Nokia Pro Cam released for the Lumia 92x range

[Guest awarner]

The camera app I have been waiting for has finally been released for the Lumia 92x range of devices. important information to start with, you will need the Amber update for this app to work I believe.

While there are a few decent camera apps available Pro Cam offers almost everything you could ask for with complete adjustments you usually find on SLR cameras. All the controls at on hand via a pin wheel input method which works really well. The only thing I wish the app did have was multiple pin wheels viewable for all the settings rather thn one at a time, this method is shown on the Lumia 1020 and the preview images on the Store but it looks like the 92x versions do not have this.

So with the app you have the usual settings for white balance (daylight, cloudy, incandescent etc but you also have more control over shutter speed, ISO control from 100 to 3200, in simple terms the iso determines the quality of the image and how much light is needed to compose your photo, the lower the iso the finer the image quality, the higher the iso the grainier the finished result will be.

New to the 92x settings is manual focus, some apps already make use of this but for those shots where you want to control the depth of field, for example only things in the foreground are in focus manual focus control really helps. Another setting is the use of a framing grid, this overlays a grid to enable you to get the framing of the shot you want just right using framing methods like rule of thirds. One really good feature using the framing option is that you can tap on a box in the grid and the image focus will be based around that one box, this really helps to create that depth of field image without the hard work of manually trying to focus.

Now the most interesting feature is bracketing, this is a technique where you take multiple shots of the same subject but with different exposures a minimum is three so one image is over exposed the next of the correct exposure and the last is over exposed. You would then normally combine the three images to create an HDR image. This is a technique used to capture and balance the light and dark areas in a normal image to give you a greater range of viewable light and can be used to produce some stunning effects. The interesting part of this is that currently Nokia do not produce an HDR app so you would have to create your HDR image on your pc. It will be interesting to see if Nokia have an HDR app in production.

Over all a very impressive app to really complement Nokia's already extensive dedicated app list.

[Guest awarner]

Thanks to Adam for the tip I missed, to have all the pin wheel menus at once touch the phone icon at the centre of the pin wheel and slide it to the left. I also forgot to add that to zoom in and out when taking a shot all you need to do is using one finger slide it up or down the screen, this is far better than using pinch to zoom which I always found annoying to use. Finally Nokia did a really good job with the app and included an easy to follow interactive user guide to highlight some of the features.