March 18, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Smartphone Photography: Rolling Shutter Effect

The ‘rolling shutter effect’ is not new within photography and is often regarded as more of a hindrance than an effect, but it can produce some interesting videos in the right situation.

This one shows the rolling shutter effect in action when guitar strings are being played (although it should be noted that the video does not accurately depict how guitar strings vibrate)

The rolling shutter effect occurs when a CMOS sensor is being used to capture an image. The majority of high-end smartphones include a CMOS sensor at it allows for versatile features such as fast burst mode and slow motion recording and also takes up less processing power than alternatives.

A CMOS sensor works by scanning each frame from side to side in a sweeping motion as opposed to capturing the entire frame in one go (as would be the case with high-end cameras). More processing power is required to process an entire frame, so by capturing the frame in stages (e.g 1/100th at a time) less memory is required.

However, when capturing extreme conditions of motion or fast flashing light, a CMOS lens can cause the rolling shutter effect to occur. In the cases below, this creates some nice looking visuals, but it can also cause annoying distortions of videos at photos at other times.

This video does a good job of explaining with visuals why the rolling shutter effect occurs:

How to prevent rolling shutter effect

In some cases the rolling shutter effect will be nearly impossible to prevent, such as those when you are capturing extreme motion in a repetitive cycle. However, you may be able to address the problem in some situations by steadying the camera as much as possible and increasing the frame rate (this may involve reducing the resolution of the recording if the setting is available).

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February 5, 2013 By 4 Comments

Smartphone photography: is now the time for RAW?

Photography on smartphones has come an incredibly long way in the last few years, it doesn’t take too much effort to cast the mind back to a time when pixelated VGA images were the norm and the idea of a phone with a camera sensor with even a single megapixel was a distant thought.

Nowadays, imagery on smartphones is big business as Facebook’s billion dollar (or thereabouts) acquisition of Instagram last year is but one testament to. When you pick up a new smartphone, you expect to be able to start taking decent quality pictures with it straight away and, connection provided, share them almost instantaneously. Camera functionality is now so ingrained in smartphone operating systems that there is often a shortcut to get to the camera app from the lock screen, and any security issues this once caused have now been ironed out in many versions.

It was professional photographer Chase Jarvis that said the now trademarked and oft-repeated quote “the best camera is the one that’s with you”, which has become something of a mantra for those invested in smartphone photography. This is true in so far as, sure, if all I have with me is my phone, then what else am I going to use? However, with the rise in both interest and knowledge of the standard user, coupled with the power and ease of use of many editing applications, there is a growing community of people that want to be able to do more. So along with belated improvements to mainstream smartphone cameras such as improved sensor size and physical zoom, one thing being asked for is RAW format shooting. If you don’t know what RAW files are then read on.

[Read more...]

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July 6, 2012 By

HTC UK Dusk Until Dawn Photography Project

Ever fancied a once-in-a-lifetime trip to see the Northern Lights?

If the answer is yes, and you are in the UK, why not consider taking part in HTC’s latest competition. 

Dusk Until Dawn photography project is about capturing images on your smartphone of the unseen side of the UK between the hours of sunset and sunrise.

Entries should be sent to @htc_uk with #duskuntildawn.

Each week internationally renowned photographer Poppy De Villeneuve will shortlist her favourites whilst the winner will be decided by a public twitter vote. 

The competition started on the 2nd and runs for 7 weeks, so there is plenty of time to capture your images.

Find out more by watching the video below.

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May 18, 2012 By

Top Windows Phone Photography Apps

As Photographer Chase Jarvis once said “The best camera is the one you have with you” and if you happen to be carrying around a Windows Phone 7 device  the team at WP Central have compiled some of their favourite photography apps to add some creative flair to your snaps.

Thumba Photo Editor

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Price: Free (trial) or $0.99 for Full Version
Link: Get it here

Thumba allows you to apply 20 different effects to your photos as well as the usual image editing functions such as cropping, resizing, colour adjustments as well as coming with a handy before/after view to see exactly how your image changes when you make an adjustment.

Sketch Camera

Sketch Camera

Price: $1.49 for Full Version
Link: Get it here

Sketch Camera gives users the option of applying one of 12 different “hand-drawn” effects to existing photos or firing up the camera and applying the effect straight away. It does seem quite a high price for some limited functionality, though, and there’s not even a free version to try out first.

Fhotoroom

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Price: Free
Link: Get it here

Fhotoroom is the closest thing Windows Phone users can get to Instagram at the moment. It features the usual dazzling array of filters and effects, photo sharing to the usual social media suspects such as Facebook and Twitter as well as being able to see the photos of other Fhotoroom users. All for the bargain price of… err… nothing.

AutoPanorama

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Price: Free
Link: Get it here

If you don’t have access to the panorama modes provided in HTC and Nokia phones then this app can help you stitch together some breathtaking scenery shots of your own. Just point, shoot and slowly sweep the camera along the landscape to automatically capture and stitch together photos to capture the scene.

