I bought an Orange Pi PC "Set 9" that came with ribbon camera module (total 20 eur) to compare with Raspberry 3. After finally getting it to take a picture using fswebcam I find the images very low quality. Most passable without any extra lighting is 640x480. 800x600 and 1600x1200 produce nearly black images. Using Raspberry 3 with similarly priced  chinese camera produce much better images with lower lighting. Am I missing something or is the camera quality this bad in comparison? I usually expect OK results from "chinese clones" but this is really.

The best image I could get was:

sudo fswebcam -r 640x480 --fps 25 -p YUV420P cam.jpg

 

You don't give much information about your images, Armbian version and fswebcam used, the answers you may get here can be vague but you usually don't get good images with low lighting condition with this cheap camera, and you are comparing apples vs oranges.
 
Please, tell us which camera you have with your Raspberry 3 that is similar to the $ 5.9 orange pi camera.
Also, please post here the pictures (taken with the same light condition), so we can have a look, compare and try to understand if it is possible to improve it some way.
 
You could try this:

fswebcam --exposure 4 -r 640x480 -p YUV420P - > cam640x480_4.jpg

and also try to load the driver for better quality (after unloading it):

modprobe gc2035 hres=1

and try again with:

fswebcam --exposure 4 -r 800x600 -p YUV420P - > cam800x600_4.jpg

Please, post the images here.

My version (uploaded yesterday) does not support "-- exposure" or "- >". Yet many posts use it. What are they? "fswebcam --help" do not list those option. Fswebcam --version shows "fswebcam 20140113"

The raspberry 5MP camera on Aliexpress costs around 8 euros. The Orange pi is at 6 euros.

Un-install your fswebcam version and try to compile and install from source this version: https://github.com/avafinger/fswebcam

--exposure will give you better results with low light condition but don't expect good quality.

 

5MP sensor is better than 2MP sensor, and Raspberry Pi camera driver is backed up by companies who sell hardware and have access to undocumented / NDA info, there is room for improvement if you have the right information.

 

Update: "- >" is redundant anyways.

Is the any other camera module that would get better results. 640x480 just is not enough these days.

you might want to read this:

 

https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1213-ov5640-camera-with-orange-pi/?hl=ov5640

 

best, gnasch