In the very first release of the SDK for Windows Phone 7 development, it was not possible to use the camera in the emulator. The latest version of the SDK fixes this problem.

Windows Phone 7 SDK comes with a set of Task (in the Microsoft.Phone.Tasks namespace). A task can be launched from your application in order to perform some work. Currently available tasks are:

• Capture Camera (StartCameraTask)
• Choose Email Address (EmailAddressChooserTask)
• Compose Email (EmailComposeTask)
• Open Market Place (MarketplaceLauncher)
• Open Media Player (MediaPlayerLauncher)
• Make Phone Call (PhoneCallTask)
• Pick Phone Number (PhoneNumberChooserTask)
• Choose Photo (PhotoChooserTask)
• Save Email (SaveEmailAddressTask)
• Save Phone Number (SavePhoneNumberTask)
• Search (SearchTask)
• Compose SMS (SmsComposeTask)
• Browse Web (WebBrowserTask)

In order to launch a task from your application, all you need to do is to instantiate the associated type and call the Show() method.

Here is a sample code which launchs the StartCameraTask and then gets the capture images in order to use it in a standard Silverlight Image control:

// launch the camera capture when the user touch the screen
this.MouseLeftButtonUp += (s, e) => new CameraCaptureTask().Show();

// this static event is raised when a task completes its job
ChooserListener.ChooserCompleted += (s, e) =>
{
    var taskEventArgs = (TaskEventArgs)e;
    var photoStream = taskEventArgs.Result.ChosenPhoto;

    var bitmapImage = new BitmapImage();
    bitmapImage.SetSource(photoStream);

    this.image.Source = bitmapImage;
};

The image is just a standard Silverlight Image control:

The emulator while the task is running:

The captured image (shown once the task has completed):

If you haven’t download the tool already, go ahead and grab them ! Everything is available for free in a single download at http://developer.windowsphone.com/windows-phone-7-series/.

Hope this helps 🙂

Note: even though the StartCameraTask is now working, this is not yet the case for all the tasks…