HMD Nokia 3.1, Learning A New Trick

Mobile Photography: Image making with an HMD Nokia 3.1, on a learning curve with macro photography.

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Just the baby steps here, and a quick look at a bit of a niche within the larger smartphone photography world, which I have completely overlooked, and was not even truly aware of its true potential until I chanced upon a couple of articles on it, close-ups, and macro photography.

In its simplest terms, close-ups and smartphone macro photography, image captures of objects at close-up focal distance and imaging of super small items with only the smartphone instead of using a DSLR or mirrorless ILC (Interchangeable Lens Camera), are already wildly popular and are a regular in the photography industry. The most important aspect of this genre is that you do not need any other equipment or hardware aside from your smartphone.

Nokia 3.1

Unless you are going into vlogging as well, even the gimbal stabilizer, as shown in the image, is not an optional accessory that you may need to have.

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HMD Nokia 3.1, At The Farmer's Market

Mobile Photography: For the vintage enthusiast, an outing at the local Sunday morning Farmer's Market, with an almost vintage HMD Nokia 3.1.

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An outing with the age-old smartphone on a street shoot at the local Sunday morning Farmers Market, a vibrant community space where local farmers sell fresh produce and other goods directly to consumers, a chance to capture a candid moment of everyday life in a public space, and an opportunity to focus on people and their interactions within their urban environment.

Doing so, in a genre that emphasizes spontaneity and authenticity, often portraying people in their natural environments without staging or intervention, calls for quick and unobtrusive shooting, normally with cameras fitted with wide-angle lenses to capture more of the scene without drawing attention. There are also times when an opportunity arises, when a shot can be taken from within the scene itself. An advantage, of course, is to use a mobile or a smartphone for the shoot.

Borne from the works that can be traced back to the 19th century when artists like Charles Nègre began documenting urban life, and early practitioners like André Kertész used portable cameras to capture spontaneous scenes in Paris. Though having its roots alongside photojournalism, street photography is now a distinct form of artistic expression, separate from traditional documentary photography due to its emphasis on personal interpretation and aesthetic choices rather than strict narrative guidelines.

For the budding photographer with an eye for spontaneity and incidentals, street photography is not necessarily constrained to the streets or urban settings alone; it may go far beyond that. The genre invites photographers to explore their surroundings with curiosity and creativity, capturing moments that might otherwise go unnoticed. This approach fosters a unique connection between the photographer and their environment, encouraging an ongoing dialogue about perception and representation in visual art.

The market at our local is a weekly affair, none too big, with only a row of stalls displaying their produce and staples along a precinct street closed to vehicular traffic. Activities start at the crack of dawn, with the crowd growing as the morning lingers until it peters out about mid-morning when the stalls close and the clean-up begins.

HMD Nokia 3.1

As the genre is the documentation of human experience in various contexts, the ubiquitous smartphone, with its wide-angle lens, is all you need to start with. Mine, which was put to good use for this short, is an age-old HMD Nokia 3.1, an entry-level Android smartphone released in 2018 by HMD Global.

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HMD Nokia 3.1, A Short Street Walk

Mobile Photography: Image making with an HMD Nokia 3.1, on an occasional outing with the mobile as the prime for recording images.

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One for the record, early morning images of a local shopping precinct, on an occasional outing where the mobile is used as the prime for recording images. Although I have had the mobile since it was introduced in 2018, I have always resorted to my normal cameras for street shoots on outings and walkabouts. The cameras, to me, are easier to handle and the mobile has always remained a communication tool.

HMD Nokia 31.

The HMD Nokia 3.1 has a 13-megapixel rear camera with an LED flash, and an 8-megapixel front camera, which can be set to 4:3, 16:9, or 18:9 image aspect ratios, with resolutions at 2, 3, 5, 8, and 13 MP. I have noticed that over the years I have been using the mobile, and the camera's features have also been upgraded to what it is now with the regular updates of the Android One program. It may be time maybe for me to use it (the camera feature) more often.

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Nokia Asha 300, Noise, Speed, and All

Mobile Photography: Image making with a vintage candy-bar Nokia Asha 300, catching the essence of the night traffic.

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My previous post, the Evening Groove, got me excited about the possibility of using the Nokia Asha 300 again as the camera for my Mobile Photography posts. Images from the point-and-shoot 5MP rear-facing camera of the candy-bar feature phone are very much more than what I was getting on my current mobile.

A totally unexpected exposure for me, with challenges and opportunities to look forward to.

The Nokia Asha 300, a 2011 vintage feature phone, comes with a 240x360 pixel 2.4-inch non-adjustable resistive touchscreen, just big enough to be used as a framing screen rather than for viewing composition details.

Image resolution from the fixed focus F2.4 lens is 2592 x 1944 pixels. The phone has 140MB of internal storage, which can store up to a maximum of 112 JPEG images, and the camera does not come with a flash.

Nokia Asha 300

Admittedly, the night shoot session turned out rather well for me. With the camera's noise, limited ISO, and shutter speed capabilities, I was quite happy to see how the images turned out. And again, with the aid of a few edits in post-processing, I couldn't ask for more.

