Camera Tips & Tricks

[Guest dwallersv]

Has anyone else noticed that the full manual for the i9x0 is best used as toilet paper -- certainly not as a decent reference for the phone? Of course you all have!

In particular, if you want to know how to use all the features of the camera (and there are many -- that's the good part), don't look to the manual or any documentation that came with the Omnia. It's not there. You're left experimenting and blundering around in the app to try and figure it out. So, I thought I'd start this thread to share what I've found, and collect the discoveries of others.

Panorama Mode

Yeah, right. Good luck on your own. Here's how it works, and it's pretty cool, once you know.

No, you don't press the shutter button for each shot of the panorama like you do with, well, every other camera with a panorama feature. The camera takes the images for you automatically. Here's how you do it:

1. Put the camera in Panorama mode. You will then see a large rectangle in the viewfinder, with a little camera image in the center with arrows point in all 4 directions (L, R, U, D).
   
2. Center the view on the first image of your panorama. It can be the leftmost, rightmost, top, or bottom image. Press the shutter button to take the first picture.
   
3. Now, here's the (unintuitive) cool part: Simply slowly pan the camera in the direction of the next image. Don't press the shutter button! Watch that large rectangle -- it will turn yellow, and as you pan "track" into the viewfinder. The camera is actually tracking your movement. When the next frame of the panorama is far enough in to view, the camera will automatically snap the picture, and start tracking the next frame (yellow rectangle).
   
4. Repeat for up to 8 frames. If you want to quite earlier (say, after 3 frames) press the shutter button.
   
5. The camera will stitch the frames together, and viola! Panorama. The built-in stitching algorithm is pretty good, especially if you are careful to keep in the same plane of rotation while you pan around.
   

The yellow rectangle is there to help you keep the frames aligned... for example pan left to right, once you take the first shot, try to keep the yellow rectangle vertically centered (i.e., don't tilt the camera up or down), and you'll get a good stitching.

Quick Viewer

There's actually quite a bit of functionality in this viewer. It would be nice if it could be invoked outside the camera app for general viewing of pictures. The other apps provided aren't as good, IMO. Here are some things I've discovered that I didn't find documented in the manual:

• (This may be documented, but good to remind people of, as they may not read the manual) You can move forward and backward in the sequence of pictures by simply swiping your finger left or right on the display.
  
• There is a button to view full screen without the toolbars on the left and right. You can also toggle this by simply tapping on the image.
  
• The volume rocker on the side of the phone zooms in and out of the picture, just like the zoom function when taking a shot.
  
• Zooming out one click more than the entire picture will bring up a 3x3 thumbnail screen of pictures.
  
• In thumbnail view, the mousepad in D-pad mode can be used to move around the 9 thumbnails (left, right, up, down). Moving up or down beyond the top or bottom row of thumbnails will scroll the prev/next row of thumbnails into view(duh!)
  
• Another press of the "zoom out" button (volume-up) will highlight a border around the entire set of 9 thumbnails, and you can then navigate by page with the D-pad up/down (much faster than in individual thumb nav mode).
  
• When in thumbnail view pressing the trash can doesn't delete the selected thumbnail; rather, it allow you to select multiple pictures, then delete them all at once with a second press of the trash can. This features works across pages of thumbnails, so you don't need to do a multiple delete on one page, change pages, do it again, etc. Just page through all the pictures you want to review, mark the ones for deletion, then hit the trash can to get rid of them.
  
  A few other things that have been discussed here in various threads, but good to consolidate in one thread here:
  • WDR -- what is it? Nice that Samsung chose not to give a peep about this setting. It's "Wide Dynamic Range", and turning it on will help with high-contrast images, flattening the contrast. For example, taking a picture of something against a bright background. It works, but the ability to flatten contrast is limited. Try it out -- a good test case is to take a picture of a window from a distance where the window is about 25% of the total image, centered. Use centered metering. Without WDR, you will be able to see bright stuff through the window, but the surrounding interior will be very dark. Turn on WDR, take the same picture, and the outside image will still be just about the same (a little brighter), but the interior will now be much more visible.
    This isn't the camera just turning up the brightness control (basically, amplifying the signal from the entire CCD). Rather, it is allowing a longer exposure then taking multiple reads of the CCD selecting later, more saturated data from the darker pixels. Because of this, you need to hold the camera real steady.
    
  • White balance: Auto does a decent job most of the time, but you can usually do better (i.e. better color accuracy) indoors under artificial light by selecting one of the fixed WB settings. Learn how to and don't be afraid to use them! When you have the time and lack of urgency to mess with the settings when taking pictures indoors, it's totally worth it to adjust WB. The only downside is the lack of a custom WB setting to calibrate against a white background and get it perfect. But like I said, one of the presets will usually give better results than Auto indoors.
    
  • Pictures blurry 'cause you just can't hold the camera still? Turn on "anti-shake" -- it helps a lot.
    

  Please add your own discoveries about the camera to this thread, so we can get it all in one place and help the community!

Edited February 22, 2009 by dwallersv

[Guest SiLviO_]

Realy helping topic. I didnt knew about the 3x3 view. Thanks!

When you are watching a picture u can move to the next one by using the D-pad.