Photography -2

 Professor Levoy goes very in depth into camera optics here:

Digital Photography

and I have posted explorations in optics in the Observing and Recording LabBook:

Observing and Recording

I will skip all that and start exploring the particular camera apps that I use.

My Moto g Power shipped with the standard Motorola Camera (version 10.0.47.40). At face, it's a point-and-shoot (everything is automatic mode) camera, unless.....unless you choose the Pro mode, in which case you suddenly have all the adjustments.....aperture, ISO, mid focus, white balance and contrast. In other words, Pro mode is manual mode for the Moto Camera 

The mode select bar is at the bottom just above the shutter release. There are a very satisfying number of modes to choose from.

One of its big strengths is an easy to get to slow motion video mode. It uses the primary camera only and there are not many controls available, but there doesn't really need to be.

You can select 1x or 2x. And it gives you a bar that lets you decide what section of the video will be slow. Here's that fan again.

It's simple and easy.

The birds here have learned a lot of tricks for dealing with the high winds. Here's a sparrow demonstrating some aerobatics. I heightened the contrast and darkened the scene to bring out it's image.

The video mode provides more control (but not slow motion) and has some unexpected tricks. For instance, it's an easy way to stop motion since you can use your editor to excise a still frame out of a video. Like this lightning strike.

 

You can select the flash and the microphone for sound. Moto Camera has FHD (Full High Definition), and unlike slow motion, you can use any of the three cameras.

Full High Definition is basically video with 1080 pixel resolution. The FHD icon allows you to switch from 30 frames per second to 60 frames per second, which can give a little crispness to a video  In the following video of Juneteenth fireworks, I begin with regular video. Around 14, I zoom to about 6x, then around 33, I switch from 30 fps to 60 fps.

The last item on the Mode bar (just above the shutter release) is "More". If you poke that, you'll see some special effect modes including two for video: Time Lapse and Dual Capture.

Time lapse is the opposite of slow motion. It speeds up the action. If you want to take a video of a flower opening, you can put the camera on a tripod, focus on the bud, and set the camera for Time Lapse.

In Time Lapse mode, there is a button to the right of the camera selector (above the shutter release, that opens a slider that will let you change the speed of the action.

Dual Capture will make a video with both the front and back cameras at the same time.

The Photo mode in the Moto Camera is basically the automatic mode discussed in Photography - 1, and, honestly, it does a great job of automatically adjusting exposure, field of view, and such which is why just about all the photographs in this blog have been taken in Photo mode.

It allows you to select which camera is used, whether to use the flash, photo aspect ratio, a time delay for the shutter, and a filter for the resulting photograph. In the settings, you can also include a time, date, location, camera, or Motorola logo stamp to include in the lower margin of the photograph.

The Portrait mode is completely automatic (you can select the flash) except that you can open a slider to adjust the depth of focus. In the following series, note that the yucca blossoms are clear at different distances from the camera 

On the Moto Camera, the manual mode is called Pro. Opening the Pro mode gives you a bar over the shutter release that lets you adjust the manual focus, white balance (tone temperature,), aperture, ISO, and contrast, and it also shows a histogram.

The histogram is a guide for tones in the photograph. The horizontal axis is brightness of pixels. The vertical axis is the number of pixels at a specific tone level. A dark photograph will show a histogram with most of the values to the left.

A light photograph will show tones clustering to the right.

 Night vision mode uses an algorithm to take a quick sequence of photographs of the same scene with the same exposure. Then it aligns them and cleans up the results. I was quite surprised at how well it  does in low light surroundings. It's not infrared. It does require some light to make images.

Also, contrast is important. Too much light in one area of a photograph will blot out details in another. I wanted to emphasize the soap tree yuccas against the dusk in the bottom photo. The top photo was a darker scene, so more ground details are visible 

With the Panorama mode, you can stand in one place, turn slowly, and obtain a photograph of 360° of a scene. If you want to include less than 360°, you can interrupt the scan by pressing the shutter release button.

Bitter Lakes National Wildlife Reserve 

The Chihuahuan desert 360°

The Scan mode allows you to capture a document image as a pdf. It automatically senses the borders and provides appropriate exposure and focus. It's sorta extra for me since I have two dedicated scanner apps on my phone 

The Photo Booth Mode provides a burst of a series of selfies. It also provides some options for modifying the portraits such as slimming, altering the size of the eyes subtly, changing the tone, etc 

These cameras are fun to play with and, frankly, that's the best way to learn how to use them  Of the six camera apps on my phone, the one that came with the phone, the Moto Camera, is the most convenient. It can be set up to take photos from the lock screen, with a tap anywhere on the screen, or when the camera detects a smile or your palm in the front camera. You can also set the phone up so that the camera opens when you twist your wrist holding the camera.

Likely, the resident camera on your phone will be similar. It may offer some special trucks so be sure to explore it.

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