Nokia Lumia Tricks and Tips with David Norbut
I’ve always been one for trying new things, especially with my photography. I remember building a pinhole camera as a young art student and going out on the roof, setting the thing on the ledge facing the city scape, opening the shutter, waiting, then leaning in view of the pinhole to see if my image would show up as well. In the darkroom I remember seeing the image appear, and thinking it looked like another world. I was hooked. I wanted to create scenes, other worlds with my photographs.
Fast forward to today, I’m writing about my experience with the Nokia Lumia 920. Over the years, I’ve shot with everything you can think of.. pinhole cameras, polaroids, 35mm, medium format, large format, digital everything, phones, whatever was around. So I didnt think of this new device as anything but a new camera. I sat around for a couple of hours shooting with every app I could find and ended up with, hands down, one app, Pro Shot. I set it on Black and White, left everything else on auto except the flash and adjusted the exposure compensation down one notch to -1.
I charged up the phone, covered the entire back of the bright yellow phone with black Gaffers tape, cranked up a Lungfish record on the earbuds and hit the city.
The best way for me to shoot is to keep it dedicated and simple, one camera, one app and create from the world around me.
I am not a technical person and I am certainly not a technical photog, so I can only tell you what I know works. This phone, using Pro Shot shooting in Black & White works. There is a shutter lag, I adapted after a few shots. We can talk all day long about ifs, ands, or buts, other phones, other cameras, other contenders, I don’t care. I’m a photographer, all I want to do is walk around and take photographs all day every day. The Nokia Lumia 920 gives me that, I got used to it and started doing what I want to do, capture and create. My technical advice is limited to what worked for me.
My Prep:
- Open ProShot
- Set to Black and White via IMG
- Drop off the Exposure Compensation, this allows you to keep nice shadows you can brighten in post processing if needed
- Leave everything else on Auto
- Tap the screen as the shutter
- Compose the scene on the screen
My Post:
I will put my images through Fotar if I want to add contrast or brighten things up.
My advice for strong images, let the image do all the work, Minimal editing works for me.
Finally, save your images to Skydrive. Its an excellent app that saves your images at full resolution and you can share your images to all other devices or other editing apps easily and flawlessly.
Bottom Line, learn the device, and you’ll enjoy using it.
Dedicate yourself to the camera you are carrying and go see the world.
