Using the LG Shine's camera

The LG Shine's 2.0-megapixel digital camera is activated by pressing and holding the Camera button on the side of the phone, or by selecting the camera function from the Multimedia menu (from the main menu, click 3 for Multimedia and click 2 to open Camera.

The screen switches to landscape mode to act as your viewfinder. To capture an image, press the Camera button again or click the scroll wheel - you'll probably find the Camera button easier to press in landscape mode, and pressing the scroll wheel with your thumb better for taking portrait shots.

If you have Autofocus activated (see option 1, below), then you can give the Camera button a half-press to focus on the subject. Getting the half-press right takes some practice, however, and it's all to easy to capture an image without focusing or to hardly press the button at all and take no image whatsoever.

Brightness can be set using the scroll wheel. Scroll down to make an image lighter and scroll up to make it darker. You'll see the setting bar appear on screen and the change reflected in the viewfinder image.

To change the camera's settings, in viewfinder mode click the left section key to activate the Options menu. This appears as a row of icons along the bottom of the screen. Navigate through the icons using the scroll key or press a key from 1 to 0 and a menu relating to each option appears. Use the small keys to the left and right (now above and below) the scroll bar and click OK to select an option. For options 1 to 10, you can press the equivalent number key instead (0 calls up option 10).

1. Shot mode switches Autofocus on and off, and lets you select Macro mode for detailed close-up photos
2. Resolution - The Shine takes images at 1600x1200 (2 megapixels), 1280x960, 640x480 and 320x240
3. Quality - The Shine has three quality settings, reducing the file size of photo using compression, at the expense of quality. The three settings are Super fine, Fine and Normal.
4. Flash turns the Shine's LED flash on and off
5. Self timer is useful if you want to get yourself into a group shot. There are three timing settings - 10, 5 and 3 seconds - or you can switch it off altogether.
6. Save to - The Shine will save your photos to its built-in memory of 50MB (Phone), or to a MicroSD card (External). Select External or Phone and click OK to specify the saving location.
7. Multishot - To capture a good still photo from an action sequence, the Shine will take 3 or 6 photos in rapid succession. You can then pick the best or combine them into a short movie. Select 6shot or 3shot and press OK to confirm. To stay in regular capture mode, select 1shot.
8. Metering sets the light meter to assess the lighting of a photo based on the centre of the image (Centred) or on the image as a whole (Combined). Generally it's best to have this set to Combined for a balanced result.
9. Colour effect - Change the style of your photo by setting the colour to Sepia, Mono or negative (called 'Negation' in the menu). The effect is visible instantly on the viewfinder, press OK to accept.
10. White balance adjusts the amount of light that comes in through the 'shutter' according to the lighting conditions. Most of the time you can leave this at Auto, but you can choose from Daylight and Cloudy for outdoor shots, and Fluroescent and Incandescent according to indoor light sources.
11. Shutter tone - Choose from three shutter sounds that let you know when a photo has been taken, or switch the shutter sound off by choosing Off
12. Reset settings resets all the camera options to their defaults. To revert to the original settings, choose Yes and click OK

In viewfinder mode, you'll see the saving destination (a disk or phone icon), the chosen resolution, the amount of disk space left on the chosen drive and battery life. The camera uses up a lot of battery power so make sure you've got a full charge if you're planning a snap-happy day.

In viewfinder mode, press the right-hand selection key to access your photo Album, and use the scroll bar and left and right keys to navigate through the images; highlighting an image and clicking Options gives you a choice of viewing or deleting an image, setting it as wallpaper or as a caller ID, sending the photo via MMS, Bluetooth or Email, or moving it to phone or external memory (the File option). You can also view a slideshow of all the photos in the album by selecting Slideshow (option 7).

When you've taken a photo, the image will be displayed on the screen, along with the options Send or Delete. Send adds the photo to an MMS, while Delete is self-explanatory. To take another photo, press the C button or the scroll wheel to return to the viewfinder.