I've been using the front facing camera lately to make skype calls and i've noticed that it's a little on the dark side. Adjusting the indor lighting all the way up still results in a fairly dark image. Is there a way to increase the brightness or the contrast of the front camera?

AFAIK, there is no setting to do that. But, I agree with the idea, it would be nice to have a little brightness applet in this case.

Yea I don't get how they managed to get the cam so insensitive to light.

I also encountered this problem as well. What worked for me (workaround) was, I hanged up the video call, and re-initiated the video call. Somehow, the second time I got very good bright quality on my front facing camera. If that doesn't work, have the other person you are video calling with (hopefully from a PC) to initiate the video call. See if you get a brighter front facing camera quality, I did.

it is probably fixing exposure with first frame it grabs or something.

try starting video call in dark and then switch light on.

r does it constantly adjust exposure setting?

Front camera does constantly adjust to light settings. I was running a test using video streaming to PC with both, front and back camera. While back camera couldn't compensate to sane brightness settings (this seems to be done by software, which gstreamer does not support), front camera automatically adjusted to light settings.

So front camera exposure seems to be done by firmware while back camera settings are done by software app (e.g. camera application for photos / videos).

Thanks quipper, your method works satisfactorily. I did exactly as you suggested, i.e. covered the camera while initiating the call.

Any more ideas on this? this 'covering the camera while you call' method does not work for me

There is an app called mirror -probably on extras. That covering trick doesn't work in the mirror tool.

It would be nice to have brightness control on the front cam. OK, I know it is only 0.3 mpx therefore no expectation about face recognition etc...

What else we want? Using 5 mp camera for video chat. That would be great for some cases, wouldn't it?

I'm not usually one to throw around the term 'bug' a lot as many times it is user error. But I think this may be a bug because as mentioned in the posts above, the same room with the same brightness is hit-and-miss as to whether the webcam will be bright enough or as black as a black man's cape.