the location isn't available, a red dash will be shown through the earth icon.
All Android cameras will rotate the photo depending on the orientation of the camera, but only to the nearest 90 degrees - so the photos look right whether you hold the device in "portrait" or "landscape" mode. But Open Camera has the option to rotate the photos so they are perfectly level, so your shots come out looking perfectly level every time!
The above shows a rather exaggerated example - in practice, you can probably take better photos, but this feature ensures they come out perfectly level, without you having to edit them afterwards in a photo editor. Of course you won't always want this - perhaps you're going for artistic 45-degree shots - so this is an option. By default it is disabled. To enable, go to the Settings, and enable "Auto-stabilise". Note that this feature is memory intensive - it will not be available on devices with low memory. Even where it is available, the performance of taking photos will be slower, and there is a risk it may cause the app to fail on devices I haven't been able to test. If you do have problems, you'll have to disable the feature again.
Also note that the feature reduces the available space in the image - because rotating an image makes it no longer fit into a rectangular image, so we have to crop it. So it's still advisable to try to hold the camera reasonably level when using this feature.
Camera Effects:
Auto-stabilise - Enable the auto-stabilise features for photos (see above). (Only available if the device has enough memory.)
Apply a color effect - Choose a color effect to apply. (Only available if the camera supports color effects.)
Apply a scene mode - Choose a scene mode to apply. (Only available if the camera supports scene modes.)
Set the white balance - Choose a method to control how the white balance is set. See here for an explanation of white balance. (Only available if the camera supports different white balance settings.)
Face detection - If this is enabled, then the camera will automatically try to detect faces, and use them for the focus, metering (exposure) and white balance. Faces will be drawn as yellow squares when detected. Note that if this option is enabled, then you will not be able to touch to manually select the focus area, and the white balance option will have no effect (since the face recognition will be used to determine these).
Camera Controls:
Timer - Set a timer for taking photos or recording video.
Timer beep - Whether to beep when the timer is counting down, or for the burst mode delay (see below).
Burst mode - Take a repeated set of photos when the camera button is pressed.
Burst mode interval - Specify the delay (if any) between photos in burst mode. Note that if no delay is selected, the actual speed that the photos are taken at will depend on the performance of your device's camera. If a delay is selected, note that this does not include the time taken to auto-focus and take each photo.
More camera controls - Select to access the following controls:
Preview size - By default, Open Camera makes the camera preview (the image that is displayed on the phone/tablet's display) as large as possible, trying to fill the available space. However if the resolution of the photo/video is a different aspect ratio to that of your device, this will result in the preview being cropped. If instead you select "Match photo/video size (WYSIWYG)", then the aspect ratio of the preview will match that of the photo/video resolution. The advantage is that what you see in the preview will match what will be in the resultant photo or video ("What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get") - though this may mean you will have "black bars" on the display in order to do this.
Pause after taking photo - If ticked, after taking a photo the display will pause, with options to share or delete the photo. To keep the photo and continue, touch the screen (or take another photo).
Shutter sound - Whether to play a sound after taking a photo. (Requires Android 4.2 or higher to disable.)
Volume keys - You can set what happens when the volume keys are pressed: either take photo/video, zoom in/out, change the exposure compensation, or just change the device's volume as normal.
Save location - Enter the folder to store the photos in. This can be either a relative path (e.g., OpenCamera or even something like MyPics/Camera) in which case the folder will be located inside the "DCIM" folder (usually something like /sdcard/DCIM/ ). For more advanced users, if the folder name starts with "/", then it indicates the full absolute path (e.g., /sdcard/Pictures/Photos ). Note that folder names are case sensitive. OpenCamera will attempt to create the folder (and any sub-folders as required) if it doesn't exist. If you specify a path that you don't have write permissions for, then OpenCamera will fail to save images/videos (and this will be reported when you try to take a photo or video). You can also use this option to save to an external SD card, though unfortunately the path varies depending on the device, so you'll have to look this up yourself (it's usually something inside /mnt/ - a file explorer app such as ES File Explorer may help).
UI placement - Whether to optimise the user interface for left-handed or right-handed use.
Show zoom - Whether to display the current zoom level of the camera (when zoomed in).
Show free memory - Whether to display the remaining storage space of the device.
Show angle - Whether to display the orientation angle of the device's camera.
Show angle line - Whether to display a horizontal "level" line that visually indicates the orientation of the device.
Show compass direction - Whether to display the compass direction of the device's camera.
Show a grid - Whether to display one of a choice of grids on the camera preview (including 3x3 grid, which helps with applying the rule of thirds).
Show thumbnail animation - Whether to display the moving thumbnail animation when taking a photo.
