trying to output raw bytes to serial, getting gibberish

Projects General Guidance
1

What I'm trying to do is use the TTL serial camera I picked up from adafruit to take a picture and output the raw bytes that represent the picture. I'm hoping these bytes correspond to the pixel colors so that I can interpret them and form the jpg on my computer.
The example sketch tutorial from adafruit works fine so I know the camera is working well. Using my own sketch, I am having trouble understanding the serial output I am getting. It just looks like gibberish to me.

Here is a snippet of what the output looks like:

}!1AQaa"q2?¡#B±ÁRÑð$3br?	
%&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz?????????????????¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª²³´µ¶·¸¹ºÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚáâãäåæçèéêñòóôõö÷øùúaw!1AQaaq"2B?¡±Á	#3RðbrÑ

Is there anyway to turn this into something more readable so I could potentially turn it into a jpeg later on on my computer?

Here is my code generating the above output:

#include <Adafruit_VC0706.h>
#include <SoftwareSerial.h>         

SoftwareSerial cameraconnection = SoftwareSerial(2, 3);
Adafruit_VC0706 cam = Adafruit_VC0706(&cameraconnection);


void setup() {

  Serial.begin(9600);
  cam.begin();
  cam.setImageSize(VC0706_640x480);
  delay(1000);
  cam.takePicture();

  uint16_t jpglen = cam.frameLength();

  while (jpglen > 0) {
      uint8_t *buffer;
      uint8_t bytesToRead = min(32, jpglen);
      buffer = cam.readPicture(bytesToRead);
      Serial.write(buffer,bytesToRead);
      jpglen -= bytesToRead;
  }
  
}

void loop() {
}
2

You probably want to convert your characters to ASCII characters, if you want to see it on a serial terminal. You have to write your own program to handle binary data.

Try Serial.print() instead on each character.

3

If you save the serial data that your are getting directly to a file then you should be able to rename that file as a jpeg and view it.