The Built-In Camera

The Pearl's built-in camera is special for a couple of reasons:

• The flash makes it a functional and useful camera that can take decent pictures even in low-light situations, thereby averting the inevitable blur that occurs when nonflash cameras attempt to shoot in low light.

• The camera has a reasonable resolution, at 1.3 megapixels. But you are not married to the highest resolution if you don't want it. Three resolutions and three quality settings are available to you, all of which affect both quality and file size.

Setting Camera Options

When you are in Camera mode (which you can access via the main menu or the right convenience key), you can press the Menu key and select Camera Options. This menu gives you access to six parameters (Figure 8.1), all of which are important for getting the most out of the Pearl's camera.

Figure 8.1. The Camera Options menu

Here are the six parameters and the adjustments you can make with them:

Default Flash Setting On, Off, or Automatic. It's best to leave this setting at Automatic unless you want to force the flash on or off for a specific reason.

White Balance Automatic, Sunny, Cloudy, Night, Indoor, Incandescent, or Fluorescent. This setting affects the "temperature" feeling of the picture, from warm to cold.

Picture Size(in pixels) 1280 x 1024, 640 x 480, or 320 x 240.

Picture Quality Superfine, Fine, or Normal. Superfine is the highest quality.

Store Pictures In Device Memory or On Memory Card. This setting allows you to choose where the pictures are stored when you save them. If you don't have a memory card, the pictures automatically go into Device Memory.

Folder This setting shows the path to the folder on the Pearl where the files are stored.

Taking Pictures

Taking pictures with the Pearl's camera is as easy as pressing the right convenience key twice in a row. This is the fastest way to take a shot, because the first press puts the Pearl into Camera mode and the second press takes the shot.

The other option is to choose Camera from the main menu, use the trackball to manage the various Camera settings, and then take the shot you want.

The trackball appears at the bottom center of the main camera screen (Figure 8.2), with plus (+) and minus () signs above and below it. If you move the trackball up, the camera zooms in, and if you move the trackball down, the camera zooms out. The zoom setting, which appears to the right of the trackball, can be anywhere between 1x and 5x, so use it to set up your pictures just the way you like.

Figure 8.2. The trackball manages the camera's zoom setting, and the Menu key takes you to the Options screen, which allows you to adjust the various camera settings

The rest of the screen shows you how many pictures you can still take, based on the memory available on the Pearl (bottom-left corner) and the state of the flash (on or off; bottom-right corner).

What now?

You've taken the picture; what do you do now? Well, now you have several choices about what to do with that picture. With the picture sitting on the "desktop" of the Pearl in Camera mode, press the Menu key to display your options (Figure 8.3).

Figure 8.3. The Pearl gives you a handful of options for your photos

You can choose among the following options for any picture:

Set As Home Screen Image When you choose this setting, the picture becomes the background of the main screen.

View Pictures This setting allows you to view all the pictures in the Pearl's memory.

Rename You can give the picture a name instead of a title like 0045.img.

Send As Email You can send the picture in an email.

Send As MMS You can send the picture as a Multimedia Message Service (MMS) message.

Set As Caller ID You can set the picture to appear on the Pearl's screen whenever you get a call from a particular number.

Options Choose this setting to access options that adjust things such as flash, destination, and picture quality.

Probably the most common use of the Pearl's camera is to take a picture of someone or something impressive and then email it to a friend or business associate immediately. The business applications of this feature are unlimited, but you also can benefit from it in non-business ways.

Suppose that you have a friend who is looking to buy a canary-yellow 1985 Toyota Corolla, and you're visiting a city that's a 2-hour drive from your friend's house. While you're in that other city, you find exactly the same car for sale, and you immediately think of your friend. You can wait to tell him about it when you get homeor, better yet, you can use your Pearl to take a picture of the car and then email the picture to him, along with the phone number on the "For Sale" sign in the car's window. In a few short minutes, your friend has a picture of the car he wants and the seller's phone number sitting on his computer.

Fun with Caller ID Pictures

Although the usual thing to do with Caller ID pictures is to take a picture of the person in question and then attach it to that person's phone number, you can also have some fun with it by attaching different pictures to various people's numbers. If you think someone is evil, for example, you might take a picture of a toy demon and then put that picture on your Pearl to represent that person. The possibilities are endless; let your imagination take over.

Self-Portraits

The Pearl's camera has a metallic mirror-type box just below the camera lens. The reflection from the mirror shows you what the camera's lens is seeing, and it allows you to take self-portraits or to capture yourself and a group of friends having fun somewhere. It's surprising how decent shots like this can be, but ultimately, you are limited by the length of your arms (Figure 8.4).

Figure 8.4. Obviously, I have the shortest arms ever. My self-portrait is less than revealing

Managing Pictures

After you have taken some pictures on the Pearl, you can delete them, set them as wallpaper (by choosing Set As Home Screen Image), and attach them as Caller ID pictures. But because the pictures you take on the Pearl are of reasonable quality, you are likely going to want to save them somewhere a little more permanent. The best way to do this is to connect the Pearl to your computer and use the Media Manager utility in BlackBerry Desktop Manager to move the pictures off your Pearl and onto your computer (Figure 8.5).

Figure 8.5. Use the Media Manager application to transfer any pictures you want to keep