[mediacapture-main] How to avoid wide-lens backfacing camera on new phones? (#655)

jan-ivar has just created a new issue for https://github.com/w3c/mediacapture-main:

== How to avoid wide-lens backfacing camera on new phones? ==
From a [stackoverflow question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59636464/how-to-select-proper-backfacing-camera-in-javascript?noredirect=1#comment105459298_59636464), newer phones have multiple back cameras. How would an app distinguish between them, specifically: avoid or pick the often unsuitable wide-lens camera?

While, `getUserMedia` does support device selection using constraints, I see no reliable difference in constrainable properties between a wide-lens camera and its regular counterpart.

**Proposal:** A new `focalLength` constraint.

This would be the distance between sensor and lens (I'm no photographer or device expert, but this seems to often be an inherent property of the lens, [e.g. on the Samsung S10](https://www.techpinas.com/2019/02/samsung-galaxy-s10e-vs-s10-vs-s10-specs.html)).

This would be different from the existing (and similar-sounding) [`focusDistance`](https://w3c.github.io/mediacapture-image/#focus-distance), which is distance from lens to subject.

Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/mediacapture-main/issues/655 using your GitHub account

Received on Sunday, 12 January 2020 17:09:44 UTC