Proof That You Can Make Great Photos With Nokia E50
Jaro 17. December 2007 :: camera, photo
One of the readers, Roger, sent me a couple of pictures made with his Nokia E50. I selected one which I want to share with you. What strikes me is that a simple E50 camera is capable of producing a photo with rich colours.
Do you have some photos you would like to share with others? Send them to contact (at) nokiae50.info.
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How To Create Panorama Photo With Hugin
Jaro 3. September 2007 :: camera, hugin, panorama
Hugin is a free, easy to use and convenient panorama stitching program. The best part is that hugin doesn’t need any expensive hardware like dSLR or tripod with panoramic head to stitch a decent panorama photo. In fact, mobile phone with camera should be enough. In this tutorial I will cover only basic use of hugin, but it will be well enough to start stitching panoramas (even 360 degrees ones).
You’ll need two pieces of software:
- hugin – http://hugin.sourceforge.net
- autopano – http://autopano.kolor.com
You will also need some photos to stitch. There are only two things you should know before taking photos for panorama.
First, the photos must overlap. Anything between 1/4 and 1/2 of
one photo should be included on the next (or the previous) one. Here is an example. Left overlap region is good enough, right one is not – it’s too small with no distinct points on both pictures.
Second, the photos must be taken in the same conditions. This means you shouldn’t change any settings (e.g. white balance or colour tone) during the shooting. Take photos as fast as possible, this will assure that moving objects (e.g. clouds) will have approximately same position. Don’t walk while taking photos just move/turn your palm.
Now you know the basics so let’s take some photos. Go out and take 3 or 4 photos following the rules above. Done? OK, no need to go out. For the learning purposes you can use these 4 photos below (notice how they overlap each other):
The next step is to setup our software. Any computer faster than 500MHz with at least 128MB of RAM should be enough.
Unpack hugin and Autopano and launch hugin by running hugin.exe. Go to File – Preferences and do the following:
1) in the Autopano tab check Use alternative Autopano program and choose autopano.exe
2) in the Enblend tab check Use alternative enblend program and choose enblend.exe (you can find it in hugin’s directory – \hugin\enblend\enblend.exe). Then in Additional arguments type -v -l 10 (the middle character is small L, not 1).
Let’s now stitch our photos together. Open hugin, go to the Images tab and add photos. If you have an older camera it will ask you to fill some information (modern cameras have all needed info stored in EXIF data of a photo). Set the lens type to Normal (rectilinear). Focal length should be filled automatically. If not, choose the focal length multiplier so that HFOV (v) will be set at about 50 degrees for landscape photos or about 40 degrees for portrait photos. Here is an example of settings for the Nokia E50 camera:
Now we should anchor one photo for position. For best result choose photo which is in the center of panorama (ie. second out of three) and click the Anchor this image for position button. We are not dealing with exposition here, so Anchor for exposure is not important.
The next step is to match photos. Set points per overlap:
- fewer = faster, but less accurate (e.g. 10)
- more = slower, but more accurate (e.g. 100).
Set something between 25 and 50 here (I typically set 50 or 100) and hit the Create control points button.
Now we must optimise our panorama. Go to the Optimizer tab and choose Positions and view (y,p,r,v) from the dropdown list. Hit the Optimize now! button.
It’s time for a first glance at our panorama. Go to menu View – Preview window. Projection will be Equirectangular but you can experiment here. Hit the Straighten and then the Center button. For now the black parts of the image must remain.
Let’s render a panorama. Go to the Stitcher tab and click on Calculate optimal size. If it’s too big, set your own width (2000 pixels is enough). Height will be adjusted proportionally. Stitching engine should be set to nona, interpolator to poly 3 (bicubic) and gamma to 1.0 (no luminosity change).
The important thing is to properly blend the pictures so there are no distinct seams between them. Set image format to TIFF, compression to none and check the soft blending. Why choose TIFF and not go for JPEG instead? Well, see for yourself. The first image is JPEG, the second one is TIFF.
At last click on Stitch now! and wait. Here is the final result (taken with Nokia E50’s camera and stitched from 4 photos). To see the original size click on the photo:
Feel free to post your results in the comments below. Can’t wait to see some more panorama photos!
Thanks to KHRoN for submitting this tutorial!
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E50 camera compared to Fuji S5600
Jaro 9. July 2007 :: camera, review, test
The following article was written by KHRoN from Poland.
One week ago I did a simple test. I took several photos with my Nokia E50 and Fuji S5600 to check whether they differ and if so, how much. I was shooting in Ruczaj district, Krakow, Poland.
The Nokia E50 was in a default mode while the S5600 was set to a custom mode (f5 aperture, standard color, 3MPx mode, 2048×1536). I made a mistake of setting the S5600 to a spot metering mode. Oh well, the next comparison will be better given the rain finally stops. It’s been raining here for a week now.
Both photos were rescaled with Lanczos algorithm to 720×540 px, ran through the Enhance Detail filter in XnView and saved in JPEG format with 85% quality which is enough for the web.
The result is quite interesting.
