Lumia Camera Tip's (Basic & Photos Of Water Drop )

Using Nokia Pro Camera - back to basics

As we’ve demonstrated and detailed with our Nokia Pro Camera tutorial series in the last couple of weeks, it’s absolutely possible to become a better photographer with a Nokia Lumia and Nokia Pro Camera.

Let’s finish this series showing you how to use some basic settings to get a perfect shot.

The functions described below can be found in the settings menu within Nokia Pro Camera.

Framing grids

An easy way to improve your photos is to start thinking more about composition and framing of your shot. For example, instead of positioning the subject in the middle of the photo, framing the photo so that your subject is placed one of the sides of the photo will create a more harmonious composition.

That’s where framing grids comes in useful. From the settings-menu of Pro Camera you can select a range of grids, like Rule of thirds, Golden ratio, Cross hairs or Square. Selecting one of these will overlay a grid onto the viewfinder, which helps you positioning your subject in your shot.

There are no rules in photography, but the “Rule of thirds” is a very good tool to make your photos look professional. The “Rule of thirds” grid divides your screen into equal 3rds both horizontally and vertically using 2 vertical lines and 2 horizontal lines.

Position the most important elements in your scene along these lines or where they intersect.

Research has shown that our eyes are naturally drawn to the intersection of these lines. Imagine how boring it would have been if the subject would have been placed smack in the middle of the scene?

An alternative rule of composition is to use the “golden ratio”, which divides the screen according to the Golden Ratio, which for long has been regarded as aesthetically pleasing.

The Crosshairs is great for making symmetric shots, and making sure that the horizon is straight. We are very sensitive to symmetry, and if you spend some extra time making sure that the horizon is really straight, or that the lines meet exactly in the middle of your photo, your photos will come out a lot better.

The square grid helps you frame your photo if you know you’re going to crop it into a square later on, which is possible using the reframe tools in Pro Camera (more on that in a previous post).

Detect faces

With face detection turned on, you will notice that your viewfinder will draw rectangles around the faces detected by Pro Camera. Once you take the photo, focus will automatically be set to the face, to ensure that the face is sharp. Keep this on, unless you specifically want to take control over the focus by for example touching the screen, or using manual focus.

Set Nokia Pro Camera as your default camera app

On the 92x-series, pressing the camera shutter key will by default open the Windows Phone Camera application. With theAmber update, you can now change this so that pressing the camera shutter key will open the Pro Camera application.

The configuration of the camera shutter key can be found in the settings of Pro Camera by clicking “more settings”, scrolling down to “pressing the camera button opens” and selecting  “Nokia Pro Cam” from the dropdown list. It can also be found through Windows Phone’s settings in “settings” > “applications” > “photos+camera” > “pressing the camera button opens” > Nokia Pro Cam.

Pro Camera is the default for the Lumia 1020, but you can change this to the built-in camera or Smart Camera.

Tutorial

If you want to learn more about photography, have a look at the tutorial in Pro Camera, found in the 3-dot-menu. The tutorial explains more on how to use the advanced parameters, and also includes interactive examples which shows you what results you can expect when you use the manual controls. Click “Try it” to get to the interactive tutorial.

Hopefully now, after this short series on Nokia Pro Camera, you’ll be prepared to snap anything – with confidence you’ll get the perfect shot.

Photos of water drops - with Nokia Pro Camera

Taking a decent photo of a fast moving object with a camera phone is tricky. Very tricky, in fact. You need a camera that’s able to open and close its shutter at very fast speeds, at fractions of a second.

Fortunately, Nokia Pro Camera is capable of such speeds, and we’ve put together a guide on how to take photos of dripping or splashing water.

We’ve all seen photos of a water drop landing into a pool of water, while ripples radiate outwards to infinity. Professional cameras with very fast shutter speed usually capture those photos.

The shutter speed with Nokia Pro Camera can be manually set anywhere between 1/16000 (or 1 sixteenth thousand of a second) which you’ll need for freezing objects in their place, right up to four seconds, which is ideal for capturing light trails.

When capturing dripping or splashing water, you’ll need to turn the dial down to probably at least 1/1000.

To do this, launch Nokia Pro Camera and head to the control panel at the top of the screen. Find the shutter speed control (the second icon from the right) and tap on it.

Bring the dial down and start at 1/1000, but you may want to bring it down even further, depending on how your photo comes out.

You’ll also need to get in close to the water to be able to capture it effectively, so you’ll need to take manual control over the focus – it’s the third icon from the left in the control panel.

