Published by Steve Litchfield at 7:10 UTC, December 14th 2011
Summary:
Billed with "Legendary National Geographic photographers guide and inspire in this innovative photography app" and at a commercial price (rather than free) I was prepared to be a little disappointed in National Geographic Photo Tips, to be honest. As someone who has written a fair number of photographic tip features himself in the past, I wondered just how far this would go to genuinely help Symbian^3 smartphone owners.
Implemented in Qt, National Geographic Photo Tips is certainly slick, with an interface driven by touchscreen swipes and with roughly sixty illustrated tips. The idea is to "learn professional tips to take top-notch pictures with your Nokia device" and, to be fair, it partially succeeds.
Essentially, each of the sixty tips is a single paragraph of text, accompanied by a sub-VGA quality photo. The latter looks great on a phone screen, but there's no way to zoom it in or save a higher quality version for use elsewhere (in case you were wondering). The tips are split into eight categories and you swipe from tip to tip sideways, with photos sliding in smoothly.
All very slick, and the tips themselves are of top quality, just like the photos themselves. Even I got some ideas scrolling through the categories, though the inclusion of a special category for "Camera Phone" rang a bit of a warning bell in my head.
As seen here, the tips are all valid, even if it's patently obvious that all of the example photos weren't taken on a camera phone, I doubt even the world-conquering N8 could match many of these. And as for the rest of the Symbian smartphone world...
The problem, and it's only one I'm throwing up because this isn't freeware, is that, valid though all the tips are, very few are phone camera specific. In other words, getting better photos from a camera in a Symbian smartphone requires awareness of any limitations (e.g. EDoF, small lens/sensor) relative to the giant cameras used to take these example photos, so I'd like to have seen much more along this line under the 'Camera phone' category. Having tips revolving around 'changing lenses' aren't very helpful for someone with a Nokia N8, for example!
Good stuff then, overall, but this would have been far better as a free title as a promotional app for the National Geographic brand. I know I ranted about people complaining that £1.50 is too much to pay for a phone application, but in this case it's true.
Add in that there's no way to close National Geographic Photo Tips short of bringing up the system multitasking carousel and zapping it there, and I can't recommend anyone actually buys this application. The good news is that it's included in the Nokia Store 'promo' giveaways in some regions, so check your store app, just in case. (Tip: try installing the beta QML version.)
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 14 Dec 2011
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