How to take better photos with a Galaxy phone

How do I take amazing photos with my Galaxy phone?

Shooting phenomenal photographs with your DSLR can be relatively easy, but getting the same stunning quality and clarity with your smartphone is a bit more of a challenge.

Luckily there are some surefire ways to get high-quality photographs with your Galaxy phone. Here are a couple of things to try the next time you’re lining up a shot to capture that picture-perfect moment!

• Use the rule of thirds
• Shoot with a tripod
• Get creative with external lenses
• Get familiar with your modes
• Forget the flash – use external lighting

Use the rule of thirds

In order to make your phone photography stand out a bit more, break away from lining up your shot dead-on. Try using the rule of thirds, a trick used by artists, photographers, and filmmakers for years.

The rule of thirds essentially means that an image should be imagined as being divided into nine equal squares, and that nothing should really be smack-dab in the middle. Why? Because by doing this, it draws your eye around a photograph or painting, making you look at all corners and take in the scene rather than focus on the obvious subject in the center of the piece (plus, having a single subject sitting in the center of the photo can be pretty boring more often times than not).

By enabling the 3×3 grid on your Galaxy device, you’ll be able to clearly line up and take shots using the rule of thirds. Be sure to experiment with placement of items and how far they are from your phone in order to capture different creative shots and angles.

Shoot with a tripod

Sometimes the lighting it perfect, the people around you are still, and the shot is clear as day. Other times there’s too much movement, not enough sunlight, and you just can’t seem to capture a clear shot.

A tripod is a great tool to have in your phone photography arsenal for a number of reasons, regardless if you’re serious at taking photos with your Galaxy phone or not.

Using a tripod almost always guarantees that your shots are going to be steady and clear, regardless of the lighting. Some people have said they’ve even captured beautiful shots of the night sky with just their phone and a secure tripod.
You don’t need to use your tripod for serious photography — in fact, if you pick the right tripod, it can double as a selfie stick or even a decent time-lapse stabilizer for video like the CliquefieMax does. Tripods are for all skill levels and phone photographers.
Go small or go home, which essentially means you don’t need to spend a ton of money on a larger, higher-quality tripod to shoot your photos or video. You can even pick up a decent tripod for under $15.

Get creative with external lenses

External lenses can be pretty polarizing: some people love to shoot with them, others think they’re trinkety and get in the way of capturing a beautiful photo. Regardless of your stance on external lenses, there are dozens of different types that are available to shoot with, some which are a bit more creative and unique than others.

Most external lens kits come with three types of lenses – a macro lens, a fisheye lens, and a wide-angle lens. These lenses themselves can be used in dozens of different ways and take your phone photography perspective to new heights. The fisheye is great for modern party shots and selfies, while the wide-angle is fantastic for capturing large crowds, and the macro is great for up-close-and-personal nature shots. Samsung’s own lens cases for the latest Galaxy phones are the best choice for a first-party experience that you know will integrate perfectly.

There are some other strangers types of lenses available, too. Urban Outfitter’s has a Fly Eye lens that gives a psychedelic, kaleidoscope-like perspective to your phone photography. Lensbaby’s LM-10 allows users to get super artsy and creative with their close-up shots and focusing. The popular magnetic Smartphone Spy Lens from Photojojo lets you explore different angles as you shoot your phone photography.

At the end of the day, playing around with different external lenses is a great thing to consider if you’re trying to get creative with your shots!

Get familiar with your modes

In order to really get comfortable shooting photos with your Galaxy phone, you have to get familiar and play around with the different settings and modes available in your Camera app.

With your Galaxy phone, you get options like Auto, Pro, Selective focus, Panorama, Video Collage, Live broadcast, Slow motion, Virtual shot, Food, and Hyperlapse. While not all of these have to do with taking photos specifically, settings like Pro allow users a lot more creative control and professional editing power while shooting.

Pro mode lets you adjust white balance, ISO, auto or manual focus, contrast, and so much more, just like a DSLR camera would. With these freedoms, users can even choose to save their photos as RAW files, something professional photographers would do if they were shooting with a DSLR camera.

Getting familiar with the modes on your phone will help you take better photos and will make you more confident in your shots, so take the time to fool around and fiddle with your settings.

Forget the flash – use external lighting

Using a flash can be a good thing in some low lighting situations, but overall it’s hard to control, difficult to edit with, and can wash out photos, making them look low-quality and unprofessional. By using an external lighting source, it’s a lot easier to get the proper wash of light in your photos without going flash-crazy or having your photos look like big dark blobs.

