Among all the perks of owning a Note 5, apart from its excellent display and having a beautiful phone that can essentially manage various facets of your life, is its incredible camera. The device comes with a snapper that can take some of the crispest shots in daylight and delivers awesome photos even in low light conditions.
But just in case you haven’t tinkered with your Note 5 enough and have yet to discover all its useful tricks, here are some that you can try.
Double-press the home button for a quick launch
Sometimes, you just have to open that camera quickly — whether it’s to capture a great lighting sequence at your favourite concert, or because your pal just did something that’s so funny it has the opportunity to go viral. Other times, it’s simply because you want to save that shortcut space on your main screen for something else. In any case, a quick two-tap feature on the home button will quickly launch your camera.
Go on pro-mode
Tap Mode on your camera menu settings and choose the Pro feature if you want to be able to fiddle with features such as the focus and control the exposure of your subject. This will allow you to adjust settings given your lighting conditions and even save the image as a raw file. It almost negates the need to tote around that massive SLR for your artsy, long-exposure shots — going pro-mode is enough to give you more processing control.
Use 4K video settings
To do this, open up the camera, select settings, choose video and then tap FHD. Going on 4K video mode won’t let you shoot on HDR, nor will you be able to apply video effects or take photos while shooting a vid, but that’s the price you pay for capturing something in 4000 pixel horizontal resolution.
Video collage
By far one of the most fun features of the Note 5 camera. This feature lets you record four, 6-second videos and stitch them all together to make a video collage. The main camera and front are fully equipped to handle this awesome feature. Now all you need is some background music and you’re all set to post it on Facebook or Instagram.
Create GIFs
All you have to do is take a series of photos, go on the Photo Editor and turn it into a great motion sequence to create personalised GIFs of your friends.
Going slow mo
Slow mo may not be an original Samsung feature, having been popularised by Apple after its iPhone 6 was released, but know that you can also enjoy this very novel feature on your Note 5. Just go to your camera, tap mode and switch to slow mo to start recording. Unlike Apple, you can easily edit the video and adjust the speed depending on how you like it.
Time lapse
The Note 5’s Fast Motion mode lets you capture time lapse videos easily and can, similar to the slow mo feature, be edited easily.
Wide-shot selfies
Selfies are a thing now — just accept it. Samsung did and now they have added a great front camera feature that lets you take wide angle front shots. Select your camera, tap mode, choose wide selfie and the phone will basically direct you so you can easily take a perfect group shot.
Shoot live broadcasts
Samsung and YouTube basically personalised the Periscope tool and now lets you upload live broadcasts from your phone straight to YouTube. Not sure what you’ll be needing this for? How about shooting a live concert feed to your friend who didn’t make it to the gig? Or shooting an important meeting and streaming it to other team members halfway across the world?
The virtual selfie
This one combines multiple direction views of backgrounds — kind of like 360-degree images — while you’re moving around. So the final outcome reveals an interactive 3D image that moves around depending on whether you rotate your phone left or right.
