Want to make sure you take the best photo possible for your light conditions, and also add special effects, like a sepia tone? Simple—tap the screen, and a menu appears that lets you do sepia and more:
Scenes
. Helps make sure that you take the best photo possible for your current conditions. Tap the button and flick through your options, including Auto, which is best for a wide range of photos; Portrait, for upper-body shots; Landscape, for big outdoor scenes; Sport, for any situation with a lot of movement; Night portrait, for taking portraits in low-light conditions; Sunset, for twilight conditions; Macro, for close-ups of flowers and other objects; and Steady Shot, to reduce blurring.Effects
. Tap when you’re in the mood for some awesome special effects, including Black and White; Negative for reversing the colors into what looks like a film negative; Sepia for making it look like an old-fashioned brown-toned photo; and Solarize for adding a psychedelic-poster effect. Finally, there are Red Tint, Blue Tint, and Green Tint, which do the same thing as putting a red, blue, or green color filter over the lens (why you’d want green-skinned pictures of your family members is up to you).Flash
. Lets you turn the flash on or off, or lets the Droid X determine whether to use the flash. In some lighting conditions, you won’t be able to do this, because the Droid X will control it automatically.
The Droid X gives you more control over your photos, even helping you stitch together big panoramic photos. Press the Menu key and select “Picture modes”. You’ve got the following choices:
Single shot is what you use most of the time, when you don’t need the Droid X to do anything special. It’s the mode your camera is in normally.
Self portrait uses a bit of magic to help you take your own picture. Prop up your camera so that it’s pointing at a place where your face will be, select this mode, and then walk over to where the Droid X is pointed and say “Cheese!” As soon as the camera sees your face in the viewfinder, it takes the picture automatically.
Panorama assist lets you take multiple overlapping pictures of a wide panoramic shot. The Droid X stitches them together into a single, large panorama. The Droid X guides you to take each photo so that it’s overlapping properly.
Tip
You can combine picture modes with Scenes and Effects. For example, you can take a solarized panorama. (You won’t win any photography contests this way, but you can do it.)
Here’s how it works: Tap the button, and a screen appears asking you the capture direction. If you’re taking a vertical panorama, choose either “Move up” or “Move down”, depending on whether you’ll be starting at the bottom or the top. (Choose “Move up” if you’ll start at the bottom, and “Move down” if you’ll start at the top.) If you’re taking a horizontal panorama, choose either “Move left” or “Move right”. (Choose “Move left” if you’ll shoot from right to left, and “Move right” if you’ll shoot from left to right.)
Now take your picture. After you take the first picture, a small box appears with a thumbnail of what you’ve just taken, and a second blank box appears either above it, below it, to the left of it, or to the right of it, depending on the capture direction you chose. A boxed arrow leads from the small thumbnail of your photo to the new, empty box. Move the camera in the direction you want to take the panorama; the boxed arrow moves along with it. As soon as the boxed arrow fits precisely in the empty box, the Droid X snaps the photo. Another box appears. Move the camera in the direction indicated, and repeat the steps until you’ve captured the entire panorama. When you have, the Droid X then stitches the panorama together.
Don’t expect panoramas to be perfect. You may notice bending or a jump where the photos are attached.
Multi-shot takes six shots quickly, one right after another. Select this, and when you take a photo, it takes six shots in quick succession. After you take the photos, it displays all six of them; you can then tap any individual photo to delete, edit, and so on, as you would normally for a photo.