The Galaxy’s flash is powerful, but sometimes it’s too powerful. By using an external light that has a dimmable feature like a Mini LED light or even a clip-on Ring light for selfies, you can get full creative control over the amount of light that gets let into your photos.

There are plenty of different types of external light sources to choose from depending on your photography style and what you’re shooting, including those that are good for action photography, those that work well with selfies, those that work well for social situations/parties, and so much more!

Now it’s your turn

Do you have any tips or tricks for shooting professional looking photos with your Galaxy phone? Let us know!

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Philips’ Hue motion sensor automatically turns on the lights for you

You can control Philips Hue lights with your phone, but if you’re feeling especially lazy, you’ll want to take a look at the latest addition to the Hue ecosystem. The Philips Hue motion sensor automatically switches on the lights in a room, with the ability to configure a specific scene to a sensor.

The motion sensor is powered by two AAA batteries, allowing it to be placed anywhere in your house or garage. The back of the device is magnetic, and it has a 100-degree detection angle and a range up to 16 feet. As with all devices in the Hue ecosystem, the motion sensor is highly configurable through the Hue app, letting you select different scenes for daytime and nighttime, and various levels of motion sensitivity.

There’s even the option of having the sensor switch off lights in a room when it doesn’t detect motion for a specified amount of time. You can connect up to 12 motion sensors on a single Hue bridge. While Philips isn’t the first brand to launch a smart motion sensor, high configurability and integration with Hue bulbs make all the difference for those that have already invested in the brand’s smart lighting ecosystem.

In addition to the motion sensor, Philips announced a new generation of White Ambiance and Color lights that bring richer green and cyan hues.

The $39.95 motion sensor will make its debut by the end of October. Who’s in the market for one?

New York’s smarter face recognition catches more ID thieves

Sometimes, behind-the-scenes tech upgrades can make a big difference. New York’s Governor Cuomo reports that an overhaul of the state DMV’s face recognition software in January has led to more than 100 arrests and 900 open investigations so far. The trick? The new system checks 128 points on a face instead of 64, dramatically increasing the chances that it’ll match a photo against the DMV’s database. Combine that with new comparison modes (like black-and-white and overlays) and it’s easier to catch identity thieves and fraudsters, such as one man who tried to get a license with a stolen identity in order to evade a suspension.

New York isn’t alone in using face recognition in the US, let alone the world. As Ars Technica notes, there are 39-plus states relying on it in some capacity. And to no one’s surprise, it’s unclear how many people might be slipping through the cracks. However, the data hints that weak points in the technology are going away — it may be that much harder to hijack someone’s ID going forward.

Via: Ars Technica

Source: New York State

There may be water on Mars, but not much

Remember those weird dark streaks that NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found last September? These recurring slope lineae (RSL), as they’re called, were originally thought to contain liquid water. On Mars, liquid water would obviously be a huge deal because it means both potential source of life and potential resource. Well, it turns out that there isn’t nearly as much water in those RSLs as astronomers had hoped and certainly none that’s potable. What’s more, new analysis has estimated that the amount of liquid surface water on Mars cannot exceed that of Earth’s driest deserts.

To determine this estimate, NASA scientists used the Mars Odyssey’s Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) to remotely measure the planet’s surface temperature from orbit. When water is present in the spaces between grains of soil and sand, it affects how quickly the ground’s temperature will heat up during the day and cool off at night. The deeper the water seeps, the more insulated the ground becomes. After analyzing multiple years worth of THEMIS data, NASA researchers concluded that the upper limit of water that a given area of soil could contain was just 3 percent by weight. That’s roughly the same level of dryness that you’d see in the Atacama Desert, one of the single driest places on the face of the Earth.

“Our findings are consistent with the presence of hydrated salts, because you can have hydrated salt without having enough for the water to start filling pore spaces between particles,” Christopher Edwards, a faculty member in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northern Arizona University, told Space. “Salts can become hydrated by pulling water vapor from the atmosphere, with no need for an underground source of the water.” So not only is there a very small amount of liquid water, it’s so briny that we’d be unable to drink it. When we do send people to Mars, they’re going to need to bring canteens.

Source: Space

Opera Browser Users Urged to Reset Passwords After Sync Server is Hacked

Opera has warned users of the browser that an unknown hacker has managed to gain access to its sync system, potentially compromising the data of around 1.7 million users.

The Norwegian company said in a blog post that “some of our sync users’ passwords and account information, such as login names, may have been compromised” following the hack, and encouraged users to reset passwords for third-party sites.

