Taking, Storing, and Viewing Pictures on Your Samsung Galaxy Nexus
- Using the Camera
- Viewing and Managing Your Photos
- Managing Photos with Your Computer
Your Galaxy Nexus has a decent 5-megapixel camera with mechanical auto-focus. This means it can take really good pictures. After you take those great pictures, you can share them with friends. You can also synchronize the pictures directly with your computer or use Google Photos in the cloud.
Using the Camera
Let’s start by looking at the Camera application itself before we discuss sharing pictures with friends or synchronizing them with your computer.
- Touch to launch the Camera.
- Touch to change the camera mode between still camera, panoramic camera, and video camera
- Touch to switch between the front-facing camera and the rear-facing camera.
- Touch to change the camera settings. (See the next section for more information about the camera settings.)
- Slide up and down to zoom in and out.
- Touch to review pictures in the Gallery application. See more about reviewing, sharing, and editing pictures in the Gallery application for your Galaxy Nexus later in this chapter.
- Touch anywhere in the frame to make the camera focus specifically in the area. The focus box turns green if it’s successful and red if it cannot focus.
- Touch to take a picture.
Camera Settings
Using camera settings you can change things such as the resolution of each picture, picture review time, and more.
- Touch to reveal the camera settings.
- Touch to set the camera flash mode. The camera flash mode setting is only visible when you have the rear-facing camera selected.
- Select either Auto (which lets the camera decide when to fire the flash), On (which means the flash is always used), or Off (when means the flash is never used.
- Touch to set the White Balance
- Select either Auto (which lets the camera decide on the White Balance setting) or choose specific lighting conditions.
- Touch to change the exposure setting, which enables you to force the camera to either underexpose or overexpose a picture.
- Choose positive numbers to overexpose the picture (keep the shutter open longer) or negative numbers to underexpose the picture (keep the shutter open for a shorter period).
- Touch to change the scene mode. Changing the scene can help the camera adjust itself to the type of scenery and type of picture being taken.
- Choose a scene like Action or Night, or leave the mode on Auto to let the camera decide.
- Touch the Menu button to see more settings.
- Touch the arrows to adjust the resolution of the picture. The highest is 5 megapixels for the rear-facing camera and 1.3 megapixels for the front-facing camera.
- Touch to enable or disable storing your geographic location in the picture or video.
- Touch to restore all camera settings to their out-of-the-box, factory settings.
- Touch to close the camera settings.
Taking Regular Pictures
Now that you have the settings the way you want them, take a few pictures. You can jump straight to step 5 and take the picture, but you might want to first set up your shot. Remember to always take pictures in landscape mode for the best results.
- Touch the Camera icon.
- Touch to switch between the front-facing or rear-facing camera.
- Slide up and down to zoom in and zoom out.
- Touch the area of the frame you want to focus on specifically. When you release your finger, the camera indicates a green focus box if it can successfully focus or a red focus box if it cannot.
- Touch to take the picture.
Taking Panoramic Pictures
Your Galaxy Nexus can take panoramic pictures. Panoramic pictures are achieved by taking multiple pictures from left to right or right to left, and stitching them together in one long picture. Luckily your Galaxy Nexus does all that work for you.
- Touch the Camera icon.
- Touch to change the camera mode.
- Touch to select Panoramic.
- Touch to start the panorama.
- Slowly rotate your body from left to right or right to left to capture the panorama. Use the indicator at the bottom of the screen to track your progress.
- When you have rotated all the way, the camera automatically stitches the pictures together into a panorama and saves it.