December 16th, 2009 | 
Last weekend I’ve got a new toy, a replacement for my old Blackberry Strom: Droid from Motorola, Verizon call it iPhone killer. Well, I did not have iPhone, so can’t tell if it is really a killer, but so far I like it! Much more freedom in applications and customizing compare to BB Storm. When i power it up, it looked with the red eye and said: “Drrrooidd” to me. Like my old cat use to do:-)
Here it is, with shell case from Motorola. There are so many photos of it naked, and I like it more this way 
I’ve paid $29 for the case, but later found it on Amazon for $15: Motorola A855 Droid Verizon Original OEM Belt Clip Shell / Holster
Motorola Droid from verizon phone keyboard open
Motorola Droid pda keyboard closed
First of all, this is almost tablet PC: 850x480px screen resolution! I can browse internet for real now. There are so many things you may like in this phone, but I’ll stick with photography-related stuff:-)
Now I am going to test built-in 5 Mpx camera to see if i can use it at least for a family album snapshots.
First, auto focus. As expected, it works, but object you are trying to focus on should be close enough to cover not less 50% of the screen:
Droind photo with close object in focus
As you can see, white balance was shifted to higher kelvin numbers because of the orange.. yes, it was orange color. This is raw image form a phone, no noise suppression or sharping was applied.
100% crop:
Droid from Verizon 100% crop closeup image test example
When I’ve moved orange slightly away, so it will be less than 50% of sensor coverage, and white balance get corrected along with the focus, making orange look good but blurry:
Motorola droid image sample close-up out focus
One more example on exposure evaluation and metering, worked very well:
Droid image sample exposure metering
Now outside, where this phone camera is suppose to be used, now I did some noise fix in Photo Shop:
Motorola Droid street test image sample
100% from above photo:
Motorola Droid street test image sample, 100% crop
Not bad for a PDA camera, what do you think?
Several more images:
Example image from Motorola Droid phone, close-up macro
100% crop:
100 % crop from motorola droid phone macro close-up
Blue sky, few days before:
Example photo from Verizon Droid phone , blue sky
I had a product photo shoot the same day i wrote this post, lighting setup was ready and it was easy to snap few more studio-made images of the Droid:
Side view, Droid by Motorla
Side view with keyboard closed, Droid by Motorola
The video is really good, better than you can expect from such small camera. Below the sample I’ve took and processed with Sony Vegas studio:
We do not sell any equipment , but if you’ll find our articles helpful, please consider to buy hardware using our Amazon link below.
It won’t make any price difference for you, but amazon contribution will help us to support this web site.
Now I am looking for some useful applications for the phone. If you know something interesting, please let me know
About The Author: Alex Koloskov
The lighting magician, owner of AKELstudio, Inc.