Although we only store encrypted (for synchronized passwords) or hashed and salted (for authentication) passwords in this system, we have reset all the Opera sync account passwords as a precaution.

We have also sent emails to all Opera sync users to inform them about the incident and ask them to change the password for their Opera sync accounts. In an abundance of caution, we have encouraged users to also reset any passwords to third party sites they may have synchronized with the service.

Opera’s web sync feature lets uses synchronize their browser data and settings across multiple devices. Opera notes that the total active number of users of the feature in the last month is less than 0.5 percent of the web browser’s user base of 350 million people, and that the password reset is a precaution.

Security scares have been a recurring theme for online services recently. Last week, Dropbox told its users that the firm was resetting passwords for anyone who had not changed theirs since mid-2012. The preventative measure was enacted after the company learned about an old set of user credentials that was stolen in a hacking incident nearly four years ago.

Tag: Opera browser
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Winner of ‘Celebration’ Apple-1 Auction Was Prepared to Pay $2 Million for ‘Holy Grail of Computers’

After placing the winning $815,000 bid on the rare “Celebration” Apple-1 computer last week, Glenn Dellimore spoke with Business Insider about his reasons for purchasing the computer. Dellimore made the decision with his wife, Shannnon, and the two were not only prepared to pay up to $2 million for the piece of Apple history, but both see it only increasing in value over the years.

The Dellimores — who founded the Hollywood skin care brand Glamglow, now owned by Estée Lauder — think that in around 10 to 15 years, the Apple-1 sold by CharityBuzz “could be worth as much as a Monet or Picasso.” The rarity of this particular Apple-1 is doubled by the fact that it started as a “blank original-run board,” that was never meant to be sold to the public and was not from a production run, potentially making it one of the first Apple-1 computers ever made.

Shannon and Glenn Dellimore

“When the auction was taking place, I realized we’d actually be in the air when it ended. Just as our wheels touched down, there were 30 seconds left in the auction and I was actually outbidded with 37 seconds left,” Dellimore said. “I think the bid was $270,000 when I looked, and then it went up again, and I kept going bidding with someone else until it was $515,000. I said, ‘you know what, I’m just going to put in a large number.’”

He said he might have bidded up to $2 million if he had been outbid again.

“Typically with things that are so valuable and so rare, there will be buyers in the world that are willing to pay whatever it takes,” he said.

The current plan for the Apple-1 is for it to be displayed in a museum, and Glenn Dellimore hopes that the computer, which he refers to both as a “piece of history” and the “holy grail of computers,” will be used to help educate younger people. Ultimately, Dellimore said that “the possibility of it being the number one, the very first prototype that Steve worked on, and with the way over time Apple has changed the world, this computer is the holy grail of computers, it is the most important computer on the planet, I think.”

Tags: Apple-1, CharityBuzz
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Ring Video Doorbell review: Chime-tastic security for your front door

In the age of the smart home, the number of home devices being connected to the internet is expanding exponentially. Whether it’s a kettle, fridge, vacuum cleaner, the central heating or – in this case – a doorbell, you can control and monitor almost anything from your smartphone these days.

Ring Video Doorbell review: What is it?

The Ring Video Doorbell is an outdoor security camera and motion sensor, which is internet connected and can be used as a regular doorbell.

Its built-in camera, microphone and speaker mean you can talk to anyone who’s at the door through your phone, using the app. Whether that’s a delivery guy and you’ve just got out of the shower, or an uninvited guest door-to-door selling who you want to ignore them without opening the door.

Any time a guest rings the bell, your smartphone is alerted, and you can set it up to alert you when there’s motion near your house too (within a certain range). It’s especially useful if you’re not at home all day, since you can chat to anyone remotely from anywhere you get an internet connection.

Spec wise, the doorbell has a 5,200mAh battery – which Ring claims can get you through 6-12 months of “regular usage” and can operate in temperatures between -21 and 49 degrees Celsius (more than capable of dealing with Britain’s mild winters and summers). It has infrared LEDs for night vision, a 180-degree field-of-view and records 720p video. 

Ring Video Doorbell review: Design

You’ve more than likely never seen a better looking doorbell than the Ring Video Doorbell. It could almost be described as the iPhone of doorbells, in the way that the silver aluminium model reminds us of the original iPhone. The bottom two-thirds is encased in a rounded metal plate, while the top part is a black glossy plastic.

Pocket-lint

Saying that, it’s not exactly the sleekest product in the world. All the gadgetry inside means the device itself is a pretty chunky at nearly 6.2cm wide and 2.2cm thick. 

