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I’ve previously discussed a few tips on taking pictures in my posting called Photo application Part 1 on the Zire 71 and other low resolution mobile cameras. Again, I’m not a photographer or expert on this but I think the tips may help you.

In that posting, I’ve provided the following tips:

1 - Keep your subject/focus still, especially for the few seconds after you’ve pressed the shutter button.

2 - Keep your hands still and steady, again, for the few seconds after you’ve pressed the shutter button.

3 - Get adequate lighting. Pictures taken in low light will not turn out very well. You may want to try to adjust the brightness and contrast to make the picture turn out better. This involves a bit of tweaking in order to get the best picture.

4 - Make sure that there is lighting “on” the subject/focus and NOT behind the subject/focus. Having the lighting behind will make the subject look dark against a bright background. You want to use the light to your advantage to light up the subject.

5 - When positioning the subject in the photo, don’t get too close to the subject/focus so that the image you see is a blurry and distorted one. The camera lens is mainly designed to take pictures from afar.

Here are a few additional tips on taking better pictures.

- Adjust the white balance (if available). By adjusting the white balance (if applicable for your Palm or mobile camera device), you can greatly improve the quality of the color of the pictures. You can easily adjust the white balance for the environment you are in to enhance the picture. Place a white card or sheet of paper in front of your camera. Go into picture taking mode of your camera device. Look at the white card in your camera’s screen. Adjust the white balance setting of your camera until the card is as close to the white color as possible. This will help the pictures turn out in the best color you can make it without having to do post photo editing.

- Without adjusting the white balance, you could also still somewhat change how colors are captured. If you are taking an object in a stationary setting, you may consider changing the background. Experiment with how objects will turn out based on the background colors (eg. white, gray, black, etc). Try using a variety of color in the background and test how your pictures turn out.

- In a low light or darker setting, if you have a portable flashlight or a cheap type of portable light like the LED ones (obtained at a dollar store), you may want to consider bringing it along. Of course, your friends may find it amusing but who cares, if the light will improve the picture capture? There are products out there that provide portable light for a mobile camera like the Phlash! universal camera phone flash, or PhoneBright. I’m not sure how much better they are compared to the cheap LED light or flashlight.

When using the light, avoid pointing it directly at the subject unless it’s totally dark. Instead, either point it a bit above the head, so that the light will be diffused, or adjust the lighting target and position to provide the best lighting that doesn’t look like it’s pointed right at the subject.

- For photo capture of stationary objects, try and test a variety of lighting environments: artificial lighting, sunlight, and test what provides the best output for your picture. You may even want to consider creating your own little photo studio using a box lined with white sheets and a desk lamp to optimize artificial lighting.

- Capture images in the highest resolution as possible and then resize to a smaller resolution and size afterwards as well as doing cropping or other adjustments later. Or, you could also capture in a lower resolution if you don’t need to have it blown up in a bigger size. Sometimes, pictures may look better if they are in a lower resolution than one in a higher resolution. Experiment with taking pictures in both lower resolution and higher resolution and go with what you find works for you.

- Capture images in mid-level lighting: not too bright so that the image reflects too much light back and not too dim so that it’s unviewable. Adjust your distance and position of the camera to find the optimimum lighting and pose.

Even if the picture doesn’t turn out great, you can always use Photoshop or other software to enhance, crop and resize the photo the way you want.

Here are a more camera tips with an emphasis for the Treo.

- Set your Treo to have that 3 second delay before it saves the picture. I originally took pictures without this and the pictures were so dark. Then, I decided to try changing the setting to allow me that 3 second delay (on, timeout) before it gets saved. And what a difference it made!

To set that time time, go into your Camera application. Bring up the Menu. Under Review photos: select On, timeout.

- Do not use the 2X setting (zoom) and take pictures in the normal setting. Normally, they look worse than in normal setting. If you want to zoom, you can always use Photoshop to do it later on.

- Camera brightness adjustment trick. To “brighten” up a picture by tricking your camera, place your finger over the camera lens for a second quickly remove it and snap the photo as you do so. If done correctly, you will trick the Treo camera to adjust the exposure setting so that your pictures will be captured at a higher exposure, thus a bit brighter. Here’s what I mean. Click on the images for a bigger picture.

The left picture is one taken without the 3 second delay. The right picture is taken with the special finger over the lens trick. See the difference?

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