A purchase-deterring situation for many interested in the Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone is that it does not take low-light pictures as well as expected. Originally posted by My Windows Phone Story, there is a quick guide on settings to use when taking pictures in different low-light situations on your Lumia 900.
- For low-light photos: Change the ‘ISO’ settings from ‘Auto’ (the default) to a value of either 100 or 200.
- For up-close photos: Change the ‘Focus Mode’ setting from ‘Auto’ (the default) to ‘Macro’.
- For the best everyday setup: Do steps 1 and 2. Also, change the ‘Exposure’ setting from ‘0’ to ‘1.0’ for shots that are less dim and turn off Flash unless it’s really dark.
- Remember! If you don’t want to fiddle with the settings, after you change them once make sure you tap on ‘Save settings’ in the Camera app so they won’t revert.
Windows Phone Daily came up with a perfect picture comparison between “auto” settings and manual settings based on the guide above. It is a huge difference indeed as they put it, there is no other way to describe it. We have their two sample pictures below.
Automatic Settings
Manual Settings
Do you have any tips and tricks for taking great pictures on your Lumia 900 Windows Phone? Post them below in the comments or on the eWM forums.
I’ve found that just using the Nokia Creative Studio to take pictures as opposed to the native app works just as well. You can’t get to it by just tapping the shutter button but the quality is much better.
As a DSLR enthusiast, let me offer a slight correction: an ISO of 100 is the typical default of all cameras, and then they auto adjust from there. Raising the ISO manually to 200 is better, but since higher ISO numbers increase the camera’s sensitivity to light (and allows you to get better photos in lower light conditions) bump it to the max ISO 800 and you’ll see *much* better pics in low light. Problem is, although you get better exposure (brightness, in this case, for lack of a better term here) you don’t get as good resolution, which means it will be more pixilated. Try it and you’ll see what I mean.