Next time, maybe I'll read the manual

I discovered recently, after months of wondering why my camera phone photos always suck so impossibly bad, that I had never adjusted the settings. Playing with the camera function one day, I noticed that it was set on "low" and "economy." I immediately switched it to "high" and "fine."

The photos still aren't great, but I think there's a noticeable difference. Both of these were shot when I was in a dark club to see a band.

Before (low settings)
Even though Meredith and Carmen were right next to me when I took this, they're barely recognizable.



After (high settings)
I took this one tonight at the Liz Phair show, because I didn't have my other camera with me. She's little and blurry, but with my old settings I don't think I'd be able to see her at all. The only drawback of the higher settings is that it takes a few seconds longer to upload a photo to flickr from my phone, but I can deal with that. Or else maybe I'll just give up on the camera phone completely and focus on thinking up ways to sneak my digital camera into rock shows.