Nokia Lumia 720, Adieu III

Mobile Photography: Image making with a Nokia Lumia 720, Auld Lang Syne to an old and trustworthy friend, Part III.

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What I enjoyed most with this low-end / mid-range phone was the high contrast and punchy colors of images captured by the 6.1MP rear camera. This is helped, undoubtedly, by the Zeiss optics and fast f/1.9 lens. The camera itself is rather a simple fare, it does not have the optical image stabilization of the Lumia 920 or the huge sensor as in the PureView 808, nor does it come with HDR or Panorama shooting modes or creative filters.

The camera served me well, and with its Windows 8 OS, creating a workflow from the camera to my desktop image management system, Olympus Viewer 3 (OV3), for post-processing is equally easy. On OV3 the images were given a minimum of one or three tweaks with Auto Tone Correction, Brightness & Contrast, and Unsharp Mask, or more when I was looking for a more creative look for the images. Final print sharpening is typically done on Google NIK Sharpener Pro 3.

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Nokia Lumia 720, Adieu II

Mobile Photography: Image making with a Nokia Lumia 720, Auld Lang Syne to an old and trustworthy friend, Part II.

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This is the second of a three-part post where I say adieu to my old and trustworthy Nokia Lumia 720 which I have been using for almost five years to the day. The phone has been through tough and thin with me, the screen is cracked and is taped over with a couple of small camera LCD screen protectors, and the battery is getting depleted even before the day is over.

Most of the images were originally captured in a 16:9 aspect ratio, out of which a collection of them has also been posted as part of my weekly musing on this blog. These 1:1 image crops are edits that I am also using on my Instagram profile, with which you can do likes, follow, or post a comment or two. Thank you.

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Nokia Lumia 720, Adieu I

Mobile Photography: Image making with a Nokia Lumia 720, Auld Lang Syne to an old and trustworthy friend, Part I.

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This will be Part I of a three-part post where I say adieu to my old and trustworthy Nokia Lumia 720. It has been quite a while since I began using the consumer-grade Nokia Lumia 720, about five years ago, and the phone is now showing severe signs of old age. The battery does not keep its charge for more than a few hours, the screen is cracked and is taped over with a couple of small camera LCD screen protectors.

The Nokia Lumia 720, together with its Windows Phone 8 OS, was arguably the slickest mobile phone system available then and was super-desirable. Though it came with only a decent display (low on pixels), it does have a very competent 8MP rear camera that makes up for other shortcomings and was good enough for me to enjoy an archive of high-quality images.

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Nokia Lumia 720, Rainy Days

Mobile Photography: Image making with a Nokia Lumia 720, it's raining and wet out there.

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It is not always good fun to be stuck in the rain, worse still if you are a photographer, as you have to figure out how to keep yourself and your equipment dry. It could be just as bad if you are caught driving in the rain or while waiting to pick someone up. Driving in the city, for example, traffic could be down to a crawl, going bumper to bumper, with no end in sight. Have a camera phone handy? It could be fun, and it can also give a moment or two of relief and enlightenment.

On these rainy days, and where you are at, external lighting will usually be flat, the surroundings mushy, muted, and dreary. Water sprays and mist from moving vehicles add to the misery. Look again, defocus, absorb the environment as a whole, and you may soon realize that the jewel of the composition forming in front of your eyes is the raindrops that are falling on your windscreen...

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Olympus XA1, At the Mall

Analog Diary: Film photography favorites, image making with an Olympus XA1, a street shoot in the mall.

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Taking along the Olympus XA1, the simplest of the XA Capsula cameras produced by Olympus over three decades ago is as easy as grabbing one and slipping it into your shirt pocket or purse as you are on your way out of the door. The XA1, a full-frame 35mm film camera, is complete with its own capsule cover that slides back to open up the lens when you are ready for the action.

This true point-and-shoot camera is exceptionally easy to use and maintain, firstly as the electro-mechanical shutter system is powered by a selenium cell, the camera does not need a battery for its operation.

Olympus XA1

The fixed focus D.Zuiko 35mm F4 is, of course, focus-free, and images are sharp from 1.5 meters onward, and the programmed shutter ranges from F4/1.30 second to F22/1.250 second automatically depending on the ambient lighting situation.

Would you rather carry around a film camera instead of relying only on your handphone? Images captured on film may come out better than digital images when shot in natural lighting, it has a higher dynamic range, and film grain is aesthetically pleasing. All said and done when all photo images can always be enhanced with a little bit of sharpening, scanned film images can also be given the same treatment in your process workflow.

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