Scratched camera lens? Getting bad pictures? #How-to fix it!

answered 2016-01-04 17:06:58 +0200

lakutalo
20555 ●168 ●261 ●264

updated 2016-01-24 22:41:01 +0200

Rubbing off the upper layer or "coating" of your camera lens simply removes the infra-red (IR) filter, which is supposed to prevent colour biasing.

Your results actually show more brightness in daylight due to one layer less responsible for light scattering. But taking pictures in environments with heavy IR sources like halogen lamps or sun light might result in significant artefacts.

To re-establish the original status, you could try to apply IR filter film to the camera again after having polished it.

EDIT 20160123: To visualise the effect of the IR filter I took a picture of a glowing LED of a remote control, once with my Jolla using an intact lens, and once with a RaspiCam NoIR which lacks any filter. Whereas the Jolla cam barely showed the LED, the NoIR showed a lot more, including a lot of pretty artefacts :)

Remote control LED, about 20cm distance to Jolla camera, showing a bit less than by a polished lens, shown in @ralooyar 's sample.

Same LED, same distance, taken with a Raspberry NoIR cam, showing much more.

answered 2016-01-04 16:01:54 +0200

ralooyar
1713 ●23 ●53 ●42

updated 2016-01-23 17:44:18 +0200

I had this problem, too: The purple lens finish of my Jolla's back camera was totally scratchy and pictures look very foggy. :( But thanks to all those great community posts here, I got encouraged to do something against this.

"What could go wrong?" (TM) In the worst case, I might loose the camera at all, but since pictures from the back camera look so ugly, the camera is already lost to me. (Of course, I could wreck my Jolla phone completely, but since "I will be very careful", I rate chances low for this.) ;)

Since I had no "Displex Display Polish" or something else at home, I tried the "toothpaste and cotton swap" approach. Putting a very little portion of toothpaste on the cotton swap about every minute and rubbing the lens with this for about 10 minutes, I could rub off 99% of the lens finish. And in the end, I cleaned the remainings of toothpaste with a cotton swap soaked with a little bit of Isopropyl alcohol. This stuff evaporates fast and does not leave remainings.

After cleaning, there is still some toothpaste, which sneaked in the gap between lens element and lens holding, but I hope, this won't affect usability. I could not reach it in this small gap. But I think this is only an "beauty issue".

Now, my Jolla's back camera is back to old quality (still not excellent, but useful, again). I am very happy! Thanks for the community posts in these three lens threads!

Addition:

@Mano: A picture taken in a dark room. The only light source is a JC G4 12V halogen light bulb.

Same scene as above, with halogen light and jolla phone LED-flash.

@lakutalo: And a picture of one of my remote control IR-LEDs. The light emission of the LED is too weak, too illuminate complete pictures, so I took a direct picture of the LED. On my digital camera (with untouched IR filter) the light emitted from the IR LED is visible, too. Although it is in pink color there.