There are a number of ways to capture dripping of splashing water. One is to stage it, and the other is to capture it naturally.

Dripping water

Dripping water is notoriously difficult to photo in a natural environment, due to environmental factors such as wind and the continued water resource. Staging the shot will result in you capturing the photo quicker than if you’re waiting for nature to throw you a bone.

Taps are a good source for dripping water, so head to the sink or the tap in your back yard. Turn the tap on so that it drips, but not running.

To start, position yourself a short distance away from the tap, about 15cm away, and manually set the focus. You don’t want anything in the background to be in focus, otherwise you’ll not see the water drop in the photo.

It might also be a good idea to set the flash to always on. In a dark environment this is will be essential, but in a light environment, it’s up to you if you want it on or not. If it’s on, it can leave you with a nice effect as the light sparkles off the water.

Now take the shot! This is easier said than done.

Because you’ve set the shutter time to very low, it’ll only be open for a fraction of a second. That means capturing a moving object is extremely difficult and timing is everything.

You’ll undoubtedly need to take several shots, one after the other. But if you persevere, you’ll capture one that’s just perfect – like the one below.

Splashing water

Much like trying to capture a water drop, taking a photo of splashing water requires you to get in close to your subject.

However, because you’re not relying on a constant regular drip, you can get outdoors and find some good places to splash.

For this example, I found a puddle in the middle of the street and asked a colleague (Phil) to stamp in it. I wanted to capture his foot and the water escaping around it.

Click the image below for the high-res photo

As you can see, the result is quite a striking one. It shows an action shot, but I’ve frozen it. The water looks almost solid but still very fluid.

To capture this, or something similar, you’ll need to get down on the floor (or in the road, in my case, so be very careful here), which can be dirty work – but worth it if you get a great shot.

Start by asking your friend to put his foot in the puddle. That way you can set the distance and manual focus. Remember that you’re trying to capture the water, and not just the foot, so set the focus slightly closer than the foot.

Now, this next step involves splashing water while your phone, and yourself, is less than a foot away – so you might get a little bit wet – so again, be careful.

As your friend’s foot taps into the water, press the camera shutter key. Again, you’ll probably need to take a few shots to get the perfect shot, and making slight changes to the focus may help here.

With your Nokia Lumia, some perseverance and Nokia Pro Camera you’ll be able to master the water.

Have you captured dripping or splashing water with Nokia Pro Camera? Share them with us below.

3 Tips for Shooting Portraits in Bright Sunshine

Fill Flash with the Sun Behind the Subject Creates Nice Backlighting but a Well Lit Face (the hat helped shade the face too) - Image by Cayusa

It’s a bright sunny day and you’re out with friends making the most of the good weather. You decide to take your camera – after all what better day to shoot some portraits of your friends than a sunny day – bright light = great shots doesn’t it?

Unfortunately lots of light doesn’t always equal great shots – in fact sometimes when you’re shooting portraits in bright sunshine you can run into real problems.

For starters shooting in bright midday sun where light is coming from directly above is going to mean that your subject can have some pretty heavy shadows cast on parts of their face.

Not only that, if you’ve ever posed for someone taking a picture in bright sunlight you’ll know just how difficult it can sometimes be to look natural and not end up looking like you’re grimacing in pain while you squint to keep the sun out of your eyes.

So what’s one to do?

Here’s three simple tips for shooting portraits in bright sun light. I’ve kept them pretty basic for those of you who are out and about and don’t want to haul an outdoor studio along with you!

1. Fill Flash

It seems a little odd switching the flash on in bright sunlight but it’s one of the best times to do it. Those heavy shadows cast on your subjects face (particularly under the eyes) by the midday sun can be a thing of the past with a little extra light from your camera’s popup flash.

Many cameras will allow you to control the intensity of the flash output with their flash compensation function so don’t be satisfied with your first shot – dial it up or back a little once you’ve taken a first test shot until you get a nice natural light.

Shot in open shade and using a reflector - Image by christianyves

The bonus of using a little fill flash is that it will often darken your background a little which can give your shot a little more punch and make your subject stand out a little from their background. Fill flash will also create a little catchlight in the eyes of your subject, giving their eyes that little extra sparkle!

Sometimes using fill flash will also allow you to shoot with the sun behind your subject – this means their face has no direct sunlight on them but that they have a little back light falling upon their hair and shoulders which can create a nice impact.

2. Shoot in the Shade

Another easy way to stop the shadows on the face of your subject is to simple move them (and yourself) into a much bigger shadow and to shoot in the shade.