For the start, FOV of both cameras is almost the same. It is quite a surprise to me as I thought that E50 would have a bit wider FOV.
Next, it seems that S5600 has darker exposure than E50. Nevertheless, E50’s sunny white balance works quite well (better than auto though).
On every pair of photos it’s quite obvious that E50 is blowing out
highlights while preserving some details in dark areas. But the overall exposition is really good for such a cheap camera.
Of course, photos are not nearly as detailed as from regular cameras but sometimes it’s better to take at least some photo than not to take a photo at all. And then E50 comes in handy :)
Note: Photos are paired. Top photo – Nokia E50; bottom photo – Fuji S5600.
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How to make better photos with Nokia E50
Jaro 23. April 2007 :: camera, photography
Today I’d like to give you a few basic tips that can help you make better pictures with the E50 camera. Don’t expect any wonders though, the E50 camera has its limits. If you are after the high quality photos you better look for some real camera ;)
This post was inspired by one of the readers of this blog. I’m very happy for any feedback I receive and I try to reply to every email. Keep them coming, I really enjoy conversation with others. I’m not any professional in photography, I just follow the basic rules.
Tips to make better pictures with Nokia E50
- good light – this is a general rule for any photography; if it’s cloudy outside you won’t get nice shot, especially with a low end camera which is implemented in most of the mobile phones
- hold steady – Nokia E50 tends to capture photos with a delay of about 1 – 1.5 seconds; keep your phone steady after pressing the button and you’ll see an improvement on the sharpness of your pictures
- don’t zoom – E50 camera has only digital zoom which is almost useless; it produces very blurry pictures that are unusable; don’t be lazy and make a few steps closer to your object
- image processing – if you are familiar with programs like Photoshop or GIMP you might want to edit your photos on pc; I like what Silvester does with his photos
So there you have it. Practice makes perfect so don’t be shy and make more pictures while you are out. You can make some really nice shots even with basic camera. If you don’t believe take a look at some of the Friday Photos. Feel free to add your own tips!
Friday Photo
Jaro 9. February 2007 :: camera, e50, friday photo, nokia, photo
I got this idea to publish here one photo every Friday. While I’m far from being a good photographer and the E50 camera is only 1.3 MPix without optical zoom I hope you’ll find a few interesting shots here. You are very welcome to join me. The only condition is that the photo must be made with a Nokia phone.
You come to this blog from all over the world so it may be interesting to see different kinds of photos from different time of the year. It’s cold winter up here in Finland and I often find myself staring at the photos of my friends from the southern hemisphere. So go out, take a few pictures and send them in (contact@nokiae50.info), it will be fun!
I’ll start with a photo I took yesterday. If you are from a Nordic country you probably know what’s on the picture. If not, submit your guesses in the comments below :)
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With or without camera?
Jaro 4. December 2006 :: camera, e50, flickr, nokia, photo
A few people asked me which model I recommend – with or without camera. When I was buying my E50 I was struggling with the same problem. I just couldn’t decide. In the end I went for the model with camera. A few things to consider:
- price difference is small; comfort of having a camera all the time with you ready to shoot will cost you around €30/$40 extra
- you won’t notice you have a camera; it’s completely build in and the back of your phone is nicely sleek
- quality of the photos is relatively low (1.3 Megapixel camera); if you want high resolution photos then look for the Nseries models which are equipped with Carl Zeiss lenses
- despite low megapixels the camera has quite many options to tune up your end result; night mode, sequence mode, self-time and adjusting white balance and colour tone are all useful features
- basic digital zoom; you won’t get any great results with it but it’s a plus
- you can shoot a video up to 1 hour long depending on size of a memory card; again, no high-res videos but still better than no video
If you want to see what kind of photos you can make with E50, check out Flickr. My final verdict is: get the model with a camera if you can afford paying a few bucks more.
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Nokia E50 on Flickr
Jaro 29. November 2006 :: camera, e50, flickr, nokia, photo
There has been lots of discussion about the Flickr Camera graphs which show the most popular cameras and camera phones used on Flickr. First place belongs to Sony Ericsson followed by two Nokia Nseries phones.
But where is our E50? Can it compete with the entertainment series? Not really but you will be surprised that it’s doing pretty well considering it’s a new phone, has only 1.3 megapixel camera and it’s intended to be used mainly for business. So let’s have a look how it’s doing among all the Nokia phones:
- ranking at number 17 out of 26 Nokia phones
- total amount of 1,110 photos have been posted
- approximately 3 people upload a photo from their E50 every day
I was pleasently surprised when I saw these statistics. I didn’t think I would find so many photos on Flickr made on the E50. And some of them even look good! Have a look yourself:
It’s no Digital Rebel but hey, these photos look pretty good, don’t they? You can see a list of all photos at flickr.com/cameras/nokia/e50. We can’t compete with the Nseries guys, they have Carl Zeiss lenses which produce much better pictures but we still can make nice pics with our tiny E50 camera. Come on, take more pictures and post them on Flickr or any other place. I’ll link to the best ones.
