Make The Most Out Of Your Nseries Camera
It’s no doubt that the latest Nseries devices carry a camera that can replace a separate digital camera for the daily uses of the average photographer. I, for one, have stopped caring about my Kodak digicam ever since I bought the N95. There is more than just convenience in the fact that the handset is always with me, always on and only a click away. Here is a roundup of a couple of tips that will make the camera in your Nseries even more useful and more capable.
First of is Devin Ballentina from The Nokia Guide with a list of tips to improve the picture quality. His advices include keeping the flash on, even in well-lit conditions, avoiding digital zoom, focusing on different objects, and preferring to move the main object from the center of the frame. Devin also posted some images to explain the benefit of his methods. I have been using the selective autofocus for a couple of days and it’s one really good tip!
The next tip isn’t as easy as the first one, but it’s really great if you’re into photographic effects. Mr-X from FinestFones explains in full detail the process of achieving Time-Lapse photography with your Nseries. Time Lapse photography is the technique you see in movies where one frame gets accelerated through time, like from sunset to dawn. Mr-X goes through the required software, the whole setting and gives 2 good examples he has done himself. It may take a while getting everything together, but if you like being creative with your handsets, this is one of the wow’ing effects you will ever be able to demonstrate.
Next up is Al Pavangkanan, also known as Dr Tran, guest authoring on The Nokia Blog and demonstrating the possibilities of taking an HDR Image with an Nseries. “High Dynamic Range imaging, better known as HDR, is a great way to make your digital photos look awesome. HDR imaging uses multiple pictures with different exposure settings and combines them with Tone Mapping to make awesome pictures.” As with Time-Lapse, this technique needs some effort and material to be accomplished, but Al made a good guide to follow and the results are pretty fantastic.
Finally, 2 applications for S60 3rd edition brought by Tea Vui Huang. The first one is Photo Detagger and allows to wipe out all the EXIF data that the image holds (camera device name, date and time, external conditions,…). It’s a good way to protect the privacy of the photographer. The second is DNG Phone Camera and allows taking RAW images with your handset. That should allow you to have a pre-processed image and let you modify and improve that photo according to your own liking on a computer. RAW files are used by professionals because they contain much more information that JPEG formats and maintain their quality over time.
Now what are you waiting for, click that camera button and get to photography! It’s one great way to keep the memories, and now it’s even become better. And do tell us how often you use your phone camera, as well as any other tips to get the max out of it.
Have not tried the DNG phone camera software myself, but for the sake of completeness, I’m copying and pasting a comment from another blog (http://www.n95pro.com/post0321/new-software-let-n95-camera-go-raw.html)
“i was really excited when i saw this. but for someone with a 5 megapixel n95 this is absolutely useless. the pictures it takes are 0.3 megapixel (640×480), extremely tiny. and not only that, after every picture you take you need to hit 3 different security OK screens, no way around it. if you want a nice looking 640×480 picture with the n95, take it the normal way then scale it down. it’ll look 10 times better.”
it would be nice to have a disclaimer (sw not tested) or a small comment/review (after testing it the software of course) when linking/recommending any software. Thanks.
-Reda
@reda
Ur sure u used a correct program to open and convert the raw-files? Remember this that they arent really image-files, just a dumb from the image-sensor, pixel by pixel how they capture the light. U propably tried to open the files with some program wich doesent support raw-files and only shows the little thumbnail, wich is saved inside the raw to make exploring the images maybe little easier.
Point of raw-imaging is that why let the crappy camera do the complex image processing with a limited resources and really limited time, when u have a powerful computer and more time to process the sensor dumbs.
Hi Vinski,
unfortunately I didn’t try the program, I just posted another user comment. I tried to install it today and got an error.
Anyway I imagine there might be one issue that confirm the other user experience (without installing the program and knowing anything about java on symbian)and that is file size in memory. That is, I’m not sure there might be a function that returns the raw 5mpx image instead of a jpeg. a raw 5mpx file is huge to handle in memory.
Anyway, it’s just pure speculation ;-)
I installed the program and the file it saves is about 1mb in my e90 (3,2mpx), way too small to be a pure raw-file. I dont know about adobe raw-format, do they use some level of packing in there (for example nikon does that with nef-files). Havent tried to open the files with pc yet to check the resolution.
I agree, there might be some memory issues handling such large files, imho i think camera is totally own independet module here, and doesent really return the raw data for the os to handle, rather processesin it itself. But who knows, maybe they really found a way to pass it.
And java sucks for making serious applications. It might be good to test something quickly, ie. proof of concept works (like this one maybe?), and for games. Or maybe its not really javas fault, rather than symbians poor handling for it.
[...] Photo Detagger made by Tea Vui Huang. I learned of this application today when I was reading a very informative post by Ricky at Symbian-Guru about taking your Nseries camera to the next level. What it does is strip [...]
Today I noticed that the photos I took today contain GPS location which in itself is not much of a surprise as I turned it on on my N82.
The surprise came when uploading them to Share on Ovi from my PC. This preserved the location information in the tags and Ovi added the correct addresses to the photos. So far, so good.
Tried that from phone with “Online Share” version 3.0.08.07 and these tags (and all others it seems) were removed. Maybe it is still in the original size version of the photos (didn’t try to download them), but those I don’t make available to the general public anyway.
So, when uploading to Ovi from phone using a photo detagger might not be necessary to remove location information.