What's available in the MENU for Programmed P mode of the camera

Menu structure when clicking the MENU button Program mode

• EV
- Set the exposure value to adjust the brightness increasing the value makes the photo brighter while decreasing the value make the photo darker Using the left and right navigation keys [Flash and timer] one can select from [0, 0.3, 0.7, 1.0, 1.3, 1.7, 2.0] The increment is 1/3= 0.3333333333.
• White Balance
• AWB - Auto WB, camera automatically sets the white balance.
• Daylight- appropriate for outdoor photography on a clear day
• Cloudy - appropriate for outdoor photography on a cloudy day
• Fluorescent_H - Appropriate for photography under daylight fluorescent light.
• Flourescent_L - Appropriate for photography under white fluorescent light.
• Tungsten - Appropriate for photography under halogen or incandescent light.
• Color Temp. - Manually set color temperature to match the hue of a specific light source.
• ISO
Set the sensitivity of sensor among the preset ISO values [Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200]. Generally the higher settings results in greater sensitivity but more noise in the image.
• Flash
Set flash setting from [Off
• Auto - automatically discharge the flash in the dark.
• Red-eye - automatically discharge the flash in the dark and reduce redness in the eyes(red-eye).
• Fill-in - Always discharge the flash.
• Slow sync - illuminate both subject and background.
• Red-eye fix- Automatically detect and remove the red-eye effect.
• Focus
Available modes: Nomal (AF), Manual Focus, Macro
• Focus Area
Center AF - focus on the rectangle at the center. Multi AF - focus on Multiple areas of the screen Selection AF- focus on selected area Tracking AF. focus and track on the subject.
• Face Detection
• Off - turn off face detection
• Normal - detect and focus on a face.The exposure value is adjusted for a face.
• Self-Portrait- detect and focus on a face, and beep to notify the position of the face.
• Smile Shot - Automatically take a photo by detecting a smiling face.
• Blink Detection - The camera will take 2 pictures when it detects the subject's eyes are closed.
• Smart Face Recgnition-The camera automatically recognized registered faces and sets appropriate focus and exposure.
• Smart FR Edit
My Star - You can register up to 5 images per face. To increase face detection rate, try to fit the face angle into the guide.
• Photo Size
Normally I just set to highest photo size since I have a 32 Gbytes SD card.
• 14m - 4320 X 3240
• 12m - 4320 X 2880
• 10m - 4320 X 2432
• 10m 3648 X 2736
• 8m - 2832 X 2832
• 5m - 2592 X 1944
• 3m - 1984 X 1488
• 2m - 1920 X 1080
• 1m - 1024 X 768
• Quality
Select from SF-superfine, F-Fine and N-Normal
• ACB
Set either to Off or On.
• Metering
Select from
• Multi- Automatically measures the brightness by detecting various intensities on the scene. ,
• Spot - Measure the brightness of the marked, focused are in the center
• Center-weighted- Measure the brightness around the center of the screen.
• timer
Select from [Off, 10 Sec, 2 Sec, Double- camera fires first shot 10 seconds and another 2 seconds after]
• Drive
Single. Continuous, Motion Capture, AEB
• Image Adjust
Select from [Sharpness, Contrast, Saturation]
• OIS
Sets the OIS image stabilization feature to ON or OFF.
• Intelli Zoom
Set the intelligent zoom to ON or OFF. Zoom into the desired scene while having less distortion than digital zoom. The resolution changes when depending on the zooming scale when using Intelli Zoom
• Movie Size
Select from [HD: 1280 X 720, VGA: :640X 480, OVGA:320 X 240, and 320Web: for sharing]
• Voice
[Sound Alive ON, Sound Alive OFf, and Mute]

You have more control features under P mode than SMART or Auto mode! For example, the P mode offers 5 settings whereas the SMART mode offers only 2 settings ON and OFF. The sad fact is that SMART mode does not offer adjustment of the extremely useful EV setting.

