Everyone needs LG’s professional quality smartphone cameras

About two years ago, when a busy downtown mall in Nairobi, which houses small stalls known as “exhibitions” in the city’s lingo suffered a massive blast, a curious thing happened.

True, the emergency services, mostly the Red Cross, paramedics and the police, responded, as they are wont to, and were among the first people on the scene. There was also a fair sprinkling of journalists and photojournalists at the scene. But there was also another group that stuck out like a sore thumb: that of ordinary citizens, capturing the incident on their smartphones either in the form of videos or photos.  

It was this army of citizen journalists who intuitively posted the first images from the incident on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and youtube and not your traditional, newsroom-based journalist. They literally “broke” the story. But the army of cyber-reporters who descended on Nairobi’s Moi Avenue on that fateful morning has platoons all over the world. Of the billions of photos taken per day by smartphone owners today, about 1.8 billion end up being shared on social networks, up from 500 million in 2013. 

Veteran Nairobi-based Ugandan journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo, would later remark. “I watched them. They were eating my lunch. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.”

With the ascendancy of smartphones in Kenya and as the gadgets become more affordable, a strong culture of citizen journalism is taking root in the country. In this realm, everyone is a journalist and a photo-journalist. No newspaper, TV or radio station today can claim that it breaks stories all the time. That is being effectively done by social media and its growing army of citizen journalists and bloggers. Traditional media outlets have had to be more content with the rather sedate and intellectually high-brow task of analysis and commentary, what is known in the trade as Day Two Journalism.

True, the advent of smartphone-based cameras has kind of “democratized” photography.  Just like the traditional journalists and photojournalists, even this breed of practitioners requires the best tools of the trade, and that includes the best cameras. This is where LG smartphones come in, especially the G4, because they are not only user-friendly, but are engineered to ensure that even lay users get the best, professional quality results. It doesn’t matter whether they are taking a “selfie” or capturing a bomb blast, literally chronicling the first chapters of history.

Boasting a remarkable 16mp camera, G4 makes full use of its detailed display and instinctive operation to help users take professional-quality photographs. Expertly tailored to meet the needs of modern consumers, the user-friendly G4 is the perfect phone for today’s mobile photographers.

For the longest time, mobile cameras have lagged far behind more advanced digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs) in their ability to capture photographs when there is little natural light. The G4’s camera lens boasts an aperture value of F1.8, making it the brightest smartphone lens on the market and capable of going toe-to-toe with lens used by professionals.

Apart from F/1.8 aperture lens, there are a number of other features that help to set the G4 apart from competition. For instance, in manual mode, the photographer can customize the level of white balance, ISO, shutter speed, manual focus and exposure compensation. When placed in the hands of an expert, these features allow the G4 to shoot capture striking images. Manual mode also gives photographers the ability to select RAW or JPEG as the format for their files.

Those features among others make it a joy to use, even for the non-professional mobile photographer, who just wants to capture moments of life for their own use or seeks to share the same with friends and family or even a wider audience. These include the brightest smartphone lens on the market that is at par with what top notch professionals use; a manual mode that gives the user a lot of control; an advanced color spectrum sensor to ensure no color is lost on “translation” and an advanced front-facing camera that efficiently feeds the growing “selfie” sub-culture. 

Support artistic kids, Lupita nudges parents

Lupita Nyong’o, Kenyan Oscar Award Winner for Best Supporting Actress, has urged guardians to be supportive of children with an affinity for arts while attributing her success in the film industry to a distinctive and motivational pattern that fanned her passion.

Lupita shares a moment with students after a mentorship session at KICC

Speaking to students and artists during a session dubbed “Arts in Education” at the KICC; the Hollywood actress said she grew up in a community that fosters creative self expression and around guardians who “validated her dreams.”

“Without their constant and vigilant belief in me, I wouldn’t be where I am…a dream can only be realised when it is validated. First by yourself and then by those around you,” said Lupita. 

The actress frowned upon the fact that “arts education is often dismissed as non-essential” in Kenya and called on parents and teachers to create room for children’s self realisation. 

Reflecting back at the times that made her as an artiste, she credits her teacher, the late Mutegi Njiru, and her debut role as a passerby in the play Oliver Twist at Rusinga Schools as an epochal moment that kicked off her life on stage.

Mutegi Njiru, an English teacher at Rusinga and an ardent thespian would later die in the 1998 bombing of United States Embassy in Nairobi. The following year, Rusinga would introduce the Mutegi Njiru Memorial Shield to recognise students with exemplary contribution in the field of theatrical arts. Lupita Nyong’o was the first to clench the award.

The actress laid emphasis on reinforcing children’s abilities and talents as opposed to imposing careers on students. “Self expression is the most pure part of self; the part that yearns to communicate in a different way,” said Lupita.

On the fringes of mentorship session Patricia Kariuki, a Head Teacher at Rusinga Schools emphasized that guardians had an immense opportunity to up the chance of a kid’s success if they understood from the onset that achievers are not born but bred.

Lupita’s sister, Esperanza Nyong’o, an alumni of Rusinga School says the fact that the institution allowed her to freely exercise her talent saw her join the school’s football team eventually pursue Sports Management at Real Madrid Graduate School.

“If you reward and recognise intelligence only, you are inadvertently telling your child that only stature matters, that way you bring up a risk averse child. The idea should be to recognise effort so that children learn to take risks, make mistakes and take out lessons from their experiences,” said Patricia.

Lupita also lauded the Government for its efforts in making Kenya an attractive film-making destination through zero-rating film equipment and wooing Hollywood to shoot movies in Kenya. Sports Cabinet Secretary Hassan Wario confirmed that Richard Leakey’s story in the upcoming movie Africa, which features Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt will be shot mostly in Kenya.  

Getting Machakos in the Mood

Moods premium condoms took Machakos by storm during the recent Masaku 7s with an activation that featured a bevy of sexy beauties that painted the town blue. Moods is a premium flagship branch of HLL Lifecare Limited and comprises variants such as 1500 Dots, Allnight and Absolute Xtasy among others.