HMD Nokia 3.1, Starting Afresh

Mobile Photography: Image making with an HMD Nokia 3.1, starting afresh and hoping for the best.

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I ended up downgrading from my old and beaten-up Nokia Lumia 720 to the consumer-grade Nokia 3.1. As the reviewers put it, there's nothing great about this run-of-the-mill model. Rather slow and sluggish, it falls short of what the competition has to offer, camera and all.

The default 13MP resolution of the F2 AF camera setup is only for taking photos in the 4:3 aspect ratio. Change the setup to a 16:9 or 18:9 image aspect ratio, and the effective megapixel count goes down to 8MP.

The camera itself is a straight and simple affair, with an interface with the shutter release at the bottom of the viewing screen, a switch to video mode next to it, and a shortcut to the gallery on the other side. On the top is a tiny mode selector that gives you the option to choose Regular photo, Panorama, or (very basic) Manual mode, and toggles for Beauty, Self-Time, HDR, Flash, and Selfie switch modes.

In retrospect, the image capture ratio does not matter much, really, as I am now doing a lot more images in the square 1:1 format. This means that I will be doing image cropping in-camera, and with the available editing functions, I may be able to reduce the time spent on the desktop.

HMD Nokia 3.1

These early images are what I came up with, leading to this post. They are not at their best, with lots of room for improvement.

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