Sunset in Jakarta

Dusk..I'm driving fast in a highway in Jakarta, sun so bright, sky so clear, i look through my window... than i suddenly realize there are many "paintings" created by city ornaments, shape of buildings and brushed by sunset lights. Can't hardly wait, i took my cellphones camera...and start taking pictures....

Dusk

Another advantage of using cellphone camera, just need a second to start taking pictures, and you could taking pictures with one hand..., Ok..ok..i knew it's dangerous and i should told you "guys don't this in your car" but, some people say a real photographers would risk their lives for a single great shot... is that true?

Pictures in Low Lights

Taking pictures in low level of lights is very risky for cellular phones, even those equipped with flash lights, because we knows the limitation of cellphones flash especially when you taking pictures of wide areas, it's useless.

Several ways to increase capability of cellphones to catch the lights (as i mentioned in previous post) like increasing aperture is almost useless! so now it's time for me to try NIGHT MODE. Even tough this features is increasing lights, it has bad effect! first, picture grain is becoming harsh, second the slow rate is make the pictures easy to blur like this.

As i always says those weakness is not stopping me to make great pictures, so i made pictures that exposed those grains like this,















Jakarta dusk in the mirror

and...pictures that usually only be able to take by adjustable speed camera, pictures that shows moving effect of a car lights..















Jakarta night lights

Even a small cellphones camera can make great pictures...

Camera Features : Panorama

Perhaps you have ever seen a picture taken by a SLR camera using wide angle lens camera or some times called "fish eye". A lense is called wide angle when the focal length is wider than a 50 mm lens (a normal human eyes angle of view).

The purpose of taken picture with this lens, is to get the object as wide as possible in a small rooms, eventough sometimes it's use to made an effect.

My Cellphone camera has the cappabilities to take a "fish eyed look" picture, called PANORAMA, this features is useful when i need to show a 180 degrees view of a room, or when i want to create a collate picture.

To create a panorama picture this is what you have to do :

1. Enter the camera mode

2. Click setting

3. Move your dial and choose "Shoot mode"

4. Select panorama

Now you are ready to take panorama pictures, the shoots are capable to take 3 pictures in a frame, first i would like to take a 180 degrees view. The shoots will take places from left to right, so make sure you take picture from same direction, after you take the first shoot, there will be a shadow of the edge of the first shoot, make sure this edge is meet with your next shoot, do the same step for third shoot, and here's the example of panorama shoot.

Departure hall of New Hasanuddin Airport in Makasar, Indonesia

As i told you before besides for creating a wide angle effect panorama features is also useful for creating collates picture like this one

Nature

That's it have a nice try...

Silhouette, if we can't avoid backlight

In my previous post regarding backlight, i try to set my cell camera to be able to take object in backlight condition, it works! if..the backlight is not dominating the picture, how if it does??

Let's made that challenge a benefit for us, if we can avoid than hit it! let the backlight to be the object! and object in the front as a frame..or we knows as silhouette. If in my post regarding backlight, I'm adding my cellphone "light compensation" to gain more lights, but in silhouette it is reduced 2-3 steps until minus (see how to do it here) and voila! a silhouette picture is created.

Backlight, should we avoid?

Backlight, There are lots of different lighting situations to be aware of when you're outdoors (sometimes indoor), and backlight can be (in my opinion!) one of the most challenging especially when you are using a cell phone camera! Backlight is when the light (the sun) is shining brightly behind the subject. The camera will think that there is plenty of light, and the subject will be underexposed.

There are several ways to handle this situation IF YOU'RE USING SLR DIGITAL CAMERA, first you could compensate backlight conditions - with using an external light source, or you could set the aperture to manual and set it to wider aperture.

But how could you do that with a fixed lens non flash cellular camera?? here's some tips..

There is a feature in SE K618i that works like a manual aperture setting, I'm not sure what to call it (a light compensation button?) these feature could be accessed when you're in camera mode. Press Jog dial button left or right (horizontal cellphone position) there will be a number appear in the left screen (+ 0.03)press it right to have lighter or left to darken the exposure.



Note..if you lighten the exposure, the object will lit but the background will be over exposure

Cell Phone Camera Feature : White Balance

Features in a cell phone camera is not as complete as a pocket digital camera or Digital SLR, therefor we must explore and optimize the features so we could make a great pictures. One of the most important feature is white balance, Pictures above are taken with different setting of white balance...lets take closer look on how to use it...

From a literature that i found in cambridgecolour.com White balance (WB) is : the process of removing unrealistic color casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "color temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light. Our eyes are very good at judging what is white under different light sources, however digital cameras often have great difficulty with auto white balance (AWB). An incorrect WB can create unsightly blue, orange, or even green color casts, which are unrealistic and particularly damaging to portraits. Performing WB in traditional film photography requires attaching a different cast-removing filter for each lighting condition, whereas with digital this is no longer required. Understanding digital white balance can help you avoid color casts created by your camera's AWB, thereby improving your photos under a wider range of lighting conditions.

Ok..forget about head aching theory, lets begin to Practice! My Sony Ericsson K618 has this AWB feature in camera mode, just press setting button.

Picture above was taken by using DAYLIGHT WB. Daylight wb is giving more warm color and closer to "real" color, the result will be much different when you switch WB setting to florescent. The picture will look a little "colder" since blue tone color dominating the picture like this one below.

So..if u want to make a different effect on your picture, why don't you try this...