Snap Pictures Fast Or Up Close With Your Nseries
For many users, taking a picture through an Nseries camera is as simple as launching the Camera then pressing the shutter button. For others, it’s as complicated as going through tens of settings from brightness to ISO to get the ultimate perfect shot. I believe the first category is the most dominant one, at least in my surroundings, and to be honest I belong to it. But even though I don’t bother to change the settings each time I want to snap a photo, there are two Scene Modes that I frequently use. “Sports” and “Close-up mode” might not be the most advertised features of your Nseries as they figure on any digital camera these days and bring nothing innovative, but if you know when and how to use them, they are utterly brilliant to have with you all the time.
Both of these can be accessed through the toolbar that appears on the right when you open the Camera application. If you’re in Picture mode, you will see that the second icon in that toolbar is an “A” for Auto. Click it and you have different Scene Mode options. Feel free to discover them all, but personally, I only use Sports and Close-up as these work well in the two conditions where the Auto mode doesn’t deliver:
Moving fast? Don’t stop, use Sports mode
I live in an awesome country with great landscapes but most of the time when I come across them, I’m in a car, driving or as a passenger. Using the Auto mode will come up with a blurry picture 9 out of 10 times whereas using the Sports mode will deliver a clear picture 9 times out of 10. The picture might not be of the highest quality as the Autofocus is bypassed to make the shutter work faster, but it is good enough to be kept as a memory.
I also use the Sports mode when i’m steady but the object is moving, like for example when I want to snap photos of my highly energetic neighbor’s kids. Like any child aged between 3 and 5, they are a hurricane of life and it would be a tragedy to ask them to stop for a moment in order to take a photo. To see how well Sports mode performs, you can plough through this channel on Share on Ovi, where I took a lot of pictures while the kids were jumping on the trampoline. I had my N95 at the time and it performed awesomely well, capturing every jump. Just think that all images would’ve been blurry if my N95 didn’t have the Sports mode! Here are my two personal favorite images: both of them were taken at the exact right millisecond, and the second one is deadly funny.
Need to keep a document? Don’t scan, use Close-up mode
Ever since I got my old N95, I realized that I don’t need a scanner since, well, I have one in my pocket. It might not give the perfect results of a full scanner, but it has 3 advantages over it: way faster, much more portable, and always with me. I have learned that the best results are when there is enough ambient light and the camera flash is set to Off to avoid reflections, and the hand is perfectly steady while taking the picture.
I can’t count how many times, in how many situations or for how many purposes I’ve used the Close-up mode. I use it instead of xeroxing for one-page documents, I use it to keep my favorite restaurants’ menus with me or to keep track of my official documents. I also use it to always carry digital copies of documents I use in the university for a quick look when I need some information.
Here are two sample images I found in my collection of images (click on them for the full versions). Though not in the perfect conditions, and taken indoors by my friend with an N73, you can see that the text is totally readable in both of them, even though the font size used on the second one is definitely lower than 8.
So whenever you need to take a picture of a moving object or a very close one, remember to change the Scene mode as the difference in performance is phenomenal, and remember that these features aren’t limited to 5MP Nseries like the N95, N82 or N96 but also available with more than decent results on 3.2MP Nseries like the N80, N73 or N78.
absolute delight this article of yours ricky!! This is what i call simply awesome. Simple and awesome!
oops. Sorry sorry. This was rita. Sorry rita. I mistook it to be ricky’s article. Should have understood! ; )
hahahaha.
people ALWAYS do that.
mix up ricky and rita.
I really must admit the fact that the point-and-shoot approach is the mostly used one.
When doing that one rarely change any settings in the camera application. You can of course use the mode you have defined yourself, but that means that you have set that up beforehand.
Nice article
Hey, as far as documents go, check out http://www.scanr.com/
You can take the picture of your document, upload it to their site (with the symbian app they provide or though email) and it will automatically try to clean up the image (make the paper white and the text black) and it will try to create a TEXT DOCUMENT of what you scanned. It can also fax the pic directly from you phone. I think you get 8 free uploads a month.
Have been using the ScanR client a bit but only for testing purposes.
I tried the latest version 2.00 just now and found that the UI was quite great. However I didn’t manage to access the pictures I have from before on my phone.
Still using version 1.05 as this let’s me see thumbnails of the pictures I have on my phone. However this version “flickers” alot when scrolling through the thumbnails.
Another one that you can use is Evernote.
I asked them if they were going to provide a Symbian client which they replied that they won’t.
So far they only offer a client for Desktop computers, Windows Mobile and iPhone.
I was recommended from them to use the http://m.evernote.com/ with my phone’s browser.
They both offers a good solution with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Ashu,
so never mind
Well, as Aatif said, it happens so often that I no longer bother to correct it
Deadlock32,
I also use ScanR but thought that this article is already long enough to bring up the subject. Thank you for mentioning it though as I find it highly convenient to use.
I love your blog, just got an n95 and didnt knew about sports mode and closeup mode
Recently I start to put all my documents (”scanned” with my symbian phones E90 (work stuff), N73, N78 and now N82) in pdf…
I got a big mess between photos and “documents photographed”…
Now, jpg are just photos…
Note: acdsee does the job pretty well!
The other cool mode: Sequence mode. Set your phone’s camera to continuously take pictures on the specified time interval.
Great article Rita, once again bringing really useful information. I wonder how the docs might work into Evernote’s image-text functionality. I’ve been meaning to give scanr a try, though, and the ability to FAX? Wow!
I take pictures of my laptop or PC’s screen with phone’s camera if there’s something on a website, email or like a train timetable or an appointment. It’s quick and dirty but hey - it works!
Aug 20th, 2008 at 10:02 am
[...] Symbian Guru - How to snap photos fast or up close with your N-Series [...]
Nov 9th, 2008 at 7:41 am
[...] standalone digital cameras offer some similar options, like image and video recording, TV-Out, and my favorite Close-Up and Sports modes. Even though there are some issues with it, relying solely on an N82 for every picture I take is a [...]