28 Nowember 2006

Getting the best out of your N93 optic!

Improve your pictures with reliable advice from the SF’s Photography expert Bigley Ling that shares tips on taking spectacularly good photos with your lovely N93.

You'll see that a little knowledge about techniques can make the difference between getting the shot you want and being unsatisfied with what you end up on the screen.

After all no matter how experienced you are as a photographer, learning new photography techniques can only improve your photos. Taking a new approach to standard concepts or experimenting with an entirely new concept will add flavour and dynamism to what would ordinarily get from point and shoot technique in full automatic mode.

The bells and whistles of an expensive camera like my lovely Canon S3-IS for example are great if you know how to use them but they are not essential building blocks for creating a beautiful visual record of your life.

What follows are some simple steps to consistently taking better photos in the most common scenarios:

• Use the right mode for the right situation. For most times, the Auto scene mode should be used.
  
  
• In all modes, except for macro, and landscape, always prefocus by half pressing the shutter button, and waiting for the central focus box to turn green. Some times one may have to put the focus box on a high contrast area on the subject, then once focused, recompose the image, then fully depress shutter to capture the image.
  
  
• When taking landscape, use the landscape scene mode, but do not use the optical zoom! If you must use the zoom for a landscape shot, use the auto scene mode instead, and acquire focus on the nearest high contrast object in the landscape. This is because the landscape focus to infinite is not necessary perfect, but seems to work best when on widest setting.
  
  
• Only use the night mode when lighting is really low and unusable. Otherwise auto can be used.
  
  
• In evening, or indoor lighting, be it flash or non flash type photography, ensure a steady hand, otherwise will get camera shake. Flash is just an illuminator, not a real flash, so expect to freeze any type of fast motion.
  
  
• In evening shots, be aware the auto focus works real poorly, unless you get a real high contrasting line, e.g. black tie onto white shirt, focus will undoubtedly be incorrect. Focus accuracy is further reduced when using the optical zoom, try to avoid using it in these situations, just get closer to the subject! Alternative if you can get subjects to be 1m away from the phone camera, quickly switch to landscape mode, and while keeping the optics on widest setting, snap away, keeping hands steady.
  
  

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  For macro shots, remember to get the distance exact to get optimum results, This magic distance seems to be 10cm. In most situations you can set the distance, and then when you want to get closer, use the optical zoom to get the desired results, whist keeping the distance constant. Be careful when using the LED flash in macro mode, as quite often it can over expose the image, instead use the exposure compensation +/-EV controls.
  
  
• In most bright situations, optical zoom can be used without losing too much photo quality, but be aware when optical zoom used, the less light gets to the camera sensor, and hence to compensate the camera may push up the ISO hence why the quality of the photo may drop. In a lot of cases to optimize photo quality use little zoom, and if you must zoom, then zoom just before the maximum.
  
  
• Shots where prints above 5 x 7 or a5 is required, post processing will be required. The best noise control so far I have used us "Neat Image". This software can knock out all noise from your image without losing much of the fine details. To further improve images, a bit of Gaussian blur can also be applied.
  
  

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  To get faster shutter response for sports type situations, use landscape mode with continuous shooting mode. Take care not to use to optical zoom, otherwise one will get undesirable less focused results. Press cancel to stop continuous mode prematurely.
  
  
• Use night mode for all indoor shooting, to reduce ambient noise. Being a photo journalist a certain quality and speed of photography is required. Try to keep subjects over 1m away and never use the auto focus in auto mode, as it is way too slow.
  
  
• If optical zoom is needed user sparingly, and ensure subject is quite a bit further away.
  
  
• Use the inbuilt photo editor to blur the image by two levels, as it is too sharp, and will remove a lot of the horrible artifacts. Crop, then adjust brightness and contrast as needed. Deploy via inbuilt web browser to site, or email, all using internal 3G or Wi-Fi from a hotspot.

OK, that’s all for know, hope this helps all N93 users who have not been having much luck with their N93 photos, to be able to go out there, capture the moment and post it here on the discussion board.

Author: Bigley Ling (AKA Mazor)
Released: 28.11.2006
Updated: 28.11.2006
Copyright: Symbian Freak 2006; all rights reserved