It is unclear how the fcam drivers affect camera-ui2, as ostensibly the 2 use separate libraries. That may be true only to a point: if gstreamer is the commonality, then fcam may be altering a setting in a way not wanted for the stock imaging pathway.

The issue is complicated by the fact that BlessN900 uses the fcam driver as well fcamera.

If Half-Life_4_Life still has over-exposure with stock , then I must suspect BlessN900 is installed still. I did I test way back and could see a clear difference in camera-ui2 exposures with and without the fcam drivers installed.

Also, note that independant of the fcam effect, camera-ui2 as well as the original Nokia app have the disfunctional -0.5ev correction. Nicolai cannot solve that as the problem lies in a Nokia binary blob.

Back to topic: I have unfortunately submitted pics in prev competitions that fail to meet the criteria. I never use fcamera's jpegs, for the reason Half-Life_4_Life notes. I always develop from raw (and have recently learnt how to fix the luminance and colour vignette in Linux) and want to continue to do so, as the results are better than camera-ui2 can achieve (at least I think so, others may disagree - no matter). Like Half-Life_4_Life I think fcamera is more flexible.

So, now that I know better, I will see if I can get a result with camera-ui2. Stock jpgs can be a challenge to darken in the lower registers.