Droid X: The Missing Manual

Taking Still Photos

If you’re used to no-frills smartphone cameras that do little more than let you point and shoot in order to take grainy, low-resolution photos, you’re in for a surprise with the Droid X. It sports an 8-megapixel camera that takes vivid photos. Because it’s a camera wrapped inside a computer, it offers plenty of extras, such as multi-shot feature (taking six pictures, one after another), a self-portrait mode, and a panoramic assist that takes multiple photos of a wide area and stitches them together into a panorama.

To launch the camera, hold down the Droid X’s Camera key—the large red button on its bottom right. (If you’re holding the Droid X horizontally, the button is on the upper right.) If you prefer, you can tap the Camera icon in the Application Tray.

Note

You have to unlock the Droid X before you can use the camera. So if you press the camera when the Droid X is locked, it won’t respond.

Frame your shot on the screen. You can use the camera either in the normal vertical orientation, or turn it 90 degrees for a wider shot. In the middle of the viewfinder, you see a white box. The Droid X uses that area for its focus, to figure out the photo’s best overall brightness (its exposure), and to calculate the overall white balance, what is often called the color cast.

Sometimes, though, the exact center of the screen is not necessarily the most important part of the ...