Although we now take them for granted, camera phones can make a strong claim to have changed the way we behave and act.
No concert is complete without a sea of hands holding aloft camera phones eager to take a picture or video of the performance.
Another phenomenon that’s been ushered in with the age of the camera phone is the self-portrait, or the selfie (or is it the selfy?).
You never used to see people holding their giant SLR cameras at arm’s length to take their selfie!
Many young people now think nothing of taking their selfie and sharing it on social networks to show their friends what they’re wearing, what they’re doing or where they are hanging out.
The selfie has practically become an art form – search for the selfie tag on Tumblr or Twitter and you’ll see just how creative people can be with a self-portrait.
Selfies on the Nokia 301
You might think that to take a good selfie, you would need either a mirror or an expensive smartphone with a front-facing camera. Well, you’re wrong.
A mirror is fine but you’re really capturing a reflection rather than a true selfie. Plus, an obvious drawback is that your phone will probably also appear in the image.
The Nokia 301 is an affordable feature phone (around 65 euros) with a gorgeous design in striking colours and a 3.2-megapixel camera.
As you would expect for a feature phone at this price point, it doesn’t have a front-facing camera but instead the Nokia 301 uses innovative voice guidance to help you capture selfies.
It’s great fun, and it means you can take perfectly framed self-portraits each and every time.
Using voice guidance
When you launch the camera on the Nokia 301, select the menu icon to bring up a host of different shooting modes.
Navigate to and select the self-portrait mode. You’ll see the instructions on the screen: “Look at the camera and follow the instructions.”
Then, flip the phone in your hand so that you’re facing the back of the phone – and looking at the camera.
It feels counter-intuitive at first because you can’t see what’s on the screen, but be patient because help is coming!
A few seconds after you’ve held the camera in front of you to get an approximate shot of your selfie, you’ll hear a pleasant female voice guiding you with instructions to move your hand up, down, left or right.
Once your selfie is perfectly framed, you’ll hear an ‘OK’ and the image will be taken automatically.
During the entire process, once you’ve selected self-portrait from the camera menu, you don’t have to press any buttons at all – just listen to the voice instructions.
The more you use the voice-guided self-portrait feature, the better your results will be.
At first I was making large and fast movements when it told me to move the phone, but I’ve come to realise that it’s much more subtle than that. You need to make small movements to get the best selfies.
Besides, if you need to move it further to the side, higher or lower, the voice guidance will always let you know until you’ve got it in just the right place!