The key is to find a spot where they’re not in the dark but have a nice even light falling on them. So avoid dappled light under some trees a tree or you’ll get spots on their face but go for something with a nice even coverage.

If you’re going for a tight head shot you might even be able to get away with having someone hold up an umbrella or some other object to create some shade over their face (as long as the other person is out of shot).

3. Find a Reflector

A combination of shooting in shade and using a reflector gives this portrait an even lighting - Image by JesseBarker

It’s unlikely that you’ll be hauling a proper reflector around with you (although I know some dPS readers always travel with a small foldable reflector in their camera bag) but that doesn’t mean you can’t use the same principle to bounce a little light into the face of your subject to help light up some of those shadowy areas.

Pretty much any white (or light) surface can act as a reflector of light and held at the right angle you can use it give your subject a little extra light.

One photographer we talked to a while back swore by always wearing a white t-shirt for this but you could get a similar result by positioning your subject by a white wall or positioning many white objects just out of frame to reflect light. I’ve even seen one photographer friend take aluminium foil from a picnic and using it to help make a reflector (although it did create a little ‘dappled’ light on his subject.

Bonus Tip: Get Creative

Once you’ve taken a few nice portraits with the above tips, why not try a few experiments and use the bright light to see if you can inject a little creativity into your shots. You might just take one with the WOW factor. For try creating some lens flare by shooting into the sun (just be careful not to burn your eyes looking directly into it). Alternatively you might try some silhouette shots for portraits with a little mystery and drama.

What other tips would you give someone looking to shoot portraits in bright sunlight?

10 Tips for Good Smartphone Photography

1

Know Your Auto Mode

Knowing how the automatic shooting mode on your smartphone camera works can greatly help you take good photos. Take the time to learn when it uses high ISOs, when it uses long shutter speeds, and adjust how you take photos accordingly. It especially helps to know when you decide to…

2

Override the Defaults

Smartphones can be pretty good when it comes to choosing settings, but not always. Metering can sometimes be pretty shoddy indoors and in cloudy conditions, which is where overriding some of the settings can come in handy.

If you think the white balance is off, change it. If the photo is underexposed, use the sliders found in most camera applications to boost it. If you’d prefer grain to blur, up the ISO used by the camera manually. Don’t forget about the flash either, which is sometimes necessary.

If center-weighted metering isn’t providing the right results, you might also considering switching to spot-metering, which some cameras allow you to do. Center-weighted looks at the entire image and meters according to what it sees, with a preference on the center of the frame. When shooting subjects off-center, it can be a good idea to switch to spot metering so the area around the ‘spot’ you select is exposed perfectly.

3

Use Good Posture (or Even a Tripod)

A key method for reducing blur is knowing how to hold a smartphone camera in a stable way. Holding your arms outstretched or far away from your body can make them sway more when photographing. Moving your elbows into the sides of your body can give a bit of extra stability where needed, as can physically resting the smartphone on a stable object.

If you want perfect stability, it is possible to get a tripod attachment that you can slot your smartphone into. You’ll probably look a bit silly bringing a tripod out and about to use with your phone, but I have seen and achieved myself some fantastic shots with a tripod in hand.

The Samsung Galaxy S5's HDR mode greatly improves visible detail in shadows

4

Harness HDR Mode

Dynamic range – the range of light intensities a camera can capture in the one photo while preserving detail – tends to be a weak point in smartphone cameras. In scenes with both dark and bright areas, such as a shadowed forest, it’s difficult to capture detail in the shadows and highlights at the same time. This is where HDR mode, or high dynamic range mode, comes into play.

HDR mode takes two images of different exposures near-simultaneously, and then combines them to produce one image that has higher dynamic range than the sensor can normally achieve. On most smartphones, this is something you can and should enable when the scene you’re photographing has widely varying contrast. The difference in photos can be vast, especially on Samsung smartphones where the HDR mode is particularly effective.

HDR mode shouldn’t be used all the time, though. As it has to take two photos and combine them, trying to photograph a fast-moving subject in HDR mode can lead to nasty ghosting and other unwanted effects. Using HDR mode in darker conditions can also introduce blur, simply from the combination of two images with slow shutter speeds.

5

Use the Whole Sensor

Something that really irks me about smartphone OEMs is their choice to always default to a 16:9 image capture ratio even if the sensor itself is not 16:9. You won’t have to do anything if you have a smartphone with a 16:9 sensor like the Galaxy S5 or HTC One M8, but if you don’t, switching back to standard 4:3 can be beneficial.

