Improving Photos on the Treo Smartphone 600 camera
Everyone loves to hate the camera on the Treo 600 Smart Phone. The resolution is not great. I think that Sprint intentionally “dumbed down” the camera so the picture file sizes wouldn't jam up the Picture Connection Service (a great tool on the phone which allows me to immediately e-mail the pictures to friends and family). To improve the resolution on your Treo 600 Smart Phone use a freeware program called QSet. It allows you to increase the DPI level setting for the camera by simply entering a number from 1 to 100. The camera comes set at 60 so moving it up to 90 gave me a dramatic improvement in picture resolution.
Here are some recent pictures. As you will see these shots are not going to be put into National Geographic anytime soon but they make a pretty decent picture for Web sites and blogs. With the SprintPCS Picture Connection Service you can take a picture and then upload it directly to your blog site. It's a great way to update friends, family or office workers of your latest doings and whereabouts.
The first is "just your typical neighborhood house fire." I caught this blaze on my way to the office. Apparently this was a controlled fire to clear away a house where a new development was being built. Isn't it great to have a camera always handy?
Here are two of our office "superstars" Jane and Susanne visiting a client. I took this shot and e-mailed it back to the office to show everyone we were actually working and not goofing-off. As you can see the lighting in this atrium-like lobby made it pretty easy to get a good picture.
The West Side Market in Cleveland is a great place to take pictures. There is plenty of colorful produce and colorful characters. But the lighting is torturous for most photographers. Everything is backlit from the end-to-end windows in the market. It took a little tweaking in PaintShopPro to get it right.
This picture of John and Dale from the Treo 600 was taken in twilight at Jacobs Field in Cleveland. The sunlight is starting to set just over the stands.
Even at night you can take pretty decent pictures with the Treo 600 if you hold the camera very steady. This is a shot at Jacobs Field during a night game.
Another twilight shot (note hot spot on the side of my forehead). I held the Treo 600 in my hand for this self-portrait during my visit to Google in Silicon Valley in August 2004.
Recently, Palm has announced the release of a new Treo 650 Smartphone with an improved camera. You can see a comparison by clicking here. Qset will dramatically improve the resolution of the camera in the Treo 600 Smart Phone but don't expect it to perform like a good digital one. The resolution is similar to one megapixel cameras. But if you want to use it for Web sites and blogs or for archival purposes it will do a good job. Tweaking your images in a good photo editor can result in some very good pictures.
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posted by Jim Fisher @ Sunday, September 19, 2004
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