Photographing the moon at night

The camera has not problem photographing the moon in a bright day in Auto mode. At night, the camera might just record a featureles glare of disk. Here is a photo of the moon just shot today at 7:50pm December 27, 2012. Instead of the flat glowing disk I usually get, I get the "man on the moon" in P or Programmed mode using the EV setting of -1.5! That's right! -1.5 with a negative sign. That is counterintuitive, but it works!

Here is a cropped image of the moon photo above. Here we see the familiar features!

The information displayed for this image says

ISo	320
F. No.	4.5
Shutter	1/90
Flass	OFF
Photo size	4320x3240

That is not my best photo of the moon at night. Here is one with an EV value of -2.0!, and taken on the night of December 24, 2012.

Photo information: ISO 80, speed 1/250, f5.1 december 24, 2012.

Buy inexpensive backup batteries at 5th floor of SM Annex!

You should not get mad at the strange battery indicator of the Samsung which does not show the gradual losss of power while using the camera. What you should do is to have at least two extra batteries on hand when that happens! Buy your battery backups at Battery Channel Corporation, located in SM North Annex, 5th floor, Quezon City. It will set you back for a low low price of P610 pesos each! Hurry as they frequently run out of stock.

My Samsung WB150F is back!

I do not know where my receipt of sale was, so I was not able to take advantage of the warranty of the my Samsung camera. Instead I gave the camera to my brother, who is a Mechanical Engineer by profession and gave permission to have it opened and repair it if possible. Last Friday, he told me that he was successsful in fixing the zoom problem! What hed did was simply to move physically some of the contacts and the connectors. Maybe they were misaligned last October 15 when I went home to Bacolod. That brightened my day considerably and I was able to shoot scenes with the camera last Friday and even today. I will post links to the Facebook photo albums later. Thank you again, Nonoy Danny, you saved me a lot of money, P12,000 if I have to buy an new one. Actually prices of cameras are falling down and you can have the Samsung camera for only P9,999. I will shoot more often with this camera. I want to get the full value with it and want to write more about it in this blog.

My Samsung zoom is not working, rendering the camera useless!

I shot a lot of photos last October 5 in my flight home to Bacolod. In the evening I discovere the following message after recharging the batteries:

The zoom did not operate normally.
Insert the battery again and turn the camera on.
If the camera does not operate nomally, 
do not put excessive pressure on it and
contact the service center.

I can still view stored photos in my camera SD card. I will try to have my camera repaired at the Samsung Service Center. But I will go back to Manila in November. Meanwhile I still have my old Panasonic VG-100 camera s my main camera. Money is tight, and I may not be able to use a bigger lens camera.

Programmed mode may offer the WB-150F user finer control.

I brought my Samsung compact camera with me to Philcoa for supper. Here are some shots I took using Smart and P(program mode). The main difference is that I set the EV value to +0.3 to lighten the scene. Here are some results. The last set shows that Smart mode may display truer colors at night than P mode. The suggestion is to be able quickly take shots in varied settings, perhaps the beauty of P mode is that one can get the advantages of automated exposures but one can adjust the very important EV value.

A lucky find? A spare battery at SM Annex!

My brother and I have the same Samsung model WB-150F camera. We were looking always for a spare battery as we were only able to take fewer than 200 photos before the battery completely discharges.

Today October 1, 2012, we found on the 5th floor at the SM North Annex Buidldng that a spare battery is available! It set us back for 610 pesos. I hope the battery will last long. I am now giving it a full charge. Hope to shoo the whole day without an intervening recharging periods. (will do the recarging in the house at night only.)

The battery is not branded Samsung but has the item

number PPDC-SLB-10A. It comes with a three month warranty. Hope it holds up during the warranty period.

I tested the battery yesterday on our way home from Pampanga UP Clarkfield. The battery lasted into the whole afternoon,and had it recharged but the battery seems to have expanded dimensions. It does not spring out when you push it to extract it from the camera. It is tight-fittting. I think we might encounter problems with this spare battery in the future, for long term use but we are satisfied with it right now for the simple reason we cannot find the original Samsung battery in stores.