A few people have asked me how I get my pictures, so thought I'd do a blog post about it.
I take them with my phone's camera. I use a HTC One X which has a good quality camera, and I'm led to beleive the Galaxy S3 has the same resolution (thanks to user emiii ) so is also a good choice.
To get my shots I usually use an app (Android) called
Mobile Hidden Camera which has a free version and a more feature rich
paid version. For my needs, the free version provides everything I
need.
The main feature is that it blacks your phone's screen
while shooting mode is active, making your phone look as though it is
locked/switched off. I prefer this to some other apps which pretend to
be a different app of some kind, like a word processor. This is because
if you see a phone with a black screen, you immediately assume it is
inactive, but a lit, active phone screen will make you look longer to
maybe figure out what is on the screen. The last thing you want is
people spending any amount of time figuring out what your phone is
doing.
Another great feature which I haven't seen before is that it doesn't show up in your 'recent apps'.
The app allows you to take images and video, (I think video
is limited to 60 seconds in the free version). You have to select
either image or video mode before you start snapping which is a little
inconvenient, but not a disaster.
Image mode allows you to take full resolution pictures by
tapping the black screen. There is also the option to use 'super burst'
mode, although I've not figured out what that is good for. Shutter
sounds are disabled which is pretty essential.
Video mode starts capturing as soon as you select video
mode and blacks the screen. Pressing your phones back key will stop
recording.
One big down side of the app/android is that the images you
have just taken are immediately viewable in your gallery, which could
get you in serious trouble if someone gets hold of your phone! I beleive
the paid version has features to prevent this, but I'm not sure. Always
make sure you use a file manager such as Astro to move the
images/videos to a 'hidden' folder (using the .nomedia trick, if people
want to know more about this let me know and I will write a blog post
about it).
All in all its a pretty basic but effective, and free app which allows you to get some pretty decent shots.
If anyone has experience using one of the other spy camera apps I'd love to hear about them. I've recently started playing with S-Cam OS, so I might write a bit about that when I'm more familiar with it.
I hope you enjoyed this post, my next post will be about
either some tips about taking pictures or using Astro file manager to
hide your images.
