Hands On With New iPad's Cameras: One Good, One Not So Much

The new iPad has two cameras: a 5-megapixel one on the back, and a VGA camera on the front. And while the rear camera has been significantly improved from the iPad 2's VGA unit, the front camera isn't going to win any photography awards.

We're embedding images taken with both cameras in this article (below). Click on the images to blow them up to full, pixel-by-pixel size.

The rear camera is now a 5-megapixel unit with 1080p HD video recording. It has autofocus, face detection, and image stabilization. I shot a picture in the new iPad demo room. The EXIF data shows it to be 2,592-by-1,936 resolution and f/2.4.

The picture is a little soft, but that's probably because it was shot at 1/15 second shutter speed in the relatively dark demo room. That's about the slowest shutter speed you can use and still get images with acceptable levels of blur. Zooming in on the image, I'm impressed by how little boise there is, though, and the white balance is pretty spot-on; an analyst's white shirt is white.

The front camera, on the other hand, is for VGA video chatting only. Brightness is actually really good here: my face was very clear in the dark room and the shutter speed was 1/30 at f/2.4, perfect for 30 frame-per-second video conversations.

But the quality? Soft, grainy, stippled, and noisy, like a cell phone camera from five years ago or more. Apple demo guys told me they don't think of the front camera as a still camera, but you can use it in a pinch.

The iPad's cameras have fewer megapixels, but potentially more frills than some competing tablet cameras, like the one on . The Prime has an 8-megapixel rear camera, but had some problems with white balance in our tests. The Prime's VGA front camera only managed 15 frames per second in low light.

I haven't compared the two tablets directly against each other in the same room, though, which would make them comparable. I look forward to doing that when I review the new iPad. That said, it looks like the new iPad's rear camera will be good enough for any tablet photography or videography you feel like doing.

For more, see and the slideshow below.