How To Use A Camera Phone

HTC Kaiser Smartphone - April 12 - 2012
Toned in CS5 with Alien Skin Exposure 4

My brother gave a really good point regarding Cell Phones of today.  We truly should stop calling them Cell Phones, as there is little emphasis on the "PHONE" part, and more on the technology crammed into them.  So I came up with the ideal term of "Mobile Communicator" or even the "Portable Communication Tablet".  Granted, Cell Phone is a far simpler term, but we've long been moving away from a mobile phone, and have basically turned it into a mobile office, with word processors, internet data usage, text messaging, video conferencing, HD Video & high resolution photography... and lastly, it seems, the phone.

HTC Kaiser Smartphone - April 04 - 2012
Toned in CS5 with Alien Skin Exposure 4

It seems that the lowly CELL PHONE is a thing of the past now.  Consider this.  How many out there have a CELL PHONE that is nothing more than a phone.  No camera, or just a very rudimentary basic camera...? 

HTC Kaiser Smartphone - March 05 - 2012
Toned in CS5 with Alien Skin Exposure 2
Kodak Pantomic 32ISO B&W Film

Most out there will have a Blackberry, iPHONE, Android Phone, or Windows Mobile Smartphone.  These are most designed specifically for the business user, yet have become the mainstream method of portable communication.

I highly doubt we'll stop calling it a "CELL PHONE", but we should consider that we are truly moving away from a cellular mobile phone, and more keeping a mobile office instead, and the phone is just a perk that seems to carry along with it.

HTC Kaiser Smartphone - April 4, 2012
Toned in CS5 with Alien Skin Exposure 4

Now, the interesting thing about this phenomenon is that the cameras on these "phones" are becoming more and more sophisticated.  From the Nokia mobile that has a Carl Zeiss Tessar ƒ/2.8 lens.  REALLY?!  A CZ lens on a mobile phone?  Insanity!  But it's true! 

I, personally, do not have this phone, nor do I want it.  I like the camera that is on my phone, because it's so stupidly basic, that nobody truly expects the images I take with it to come out the way they do.

HTC Kaiser Smartphone - April 16 - 2012
Bokeh ; DoF in CS5 with Alien Skin Exposure 4

Of course, a lot to do with that is know how to use a camera, and how to use the software to process the image afterward.
On thing I have found, though, is that the camera takes EXCELLENT close up images.  The colour saturation is, obviously adjustable, but rather neutral in comparison to the average digital camera.  The 3MP sensor is perfect, considering its miniscule size.  Sure, you get some bad noise on some images, especially low-light images, or ones that you are processing slightly too heavily and trying to tone the levels differently.  Well, you have to learn how to cope with that, or you scrap your idea with the image, and try something else instead. 
I have had to do that once, and that was with this image below;

HTC Kaiser Smartphone - April 12 - 2012
Toned in CS5 with Alien Skin Exposure 4

I wanted to get this to be similar to an IR photo, but for the life of me, I could not do it.  I tried and tried and tried, but to no avail, so instead I decided to just adjust it to be a Fujichrome VELVIA shot instead.  That bumped up the Saturation levels and gave it a warmer punchier look.  Now the funny thing is, I actually had a CPL filter (Circular Polarizer) that I used with this one.  I held it over the camera lens, rotating it so that I'll get a darker bluer sky, and shot the image that way. 

The hard part of shooting this in the bright sunlight, is that the screen gets washed out.  I have a very hard time shooting without the viewfinder, because I'm both not used to it, and because it's just so difficult to see the LCD screen in bright light.

Either way, it worked out in the end.  The image, when viewed on my home computer screen, was just the way I wanted it, although slightly washed out in colour compared to the above image, and far cooler.

The other difficult part is adding a DoF (Depth Of Field) to the image.  Noted above the Detour sign, I had to add a DoF to it because otherwise it was very flat, and uninteresting.  Sure, shooting with a cellphone camera is rather uninteresting, until you start adding effects to the photo in post.



This leaves me with my most fun image yet.  It's a shot of my Canonet QL25 Rangefinder, which I took for a bit of a workout with me yesterday (April 16th - 2012) so that I could both finish the film inside it, and so I can bet better acquainted with this little rangefinder.  Very formidable camera, it is, and one that I should either use more often, or put it up for sale.  A camera like that truly does not deserve to be a shelf-queen at all!

HTC Kaiser Smartphone - April 16 - 2012
Toned in CS5 with Niks Silver EFEX Pro Infrared
Colour Channel Swapped In CS5

I know the colour seems really weird, and in truth, it is.. But I actually did NOT use Exposure 4, nor did I do anything other than a little bit of channel swapping here.
First I created a new layer, than used Niks SilverEFEX Pro to swap that new layer to Infrared.   After that, I took the first layer, and swapped the Green channel with the Blue Channel, then the Red Channel with the Green Channel.  Now, why the Infrared layer then?  Simple, I took the entire layer in Infrared and copied it into the RED channel on the lower layer.  This toned it for an EIR image. 
Great fun, and gives it a different type of look entirely.  The entire image takes on a reddy pink tone throughout.  I'm really wanting to try to shoot an image in dIR with sweeping deep blue skies as well. 
Perhaps one day I'll do that with my dSLRs.

Until then, I'll have to be satisfied with being silly with my Camera on my Portable Communications Tablet!

Not to mention, I'll definitely be shooting some REAL infrared film.  Efke IR820 anyone?