Android ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE Intent

Question

We are trying to use the native camera app to let the user take a new picture. It works just fine if we leave out the EXTRA_OUTPUT extra and returns the small B

Answer 1

I've been through a number of photo capture strategies, and there always seems to be a case, a platform or certain devices, where some or all of the above strategies will fail in unexpected ways. I was able to find a strategy that uses the URI generation code below which seems to work in most if not all cases.

mPhotoUri = getContentResolver().insert(MediaStore.Images.Media.EXTERNAL_CONTENT_URI, 
            new ContentValues());
Intent intent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_IMAGE_CAPTURE);
intent.putExtra(MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT, mPhotoUri);
startActivityForResult(intent,CAPTURE_IMAGE_ACTIVITY_REQUEST_CODE_CONTENT_RESOLVER);

To contribute further to the discussion and help out newcomers I've created a sample/test app that shows several different strategies for photo capture implementation. Contributions of other implementations are definitely encouraged to add to the discussion.

https://github.com/deepwinter/AndroidCameraTester

Answer 2

I had the same problem where the OK button in camera app did nothing, both on emulator and on nexus one.

The problem went away after specifying a safe filename that is without white spaces, without special characters, in MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT Also, if you are specifying a file that resides in a directory that has not yet been created, you have to create it first. Camera app doesn't do mkdir for you.