Force maximum brightness - Whether to force the screen display to maximum brightness.
Photo and Video Settings:
Photo and video settings - Select to access the following controls:
Camera resolution - Select the resolution of photo images taken by the camera. Note that if auto-stabilise is enabled, images will in general come out as a slightly lower resolution (due to the rotation and cropping that's required).
Image quality - The image quality of saved JPEG images. Higher means better quality, but the image files will take up more storage space.
Store location data (Geotagging) - If selected, then photos will be tagged with the current location, and compass direction.
Video resolution - Select the resolution of videos taken by the camera.
Record audio - Whether to record audio when recording a video.
Audio source - Select the audio source for recording video. The effect of this depends on your device - if it supports an external microphone, you may be able to use this by selecting "External mic".
Misc:
Online help - Load this web page.
Donate to support development - Loads the page for my donation app.
About - Provides various debug information about the app and your device's camera. You can also copy this information to the clipboard.
Contacting me (bugs etc)
Please contact me at mark dot harman at ntlworld dot com for bug reports, feature suggestions, etc. I can only test Open Camera on a small number of devices, so if you are having problems, these may be issues that I am unaware of, so reporting bugs will help me improve Open Camera!
If you experience a crash, and Google offers to "Report", please do so. If you are reporting a bug, it is also helpful to email me the "About" information - please go to Settings/About, then click "Copy to clipboard", then you can paste the information into an email (or Google Keep, or wherever) to send to me.
History
Version 1.9 (2014/03/22)
FIXED Crash on some devices when starting app or switching camera.
Version 1.8 (2014/03/18)
FIXED Crash on startup if Network or GPS location providers not available,
and geotagging was enabled.
FIXED Crash if specified save folder was an empty string.
FIXED Don't ever turn on flash during autofocus when app is launched.
FIXED Various other crashes.
ADDED Option to not force screen display to maximum brightness.
ADDED Option to display horizontal "level" line.
ADDED Support for hardware menu button (now opens settings).
ADDED Option to display a 4x2 grid (if you previously had a 3x3 "rule of
thirds" grid, you'll have to reenable it under the Settings).
ADDED Added privacy policy (for location permission/geotagging) to intro
window text (needed for Nokia Store).
ADDED Uses setRecordingHint, may improve performance of starting video
recording.
ADDED New About option in Settings, providing debug info.
UPDATED Don't re-autofocus before taking a photo, if camera recently
successfully focused due to user touching the screen.
UPDATED Display yellow or green dot next to earth icon to indicate location
accuracy.
UPDATED Display earth icon with red dash through it, if geotagging is enabled,
but the app doesn't have a location.
UPDATED Current zoom is now saved when app goes idle, or switching cameras.
UPDATED Offset zoom slider slightly so as to not interfere with Google Now
swipe.
UPDATED Allow greater range of characters (including unicode) for save location
(now allows any character other than those reserved by filesystem).
Version 1.7 (2014/01/29)
FIXED More fixes for aspect ratio - the preview display should now always
have a 1:1 aspect ratio (on some devices this may mean black bars are
shown, if there isn't a match between the camera's available preview
sizes, and the aspect ratio of the device's display).
FIXED Possible crash relating to creating thumbnails.
FIXED Autofocus on startup didn't always actually focus.
FIXED If camera doesn't support focus areas, but does support metering areas,
still set the metering area.
FIXED Was sometimes trying to set metering areas when metering areas not
supported by device.
FIXED If image is deleted after taking the photo, the thumbnail is now
properly updated to what is now the most recent photo or video.
ADDED New option to set preview aspect ratio to match the picture/video
aspect ratio (WYSIWIG).
UPDATED Save folder can now be an absolute path, allowing possibility to save
on external SD cards (though you need to know what the path is, which
typically varies depending on device; I am unable to test this, so
please let me know if it does or doesn't work).
UPDATED Zoom -/+ control now matches the zoom slider orientation.
UPDATED Hide some icons when taking video, as they don't do anything.
Version 1.6 (2014/01/20)
FIXED Crash when trying to access image or video resolutions in settings, if
camera didn't offer these settings.
FIXED Exposure compensation wasn't available on devices if min or max
exposure compensation level was equal to 0.
FIXED Aspect ratio problems with the preview on some devices (if you are
still having problems, please let me know what Android device you are
using).
FIXED Aspect ratio problems with the preview on all devices when switching
the camera.
FIXED Problem on smaller devices where on-screen text overlapped with take
photo button; the text is now aligned to above the button on all
devices.
ADDED Zoom can now be also controlled via on-screen slider (next to the
plus/minus zoom buttons).