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HMD Nokia 3.1, Weeping Willows

Mobile Photography: Image making with an HMD Nokia 3.1, of weeping willows in the park.

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I was saddened, actually, at the demise of my favorite candy bar mobile phone, the Nokia Asha 300. The mobile, which was a 2011 release, had a 2.4-inch touch screen and a 5 MP camera, which served me well with its set of super sharp images, which I enjoyed very much. I was using the camera in favor of the current mobile that I am using, the bottom-of-the-line implementation of the new HMD Global Nokia series introduced in 2018.

Improved over time, the camera app that came with the set is now a better performer, with more selective functions, and images that are pretty much sharper and more delineated than when it was first introduced. This is my first re-trial of using the camera after having it lying around redundant for the whole time I was using the phone. Using a mobile phone for daylight shots, just as taking these shots here, is pretty much the art of guesstimate shooting, as you can hardly see anything much on the phone's display screen.

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Nokia Asha 300, Squares on Instagram

Mobile Photography: Image making with a vintage candy-bar Nokia Asha 300, square cropped images for publishing on Instagram.

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I was a regular on Instagram until only recently, and from when I started a few months ago until I left, I have always posted images that have been cropped to the 1:1 image aspect ratio. As with the images posted here, these are cropped off the original 4:3 images as captured on the Nokia Asha 300, which is a regular camera that I used for my Mobile Photography posts.

Though captured only in 2985x1980 pixels, images from the Nokia Asha 300 are clear, sharp, and crisp, and take only a couple of minor tweaks in post-processing to make them presentable.

The square format, as you know it, was how Instagram posted submitted images when it first started. Changes to the multiple format submission, where images can be in landscape or portrait, came later. The new options are to provide a more creative approach with images and stories people are sharing. Instagram images that are shared on Facebook are now shown in their submitted format.

Nokia Asha 300

The recommended size for images to be uploaded to Instagram is a minimum resolution of 1080×1080 pixels. This will also make the images usable on other platforms, and as more and more screens become higher in their pixel density, you will be future-proofing your images from being too small.

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Nokia Asha 300, The Classic

Mobile Photography: Image making with a vintage candy-bar Nokia Asha 300, looking up the archive for images worth presenting.

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I wasn't too happy at all with the images from an early outing with the Nokia 3.1, which came with a camera, as they say, is just another run-of-the-mill product with not much more to add to it. Though the camera's HDR function may help to boost the dynamic range and contrast, and give you slightly better images, let alone be I'd rather leave it aside for the moment.

Luck was with me as I came across a selection of images that were previously recorded on the Nokia Asha 300, a candy-bar cellular phone model introduced way back in 2011, which I was using then.

Small and diminutive when compared to today's smartphones, the cell is really compact, and it sits comfortably in your hands. This may prove, however, to be a bit of a trifle when used as a camera with your fingers fumbling all over the camera control interface. On image capture, the Nokia Asha 300 came with a 5MP fixed-focus rear camera, capturing images with a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944.

These initial groups of images, which I referred to as 'classic', not for any reason at all, were from around the office where I was previously working. While the first image is a good example of the capability of the camera, the others are a bit muddled as they have been edited and re-edited again away from their original pixel size.

Nokia Asha 300

I did, however, find more images in the archive, including a small batch of images that are quite beyond what I had expected. Surprisingly, these include a batch of pretty sharp and clear images, with a good color rendition, which I will polish up and post in the next post of the Mobile Photography series.

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Nokia Lumia 720, Square Sights

Mobile Photography: Mobile photography favorites, image making with the Nokia Lumia 720, from a walk around the block.

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You might have noticed that the square (1:1 aspect ratio) is the format I used more often than others in my postings. This is another one of those. The originals of these images, however, were taken with the smartphone, in 16:9 format, converted to black-and-white, and post-processed on Olympus Viewer 3 (OV3) with print sharpening done on Google NIK Sharpener Pro.

The simplicity of the square format is that it can be used to crop the image to give more emphasis to the subject, encompass negative space, lay out a composition, catch lines, and all.

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Nokia Asha 300, Kaleidoscopic

Mobile Photography: Image making with a vintage candy-bar Nokia Asha 300, kaleidoscopic reflections.

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Still having fun with my come-back-to-life candy-bar Nokia Asha 300, while trying out a newfound genre that mobile phones are good at, close-up photography. Mobile phones, as we know, have lenses with incredible minimum focus distances which can be used effectively as a close-up camera, or when fitted with an auxiliary close-up attachment, as a macro monster.

When you have the camera held at arm's length, however, or with the camera pushed far forward and angled away from your eyes, using the camera at its closest autofocus distance, even without supplementary lens add-ons, is a guessing game. The best you can do in this situation is to take multiple shots, or a burst mode sequence, while moving the camera slightly forward or backward from your practiced distance.

Nokia Asha 300

The archaic Nokia Asha 300, like the one I was using here, does not have the close-up capability as later or more expensive camera models, but sufficient to say that it handles itself well as a learning or starter camera, which can be said of other lower-end mobile cameras as well. The subject of my curiosity here was a water-filled upturned cover of a garden bin that had collected a bunch of fallen leaves, captured against the reflected backdrop of the sky and covering foliage.

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