The doorbell button has an LED light ring surrounding it which lights up and animates when the button is pressed, when network connectivity is lost, or when the battery is being charged.

Ring Video Doorbell review: What’s In the box

The doorbell ships with five screws and five wall plugs (one spare of each), a small spirit bubble meter, masonry drill bit and a screwdriver handle with a reversible tool that slots in. This screwdriver has a regular Philips head on one end and a tiny pentalobe driver end on the other. The latter is used to screw the doorbell on to its backplate.

And since it’s pentalobe, it’s very unlikely that anyone can steal it easily. 

Along with all the tools, there’s the doorbell itself, the backplate for mounting it, a diode (which you may or may not need) and a micro USB cable for charging the doorbell’s internal non-removable battery.

Of course, there’s the manual which helps you get the doorbell setup with easy-to-read, step-by-step instructions, including how to connect it to your home network.

Ring Video Doorbell review: Setup

As setup processes go, the Ring doorbell was about as easy as they come. That’s mostly thanks to the included tools and instructions in the retail packaging. It’s a very well considered retail package.

The first step – regardless of how you want to fix it to your property – is to download the appropriate app for iOS or Android. This will guide you through a registration process to setup an account and enable you to add other users who can access your doorbell.

The devices don’t come fully charged, so it’s worth plugging the doorbell in for a couple of hours to fully charge it before mounting to a wall using four of the provided screws. If you’re mounting it to wood, the backplate screws straight in. If you’re fixing it to a brick wall, you’ll need to drill four holes first then use the provided wall plugs. Once the backplate is fixed, the doorbell slides over the top and clips in place using the built-in fixing hooks, then tightening the screws at the bottom of the unit.

Pocket-lint

Getting the doorbell connected to a home network is pretty simple. It involves connecting directly to the doorbell’s Wi-Fi signal by heading to your phone’s settings menu. Once that’s done, you head back in to the app, where it detects the doorbell. Then, input your home network details and tell the doorbell which network to connect to. Once it’s connected and fully charged, it’s ready to install.

If you already have a doorbell wired to a bell inside the house somewhere, you can install the Ring doorbell by connecting it to the pre-existing wiring. Depending on the voltage and system you have, you may need to connect the diode to those existing wires. Then, when a guest presses the button, it rings the existing bell as normal. With this method, you’ll never need to charge the built-in battery since it gets its power from the mains.

If you want to set it up as a brand new system, you can do that too – but you will more than likely need to purchase one of Ring’s wireless Chimes (£25). These Chimes are connected to your home network like the doorbell itself and alert you whenever the doorbell is pressed.

They’re built directly onto a UK plug, and so can be placed anywhere in the house where you have a spare power socket. You can fit multiple Chimes if you live in an especially large house with multiple rooms.

Ring Video Doorbell review: Customisation

Once it’s all installed and ready to go, the customisation can begin.

The most logical place to start is probably the motion sensor, which can  have its sensitivity set using the Ring app. You doorbell can pick up movement from up to 30 feet away, but the app lets you choose any distance between from five feet by moving the slider on the app’s Motion Zones page.

It also breaks the 180-degree field of view into six zones, and you can choose which of those the motion sensor should ignore, or pay attention to.

As for alerts, the app has a Smart Alert feature which can calculate when repeated or continuous motion takes place, and only alerts you again once that motion has finished. You can also change the sensitivity of this algorithm by choosing between light, standard and frequent alerts.  

If you have a Chime you can also change the audio level to suit you.

Ring Video Doorbell review: What’s it like to use?

The Ring doorbell largely depends on app-based use. Your iPhone or Android smartphone will ring every time your doorbell is pressed, or jingle when the motion sensor detects movement.

In either of these situations, you can open the app and see a live video stream of what your doorbell can see using its extremely wide-angle lens. If there’s someone you need to talk to, simply press the green “talk” button, just make sure the microphone isn’t muted, and then talk. This can be really useful if you’re expecting a parcel, or if a friend has turned up before you managed to get home.

Like many gadgets, the Ring doorbell’s greatest strength is its greatest weakness: all of its best features are enabled by its internet connectivity. That means if you’re in an area with poor (or no) 3G or 4G signal then the video stream is delayed, so communicating with whoever is at your door is virtually impossible. If you’re out and about often in relatively rural areas, or places you know have inconsistent or slow connectivity, then the Ring doorbell is going to be pointless.

However, if you’re rarely out of strong coverage, or spend your days in an office with a strong wireless network, the Ring doorbell could be the perfect addition to your smart home.