ADDED Option for volume keys to control the exposure compensation.
ADDED Option to display compass direction of camera on-screen (defaults to
on, disable it in options if you don't like it).
ADDED Option to choose microphone for recording audio (support for external
microphones).
UPDATED Exposure compensation is now set via a new button in the on-screen GUI
(the black and white +/- symbol) instead of the settings. Clicking this
will bring up a slider and plus/minus buttons to adjust the exposure
compensation. To get rid of the slider and buttons, either click the
Exposure button again, or click elsewhere on the screen.
UPDATED Geotagging now stores image compass direction (GPSImgDirection,
GPSImgDirectionRef).
UPDATED Display degree symbol for displayed on-screen angles.
UPDATED Zoom control is now transparent.
UPDATED Filter applied to sensor for device angle.
Version 1.5 (2014/01/09)
FIXED Crash on Android 4.4 when launching for first time, or changing the
save folder (issue with creating the save folder, due to Android no
longer allowing ANDROID_MEDIA_MOUNTED to be broadcast).
FIXED Crash if failed to open camera after switching cameras, then user tried
to zoom.
FIXED Other potential crashes (NumberFormatException on "es209ra" on startup;
RuntimeException on Xperia Go when taking photo; RuntimeException on
"maxx_ax5" when taking photo with face detection).
Version 1.4 (2013/12/16)
FIXED Calculation for focus areas wasn't right for front facing cameras.
FIXED Exif data wasn't getting saved if auto-stabilise option was enabled
(this also meant that on some cameras/focus modes, the orientation
would have been incorrect).
FIXED "Toast" pop-up messages looked poor on Android 4.4.
FIXED Fixed potential crash if taking picture fails.
FIXED Touch to focus with continuous focus shouldn't show red box.
FIXED Crash with auto-stabilise for some angles larger than 90 degrees.
FIXED Crash when rotating device when viewing "Photo and video settings".
FIXED If device was rotated when app was idle, the UI sometimes showed with
the incorrect orientation.
ADDED Images now tagged with current location (optional, off by default). Note
that Open Camera now requires Location permission, for this feature.
ADDED Option for face detection.
ADDED Touch to select focus area also now sets the metering area (used to
determine exposure).
ADDED Now displays current time.
ADDED Option to display a 3x3 grid ("rule of thirds").
ADDED Now displays flashy thumbnail animation when taking a photo (you can
disable this in the options under "More camera controls..." if you
don't like this sort of thing!)
UPDATED Gallery button now displays thumbnail of last image/video taken.
UPDATED Clicking the Gallery button now goes to most recent image/video.
UPDATED Made it easier to see on-screen text when underlying photo preview is
bright, by drawing a background with the text.
Version 1.3 (2013/11/18)
FIXED Video files may not have shown up properly in other apps, or over USB,
until rebooting device.
FIXED Make sure filenames for images/videos are unique.
ADDED New burst mode option - take a repeated set of photos at once, or with
a delay.
ADDED Option for video resolution.
ADDED Display battery status on screen.
UPDATED Reorganised settings screen to remove clutter - less commonly used
options have been moved to sub-screens; "Record audio?" is moved to
"Photo and video settings..."
UPDATED Only show zoom level (if that option is set) when actually zoomed in.
Version 1.2 (2013/11/09)
FIXED Crash when launching gallery, if no Gallery app installed on device.
FIXED Selecting a focus area shouldn't switch to focus mode auto.
FIXED Focus area wasn't getting reset when it should (e.g., changing focus
mode or zooming).
FIXED Fixed potential crash on auto focus.
FIXED Hide GUI options while taking a photo (otherwise problems can be caused
by changing options, e.g., changing focus mode).
FIXED Message for failing to open camera was too wide for portrait view.
ADDED Option for exposure compensation.
ADDED Show whether auto focus was successful or not (via red/green rectangle)
even if focus area not selected.
UPDATED Pause after taking photo now defaults to false.
UPDATED Made "toasts" look nicer.
UPDATED Added simple instructions to the intro window shown on first time
start-up.
Version 1.1 (2013/10/27)
ADDED Touch to select focus area.
ADDED Optional beep on timer countdown.
ADDED Option on whether to display the current camera zoom level on screen.
Version 1.0 (2013/10/17)
First release.
Licence
Open Camera is released under the GPL v3 or later. The source code is available from https://sourceforge.net/projects/opencamera/files/. The file exposure.png is also dual licensed under GPL v3 or later, and CC BY 4.0 or later (attribute to Mark Harman and please link to http://opencamera.sourceforge.net/ ).
The following third party files are used in Open Camera:
