Three Little Letters

The first thing on the wish list is to be able to shoot RAW and the G4 allows us to do just that. Saving images as both jpeg and Digital Negative (DNG), an open raw file format.

You can see here that these two images, despite being taken at the same time, are very different in size, the DNG file being almost FIVE times as big, thats five times the data, a far broader range of luminance.

Three Modes

The LG G4 has three camera modes; Simple, Auto and Manual. For those wanting a pretty decent point and shoot the first two will do you just fine, but for those of us that have been dreaming of a smartphone camera that we can alter the setting of, Manual is a gift from heaven!

Diving into Manual

Once in Manual mode a whole host of icons and information is presented to you;

1. Settings menu for flash, camera (front or rear) file type and access to further settings.

2. This is the currant settings, from left to right; Histogram, White Balance, Focus, Exposure, ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture.

3. Tapping one of these icons brings up its control (4) In the screenshot above this is setting the Exposure Compensation.

Focus

Here you can see the Manual Focus controls that give amazingly sharp images from approximately 5 cm from the lens.

Exposure Compensation

While in Manual Mode Exposure Compensation becomes available, in the image below I’ve used this to prevent Sian from being in silhouette in front of the bright window.

Shutter Speed

With access to the shutter speed I can shoot at 1/6000 sec to 30 sec. In the following shot I used just a couple of seconds (at 11pm I thought I’d call it a night, but expect long shutter pics to crop up soon!)

Conclusion

The camera on this phone is good but its great in manual. The control is exceptional and a joy to use. I found that shooting on a sunny day was tricky, the screen is very reflective so i ended up putting a cover over me and the phone,not really progress!

For me, the best smartphone camera I’ve tried yet.

Images in this post taken with Honor 6+ and iPhone 6

I’m looking for new things to shoot and I wondered if I’d be able to find a way to take photos underwater. Here’s my solution;

Spaghetti Is The Answer

The problem is, how to get the phone underwater without getting it wet. To do this I went to my local John Lewis and bought a spaghetti jar. I spent some time looking at a couple of models, even putting my phone in them and taking an image.

The distortion of more rounded jars was far too much, so I went for the more square model where the phone could sit flush with the sides.

Pack It In

To make sure the phone stayed flush to the edges while shooting I packed kitchen roll around it. Then packed the top of it with kitchen roll to to catch and spillages or splashes.

Trigger

Obviously I wasn’t able to press the shutter to take the pics, so I used a bluetooth trigger.

Dip In

Dipping the jar in the water and hitting the shutter means its a little hit and miss, but its a lot of fun and rewarding when you get a little something.

I didn’t catch any wildlife but thats not too surprising considering where I was,

Captured with Honor 6+

This technique also meant that I could capture the landscape from water level, something I’ve not done before.

Captured with Honour 6+

Next time I’m at the coast I’m heading straight to the rock-pools!