Shooting in 4:3 on a 4:3 sensor not only gives you access to the full resolution of the camera, but it still allows you to crop down to 16:9 after the fact with more pixels to play with. Didn’t frame the shot perfectly the first time? Well if you were shooting in 4:3 and using the whole sensor, you might be able to get a better photo out of your shot.

HDR shot taken with a Samsung Galaxy S5 and edited in Adobe Lightroom. The original can be seen here.

6

Edit

The final piece of the puzzle that often stops a photo captured with a smartphone from looking truly awesome is the post-processing stage. All the detail and necessary information has been captured, but it may not look as vibrant as you were after, or as sharp, or as beautiful.

It’s easy to fix this: chuck the photo in an editing program on your computer, like Lightroom, or even use an app on the device itself and begin playing around. After moving a few sliders and ticking a few boxes, the results might astound you and your friends.

7

Check the App Store

You don’t have to use the default camera application on your smartphone. Check the Google Play Store, App Store or Windows Phone Store on your respective device and look for a standout camera app. Look online to see what people are saying, because there are some gems out there that can add features and controls to the smartphone photography experience.

Camera Zoom FX, as silly as it may sound, is a really solid camera replacement for Android devices. If you’re using a Windows Phone and it’s made by Nokia, make sure you’re using Nokia Camera. As for iOS, Camera+ and ProCamera are some applications to consider.

8

Never Zoom

Most smartphone cameras have the ability too zoom in while taking a photo. As the overwhelming majority of smartphones don't have an optical zoom module, this zoom feature digitally zooms, simply enlarging and cropping the output from the sensor before the photo is captured. To get the best photos from your camera, never use the zoom feature.

Zooming before capturing does not allow you to reframe the image after the fact: you're essentially losing data and reducing quality with no way backwards. Yes, the image will appear to show an image in the distance closer than it would otherwise, but you can very easily take the photo without zooming first, and then crop it afterwards. Taking the photo without zooming provides flexibility and the ability to change your mind later.

Taken with the Sony Xperia Z2 and its f/2.0 lens

9

Go Macro

Smartphone cameras don’t have the best bokeh from their wide-angle lenses, meaning it’s hard to achieve DSLR-like background blur with medium range shots (unless you have some fancy tools like the Duo Camera on the HTC One M8). How do you achieve that pleasant blur? Simply get closer to the subject of your shot, utilizing the close macro range of the focus system.

Some of the best photos I’ve achieved with a smartphone have been macro-style, using the small amount of bokeh that’s achievable to my advantage. On an f/2.4 camera system, like the LG G2 or Nokia Lumia 930, don’t expect anything incredible; but if you’re blessed with an f/2.0 system like the Sony Xperia Z2 results can be surprising.

10

Light It Right

If you want to get serious about smartphone photography, it’s crucial that your photos are lit well. Small sensors typically found in phones are not very capable when lighting gets poor, so it’s always best to ensure your subject is well lit when taking a shot. If you can use your camera at ISO 100 or lower, you’ll see less grain in the resultant image, and photos will look clearer and more impressive.

One way to achieve better lighting for your smartphone photos is to get strong artificial lights, but this probably isn’t practical or worth it considering it’s not a DSLR. The flash also tends not to be so great, so you can rule that out as well. This leaves natural light as the best source, and there are a few tips to getting the best shots in the lighting you have.

Taken with the merely okay HTC One Mini camera. Placing the paperweight near a window helps improve lighting for a better photo.

Like when photographing with any camera, ideally the sun should be behind the camera’s lens, shining light onto the subject without entering the lens directly. Pointing a camera towards the sun will cause shadowing and a loss of contrast, so try not to do so unless you want the artistic effect. In cloudy conditions the sun can be diffused throughout the sky, so avoid shooting up to the sky if it’s not a sunny day.

As I mentioned earlier, it might also be worth exploring spot metering to get the exposure just right, especially when there’s strong backlighting. Ideally you wouldn’t be shooting when there’s strong backlighting as smartphone cameras typically have weak dynamic range, but sometimes it’s necessary. And sometimes you can experiment with reflective surfaces to get light in just the right positions: often a simple white piece of paper will suffice at directing light from the sun (or an artificial light) on to your subject.

Finally, as some bonus tips for you budding videographers out there, make sure that you set your smartphone to record at the maximum resolution possible. Many smartphones that record at 4K will default to 1080p, so changing the appropriate setting will lead to better quality videos. Another thing, try recording HDR or 60 frames per second video for better quality or smoother videos.

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