There was previously no access to high res resolutions on the camera, but you had to know which model supports which high resolution. Now with the universal apps, you can actually get the all supported resolutions from the camera easily, including the high res and init your camera to use them. Here’s a quick sample snippets to init your camera, select the highest possible resolution and change your camera to use that.

Assumption is that you have CaptureElement in your XAML called captureElement, and MediaCapture element called mediaCapture as a member variable in your code behind in MainPage.xaml.cs

Select the back camera:



var devices = await Windows.Devices.Enumeration.DeviceInformation.FindAllAsync(Windows.Devices.Enumeration.DeviceClass.VideoCapture);

var backCameraId = devices.FirstOrDefault(x => x.EnclosureLocation != null && x.EnclosureLocation.Panel == Windows.Devices.Enumeration.Panel.Back).Id;

await mediaCapture.InitializeAsync(new MediaCaptureInitializationSettings

{ VideoDeviceId = backCameraId});



Next query all the supported resolutions, and select the highest possible and set that to the camera.



var resolutions = this.mediaCapture.VideoDeviceController.GetAvailableMediaStreamProperties(MediaStreamType.Photo);

if (resolutions.Count >= 1)

{

var hires = resolutions.OrderByDescending(item => ((VideoEncodingProperties)item).Width).First();

await mediaCapture.VideoDeviceController.SetMediaStreamPropertiesAsync(MediaStreamType.Photo, hires);

}



Now you’re ready to start video preview and do photo capturing with these last calls



captureElement.Source = mediaCapture;

await mediaCapture.StartPreviewAsync();



Check out my previous post about setting the camera preview correctly, otherwise your image is going to be tilted quite funkily.