HDR Capture and Low-Light Assistant for Nokia N900

From Nokia Beta Labs tell us two applications to make better images with our Nokia N900, with HDR Capture and Low-Light Assitant, using FCam.

The HDR Capture application is meant for situations with too much light, especially when the background is bright (e.g., sky) and the foreground has less light (e.g., a person). Using normal camera to capture a single image would typically lead to a black silhouette of the person with a nice sky in the background. HDR Capture measures the brightness of the scene, captures 1-3 images as the user presses the capture button, and combines them into a single image that should show details of both the bright and dark areas. (See image above).

Another problematic situation is when there just isn’t enough light. If you take an image with short exposure time, the result is a noisy image. However, if you extend the exposure time, the output is often blurry. With Lowlight Assistant the camera captures two images, one short (probably noisy) and one long (probably blurry), and automatically combines the images to a new image that hopefully has the sharpness of the short exposure and the better colors of the long exposure. The user can evaluate a small area of the image to see whether the quality is sufficient. If it is, the combined image is processed in the background, otherwise the user can try again. (See image above).

HDR Capture and Low-Light Assitant are available in the Extras-Devel repository. To learn more about repositories, click here. You can also download and install them from Nokia Beta Labs.

More info | Nokia Beta Labs