HTC One M8 - Manual Camera Settings

[thesoupdragon]

HTC One M8

Manual Camera settings

We all use our Phones to take Photographs these days but there are times when these handy little “Cameras” can struggle in the usual Auto mode.

The HTC One M8 has one of the best “Manual modes” of any modern Smartphone, combining ability and ease of use.

How do I access Manual mode?

1. Open the Camera Application

2. Tap on the 3 little dots in the Top left of the screen, (portrait mode) or bottom left of the screen (landscape mode).

3. Tap on [AUTO]

4. Select the M

   

To reveal the manual mode sliders, simply tap on each of the settings On-Screen.

This will activate the easily controlled sliders which range from Full Auto mode, right through the full scope of manual settings.

As you can see from the image above the Manual settings have been cleverly arranged into a simple graphical display using very intuitive slide controls.

What do these sliders do? Let's take a closer look at each one:

1. WB or White Balance, is used to alter the the intensity of each colour channel. In simple terms it helps make whites look whiter and other colours look as natural as they did to the naked eye.

2. ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization. It is a standard that dictates the agreed measure of sensitivity to light. In old 35mm film terms, the higher the ISO number, the more sensitive to light and therefore the faster the film speed.

3. Shutter (looks like an Iris) This controls how fast or slowly the shutter opens and closes again.

4. Focus (looks like a cross hatch target) This controls the Cameras Depth of Field. Whether an item is in focus, close to the camera or far away.

How do I use these settings?

This is simple, point the camera at what you want to take a picture of and move the sliders…

OK that’s a bit too simple I know!

The first thing to do is consider the quality of light that is all around you. Is it bright, is it dark or is it somewhere in between?

Move the Shutter slider slowly until the picture looks about the right brightness. Don’t worry about being too accurate at this point… 😉 The HTC One M8 gives you a “Live view” so any changes you make will show you immediately what the photo will look like.

Usually ISO 200 will give you the best trade off between quality of image and faster shutter speeds. The exceptions will be if it is an incredibly bright sunny day you could use ISO 100. Or if you are indoors or taking an evening shot you might want ISO 400 - 800.

Now check the white balance, move the slider until the colours look natural. If there is something white nearby, that will be really useful as a reference to set the image by.

(You could place a piece of white paper next to your subject and measure off that!)

Finally adjust the Focus slider so that the main subject of your image is nicely sharp.

This can be the most useful of all the manual settings, for those moments when the Phones Camera is struggling to focus on exactly what you want it to.

Example of manual Focus

As you can see in this image, there are lots of gaps in the main subject of the Photo. The Camera was struggling to choose between the Catapult, the Table and the background.

I switched to Manual mode and kept everything in Auto mode except the Focus slider. I was able to very quickly bring the Catapult into focus and at the same time produce a reasonable soft focus effect for the background.

(The slider ranges from Full Auto into Infinity, all the way down to Macro for extreme close ups.)

So next time you are struggling with getting the “perfect” photo. Open the Manual settings and have a quick play around.

You might just be surprised at what you can achieve?

TSD