[jcarli00]

Last night I was at the Phillip Phillips and Matchbox20 show in Louisville. I could see others holding their phones, getting some pretty good pictures. I know I have the best phone (Lumia 920) and best low-light camera on any phone out there now. Below are photos I took...

Are there any settings I could change manually that would make the photos more clear and have better color? Should I have changed the Exposure Value, White Balance, ISO, etc? I'm going to see Pink in a few weeks, and want better photos...Any help you could offer would be appreciated!

jc

[Icbuono5]

Maybe its just my 920 but I can't even see any of your pics even after I login with my google account. Why don't you try posting links from SkyDrive of those pictures.

Without even seeing the pictures did you try changing the scene setting from Automatic to Night or Night Portrait?

[ttsoldier]

Those look horrible!
Maybe your lens was dirty.
You could try setting it to night mode.

[jcarli00]

They are horrible. I did change to night mode. Any suggestions on correct settings for Exposure Value?

[Tafsern]

Night mode is not good when taking photos of moving objects like that. Use regular settings, without focus light or flash. Set ISO to what you think looks the best, I usually use 100 or 200 for photos that are supposed to give a certain impression of how it really looks. I tend to let all the other settings to stand at auto.

Try it out at home with dimmed lights, then you figure out what looks the best. And remember, the more you shake the phone when taking a photo, the worse it gets, and zooming in (even though it's tempting) is no good either. I would point the screen and take the photo that close to the stage at a concert. :)

I took the liberty to check some of your photos, the flash is on auto and the ISO is probably on auto to because it's on 800. When it comes to flash, and it doesn't matter if it's a phone or a digital camera, it flashes the first thing it hits and usually does more damage than good (but off course, you can use it in a good way sometimes). Don't use auto ISO on indoor photos if you like them to stay "dark" and natural. That goes for the outdoors as well.

Good luck :)

[TK2011]

They are horrible. I did change to night mode. Any suggestions on correct settings for Exposure Value?

It's hard to judge properly with such low resolution uploads, but they are obviously very overexposed (performer's faces are very much blown out with no details). Changing to night mode will probably make it worse. What you need to do is to lower the exposure. Try -1 EV or maybe even -2 EV. Overexposing concert scenes like this is a very common mistake. That's why they give manual exposure bias (EV control).

The reason shots like this are tough is because camera's auto-exposure algorithm looks at the scene and tries to compensate for the overall dark stage and in the process overexposes performer's brightly lit face. Even on DSLRs, it takes some skills to expose properly. What I usually do is to shoot a sample with -1 to -2 EV or something similar, check the result on screen, fine tune the EV value and stick with it. If you want to shoot care free, there's CameraPro app that does exposure bracketing for you. It shoots multiple shots at different EV values you choose and you can pick the best results later. It's a great tool to have when you have a scene that's tough to expose properly.

One thing makes it even harder is constantly changing stage light. If brightness changed a lot between auto exposure and shutter operation, you will have badly exposed picture. AE bracketing would come in handy here also.

[jcarli00]

What would you set the camera to on White Balance? Would you also change the ISO, or leave to automatic?

[TK2011]

I probably would leave those to automatic.

Because it's a tough condition to shoot and the changing light, you probably just have to deal with a lot of bad results. Just shoot a lot (preferably with AE bracketing) and some will look pretty good.

Oh one more thing, did you zoom in when you took those pictures? I see more than usual amount of pixilation..

[deuxani]

On parties I always have my 920 set to ISO 200 and white balance to Daylight. This is an example of a typical partypic:

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WP_20130203_012.jpg

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When there are many white walls in someones house during a party and there is medium light, it might be better to set the white balance to Fluorescent or else everything will look too yellow. You just have to see in the moment what ISO value is best, but ISO 200 is most of the time the most accurate representation of the actual scene.

[jcarli00]

When you say AE bracketing...what does that mean? (Sorry to be a camera d/a)

[TK2011]

When you say AE bracketing...what does that mean? (Sorry to be a camera d/a)

Auto-exposure bracketing that I mentioned above using CameraPro app.

[jcarli00]

Nice photos!

[ZiiimZooon]

On parties I always have my 920 set to ISO 200 and white balance to Daylight. This is an example of a typical partypic:

Amazing tip! Just got better indoor pics with this :)

[deuxani]

Amazing tip! Just got better indoor pics with this :)

You can also try to set the exposure value to -1, so the photos will become a little bit more darker but your shutter time will be shorter and your photo will be sharper. Also don't take photos with the hardware camera button, because you will shake your phone too much. I love it that you click the screen, it will focus and then take the picture, so by the time it takes the picture you are not clicking or moving the device so the photo will have almost no problems with you shaking.