Ring Video Doorbell review: Connect all of the things

One of the Ring’s added benefits is that it can tie in with several other partner products. With Ring+ you can connect your device directly to Belkin WeMo products, or connect to various security products from the likes of ADT, Lockstate or Lockitron.

What’s more, Ring is IFTTT enabled, so you can even use it to trigger several other connected accounts and create recipes for when your doorbell rings or detects motion. This could be anything from switching your WeMo or Hue lights on when there’s motion at your door, to creating an Evernote or Google Drive log whenever you get visitors.

Verdict

The Ring Video Doorbell provides a great service and adds an element of security to a product category which has long been just a minor peripheral.

It’s well-made and attractive, but with the battery having dropped to 80 per cent after just over a week of use, we’re very sceptical about Ring’s claims that it can handle up to 12 months of usage. Or maybe we’re just super popular.

The big draw for the Ring Video Doorbell is that it’s not just aesthetically pleasing, but its entire operation and installation is so easy that anyone can use it. It’s an effortless way to add security to your home and ensure you don’t miss any important parcels. Although it is a chunk of cash more than a basic doorbell.

Philips Hue motion sensor turns lights on for you

So you have your home all decked out with some sweet smart lights that you can control with your phone. Big deal. True convenience is when your lights turn on exactly when you need them to, without you even lifting a finger. And Philips’ new motion sensor can help you achieve that. The $40 device will be available in October, and after my brief preview of the Philips Hue motion sensor, I can’t wait till I can get one.

“There are moments when you just want things to happen,” said Todd Manegold, leader of Philips Lighting’s connected home arm, as his team showed me around a hotel suite they had set up with the full Hue experience. Those moments include coming home from the grocery store with your arms full of shopping bags, or opening the door to a closet with a hard-to-reach switch. In such situations, any motion sensor would come in handy, activating your lights in an instant so you don’t have to struggle yourself.

During my demo, I walked through a couple of dim, unlit hallways (much less sinister than it sounds) and the Hue motion sensor flipped the lights on just as I entered. The device has a 100-degree (vertical and horizontal) detection angle and a range of up to about 16 feet, which enables a pretty speedy response time.

Having the sensor isn’t just useful for automatically turning the lights on when you enter a room or hallway. It can also trigger them, say, when you wake up in the middle of the night and need to go to the bathroom without fumbling for a light switch in the dark. Plus, you can use the app to set a night scene that’s dimmer and easier on your sensitive, barely awake eyes. Philips had set up rows of Hue lights under a bed and along the walls, which, when set to a low brightness, lent a soft, warm glow to the room so obstacles were visible.

Through the app, you can also set time limits for specific rooms so that when no movement is detected in them for more than the dictated period, the sensor will turn them off. This way, you can set longer allowances for living or bedrooms where you’ll need lights to remain off despite little activity in the room, and shorter durations for places such as the kitchen or garage.

Philips is by no means the first to create a motion sensor for the smart home, but its product integrates and sets up easily within its popular family of lights, making it more useful for those who already own Hue bulbs. The company also announced a new, smaller variant of its White Ambiance bulb, as well as a new generation of its White Ambiance and Color lights that offer richer greens and blues than before. Now, you can better enjoy all of the lights in all of the colors.

Toyota is teaching teens how to build fuel-cell cars

Toyota has launched a new project to teach high school students how to build fuel cell cars. Well, OK, the company is teaching them how to build small, remote-controlled fuel cell cars, but it’s hoping that’s enough to ignite their interest in the technology. The automaker’s Hydrogen Horizon Automotive Challenge isn’t a full-blown, multi-year program like the drone and robotics course offered at one Japanese high school. But it will teach teens about climate change and the importance of alternative energy for a whole semester.

Toyota national vehicle marketing manager Doug Coleman said:

“The Hydrogen Horizon Automotive Challenge provides an opportunity to introduce the next generation of innovators to fuel cell technology. We hope this challenge encourages students to join Toyota in the effort to create a more eco-conscious and sustainable future.”

The project is now active in 20 high schools in Los Angeles and Orange County with multicultural student bodies. Besides helping them build their own RC cars, Toyota will also have the students tackle the various challenges its own engineers encountered while designing its full-sized fuel cell-powered vehicle, the Mirai. Once they’re done making their toy vehicles, they can finally have some fun: they’ll have to demonstrate their creations by racing them against each other with help from Toyota’s NASCAR Pit Crew.

Via: Autoblog

Source: Toyota