Palm Pre: The Missing Manual

Chapter 9. The Pre as Camera

The truth about cellphone cameras is that none of them are in the same league as those black, chunky, professional-grade cameras with big lenses (and big price tags). You wouldn’t think of using a camera phone to shoot a family portrait, for example, or images of a lunar eclipse. In fact, most cellphone cameras don’t even measure up to modestly priced point-and-shoot digital cameras.

But the upside of camera phones is that you almost always have them with you. So they can come in really handy when Junior kicks the winning goal in soccer, when grandma blows out the candles on her 90th birthday cake, and when you get into a fender-bender and need evidence for the insurance company.

This chapter covers the Pre’s dead-simple camera. You’ll learn how to snap photos, admire and share them, and use your photos as the Pre’s background display or as an image that pops up when a friend calls.

Snap Shots

As cellphone cameras go, the Pre’s 3-megapixel model stacks up nicely. It takes decent pictures in low light and doesn’t have a lot of shutter lag (the time between when you press a button to take a picture and when the Pre actually captures the image). As long as you don’t expect too much from the Pre’s camera (you wouldn’t want to use the images it creates as wall-sized posters, for example), you’ll be pleased with the results.

But the Pre’s camera isn’t perfect. You long for an autofocus feature and a zoom lens. It doesn’t have any souped-up editing features that ...