GLOBAL – The Nokia Lumia 800‘s 8-megapixel camera is packed with hardware and software features that place it among the leading cameraphones of its generation.
Using a combination of the dual-LED Flash and Carl Zeiss optics, along with the software behind the Live Camera tile, your photography can be as automatic or creative as you want.
Taking pictures is intuitive via the hardware camera button, right through to sharing the finished results, making it a fully connected experience that works seamlessly.
The video camera on the Nokia Lumia 800, which shoots in 720p resolution, is equally as easy and footage looks great on your HD TV.
To get started, press the camera button, bottom right of the Lumia 800 or tap the camera tile on your home screen. Select camera or video from the toggle icon in the corner.
Assuming you’ve selected camera, hold the phone in landscape or portrait as required.
One trick to remember is that long-pressing the camera button will start the camera even when the phone is locked, for quick access when you need pictures in a hurry.
Then, making sure the light source is behind you and shining on your subject, you are ready to shoot. To zoom in, tap the plus button on the right in landscape mode or minus to zoom out.
Then gently half-press the shutter button to engage the autofocus. Once everything’s crystal clear squeeze it further to take the shot. To review your pic, press the back arrow, bottom left.
If you are happy with the shot, it’s easy to upload to SkyDrive or People Hub from here and then press the shutter button again to go back to live view and carry on shooting.
If you’re not happy, go into settings where you will find all of the manual options you’d expect to find on the average compact digital camera.
If the white in your picture is bluey or orangey, for example, go to white balance and switch to the appropriate light settings. Then try taking your picture again. Or, if the picture looks dark, try upping the ISO value. You can also try adjusting the exposure value until your picture is light enough.
Other settings include a choice of scenes, which will enhance your pictures, according to the conditions or event. You can also manually select light metering, contrast, effects, contrast, saturation, focus mode and resolution. In settings you can also select between flash, no flash and auto flash (the default setting).
If you really get into photography, you can spend hours experimenting with these settings to achieve amazing creative effects.
The video HD camera is just as much fun, with an equally good choice of settings. And it’s very easy to upload into Windows Movie Maker if you want to edit the footage. We’ll explain more about how to set up the Zune to make life easy in a later post.