Camera.open() returns NULL Android development

Question

I am following the tutorial for building a camera app http://developer.android.com/tools/device.html and I am my call to Camera.open() returns null. I've declared the permission in the manifest and I tried both on the emulator and a xyboard and I am still getting null. Does anyone know any quick hints?

Camera c = null;
try
{
    c = Camera.open()
}
catch(Exeption e)
{

}
return c;

Keep in mind, I am not throwing an exception, I am simply getting NULL back.

Answer 1

That's because it's not supposed to throw an exception. It returns null when no back-facing camera is found:

Creates a new Camera object to access the first back-facing camera on the device. If the device does not have a back-facing camera, this returns null.

You may be trying to access a front-facing camera, in which case you probably want to use open(int cameraId). (See the other answer for an example of using it)