My Motorola camera phone has a bug that I finally figured out.

I had noticed that when I took a picture and it goes to the Store / Discard the picture looks good, but after you select send the picture looks funky. I knew it was motion related, but could not tell when the problem occured.

I nailed the problem while taking a picture at IU Fort Wayne (above). I was taking a picture of the campus sign when a car drive through the frame. In the preview (Store/Discard) screen the car was on the right side of the frame. It was well framed – the car was on the right and the campus sign was on the left – it was lucky – so I wanted to save it.

However when I stored it, the car was on the left side of the frame – resulting in a crappy picture because the car obscures the sign.

But – I found the bug. Apparently some how two frames are grabbed about 1/4 second apart. The first frame is used for the preview and the second is stored. There are several possible explanantions for this – the first might be the last frame in the preview frame buffer at a lower resolution (say 160×120) while the second is the fuull 640×480 picture.

But overall this is very cool! I am *not* insane.