Rewind Time with Time Shift Camera in BlackBerry 10

Shooting great photos is all about capturing that golden moment—miss a millisecond and it’s gone! It’s humanly impossible to not miss any great shot, and the reasons for this are many. Firstly, it’s impossible to pre-empt that the subject will blink or move at the time you release the shutter. The probability of this is higher when you’re taking group shots, because there are many who may blink, move, not look into the camera or not smile at the time you press the shutter button. It gets worse when there are pets and children in the frame who keep changing expressions and get distracted by the slightest thing around them. In such situations, you have no choice but to round up everyone together and reshoot. But again, there’s no certainty you’ll get a perfect shot. In that case, you’ll have to go with the shot that looks best, or keep trying your luck until you get what you want. One of the means to counter such undesirable circumstances is using the Burst mode, which shoots multiple frames in succession allowing you to choose the best shot. It’s a common feature found in most digital cameras these days. Some models feature the Best Shot mode that uses the same mechanism to help eliminate frames that are out of focus or in which the subjects have blinked or moved. Burst mode and Best Shot are also featured in many camera apps for various smartphone platforms—for example, Fast Burst Camera for Android and Photoburst for iPhone can shoot around 10 photos per seconds. This works great for action shots, however it doesn’t rule out the slight chance that someone or the other in a group blinks or looks away in every frame. The Time Shift camera feature in BlackBerry 10 helps tackle even that with great ease. Here’s how it works.

Burst shooting is great for action shots!

The mechanism

Consider a group shot with burst mode. You first choose the shot that looks best, but there’s a face with eyes closed and another one that’s not looking at the camera. However, other shots in the burst mode have photos of the same subjects looking at the camera and smiling. Now imagine using Photoshop to replace the faces in the chosen shot with the ones that look best in one of the other photos shot in burst. Save the final result and voila, you’ve got the perfect shot! That’s exactly what Time Shift allows you to do, and it can’t get easier.

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Use the timescale to select the best expression

Time to rewind

The Time Shift mode has to be activated via an icon at the top right corner of the camera app. This mode detects faces in the frame, and on pressing the shutter button it shoots multiple frames in a burst. You have to keep your hand steady for a few seconds until the burst capture is over in order to avoid blurry shots.

Time for magic! The playback mode allows selecting faces by tapping on them. A time scale is displayed around the selected face, and you can drag the slider to choose the best-looking face from the burst. This can be done for all the faces detected in the frame. After you’re done with giving the subjects a facelift, the changes are combined in a single shot. It works seamlessly and the results don’t have even a hint that it’s actually edited. BlackBerry had been working closely with Scalado to integrate the Time Shift feature into BB 10’s camera app. 

So, one thing is sure with the BlackBerry 10—you’ll get that perfect shot with every click of the shutter!