Pictures Lab

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Price: Free (trial) or $2.99 for Full Version
Link: Get it here

Again we have another photo editor here, again with its own in-app camera, again with more filters, adjustments, borders and effects than you can shake a stick at. Like Fhotoroom this one allows sharing to other services although it comes with a hefty $2.99 (well, not that hefty in the grand scheme of things) price tag. It does however have a free version for you to give it a whirl before parting with your money.

Apict

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Price: Free (trial) or $0.99 for Full Version
Link: Get it here

It makes your photos look like old school polaroids complete with a handwritten description. It also has the added bonus of making the sound of a polaroid snapping and printing your photo, which more than justifies the $0.99 price tag!

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March 14, 2012 By

Instagram–The Possibilities–Smartphone Photography

Instagram is without question one of the most successful camera applications on the iPhone.  There have been a lot of talk over the last few days about there being 27 million users of the app and that an Android one is in the works and due to be released soon. Maybe they should think about a Windows Phone one too?

Business Insider have had a professional photographer switch to Instagram for a month, and they are now hooked.

[Read more...]

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September 3, 2011 By

Smartphone Photography– cool images with your smartphone

imageIf you followed our series on smartphone photography – the whole of which can be found HERE you may be interested in the series that the team over at PhoneArena are running.

Very similar to the campaign we ran, whilst it is not a competition, there are some great entries and those of you who entered may wish to submit your photos to show them off to the rest of the world!

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August 18, 2011 By

Smartphone Photography – World Photo Day

Today is world photo day.  If you have been following the smartphone photography content we have been posting then you may be interested.  Today above any day is the one to get you camera out and start taking pictures.

Find out more here.

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August 18, 2011 By

Clove Photo Competition–Winners Announcement

So 6 weeks of photo entries are over!  We have had over 1500 entries and choosing a winner was difficult.  However after much deliberation a winner and 5 runners up have been chosen. Well done to all and thank you for the entries.

A special ‘well done’ to Del Folds who takes 1st prize with their picture of a squirrel taken on a HTC Desire.

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Taking 1st Prize means Del wins over £600 worth of smartphone equipment:

We have too selected 5 runners up as well.  These are:

J Lu

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Uros Krajger

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Vicky Mason

217

Nicholas Batchelor

472

Gary Toplis

1456

All winners will have been emailed.

So those were the winners, but because we had so many good entries we thought we would make mention of other photos we really likes and wanted to share with you.

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Thank you to everyone who took part.  All entries can be seen in the slideshow below!

[vodpod id=Video.10913139&w=425&h=350&fv=offsite%3Dtrue%26amp%3Blang%3Den-us%26amp%3Bpage_show_url%3D%252Fphotos%252Fclovetechnology%252Fsets%252F72157626952310364%252Fshow%252F%26amp%3Bpage_show_back_url%3D%252Fphotos%252Fclovetechnology%252Fsets%252F72157626952310364%252F%26amp%3Bset_id%3D72157626952310364%26amp%3Bjump_to%3D]

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August 13, 2011 By

Smartphone Photography Apps – Because Privacy Matters (Android)

416340firwwlmyeIf you use your phone for a mixture of business and personal use it is quite possible that at times your phone gets shown around the office or to a client and there could be data, or in this case photos or images you do not want or would prefer they didn’t see.

Android as fantastic as it is, the gallery which most users use to view photos picks up any image, irrespective of the folder location. Thus this means it could even pick up an icon image file which you do not want to see when scrolling though pictures taken on the camera.

To remedy the situation you can place a .nomedia file inside each folder that you want to exclude from the Gallery. While not terribly difficult, doing so is not as easy as it sounds.

Gallery Excluder lists the folders on your sdcard and allows you to place a check mark next to folders that you want to exclude, and vice versa. The app is simple and does exactly what it’s supposed to — most of the time. Some phones, particularly those from Motorola, do things differently and the .nomedia trick doesn’t work.

So if you want to protects some of your images, Gallery Excluder is just the app for you.

http://pocketnow.com/android/keep-unwanted-images-out-of-your-android-gallery-with-this-app?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+pocketnow+%28pocketnow.com%29

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August 12, 2011 By

Smartphone Photography: How do you backup your photos?

If you are using an Android smartphone and you take pictures on it, there is a good chance at some point, you want the images taken on that device to be stored or used somewhere else. 

Now we may store them on our smartphone, then upload to twitter or Facebook or email to a friend but then what.  Do you delete them, keep them?!

My question is once you have taken a picture on your phone what do you normally do with it and how do you handle this migration of content or backing up photos?

If you are like me, you probably take the photo and have it automatically stored  on the SD card within your device  which in itself is a better backup than the phones internal memory should something go wrong.

[Read more...]

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