How good is the front camera on the Galaxy S2?

We recently had a look at how the photographs taken with the 8MP main camera on the Samsung Galaxy S2 look, and lets admit, they look impressive, vibrant and sharp. As well as that camera however the phone also features a front facing camera this really more used for video calls rather than as a still camera. This doesn't mean you can't use it as a 2MP still camera to take photos with. The photographs in this entry have all been taken with this front camera.

Sadly when you're using this camera mode you'll notice that the only thing you can really get a good focus on is yourself (see the picture of me to the right hand side).
Whilst you can take photographs of others things, like this wardrobe picture to the left you'll notice a number of issues. Firstly, as the wardrobe picture shows, your angles are hit and miss, you can't actually see the image you're taking a photo of, unless your taking a photograph of yourself. This means your pictures are given stupid slants and your miss things. It sort of looks like a drunk has taken it because you've effectively taken the photo "blind".

This picture to the right however shows an even bigger problem however, the pictures are often too dark. Unless you're taking a picture of your own face you do need a really good lighting source as there is no flash on the front camera. This moans not only are shots taken "blind" but they are then given a "dark" look which sort of further distills the quality of the image.

Whilst the images of the wardrobe and the person on the couch are really poor photographs it does need to be said that this is the best to take a self shot image. It allows you to see yourself before taking the photograph and get the image right, however for anything else you're best off using the main camera to take photographs as it is a much more complete camera (and not just a higher quality one).

How to take a self shot video using a Samsung Galaxy S2

In the past we have looked at how to take a self shot photograph with the the Samsung Galaxy S2, well another self shoot option is taking a video again using the phones front camera. To do this we need to select the "Self recording" or "Self shoot" option. If you start by selecting the "Video camera" mode when you open camera you have 2 options to enable self shooting. The first option is by clicking the video camera icon in the top left corner (as you can see in the picture to the right). Alternatively you can click on the cog icon to open up the settings menu (see below).

When you've selected the self shoot option you will see whatever is infront of the front camera (which is on the top of the phone near the SAMSUNG logo). If you press on the record button (the big red one) you will begin to film whatever is in front of the lens, usually, yourself.

This isn't as good as the camera on the back of the phone (filming in a locked resolution of 640x480 as opposed to the HD quality of the main camera) though if you're wanting to do a video for something like youtube where you are talking into the camera this is an easier way to do it and see what you're actually filming.