V Festival with LG

Festival season is in full flow and I took the LG G4 along to V Festival with me. Time to snap away.

So last week I hosted a competition for one person to win two tickets and the new LG G4, with LG, the Official Handset Partner of Virgin Media at V Festival. However I didn’t mention that I’d also be going as well with LG to see if I could leave my trusted camera at home and capture some V festival moments, armed with its latest smartphone.

Being the kind brother I am, I took my sister along for the day and in untypical English summer festival style, the weather couldn’t have been better. And before we entered the main arena, we went to the Louder Lounge, a more chilled out and relaxed area of the festival. LG had their own LG Circus tent where we’d be taking a selfie that unknowingly to me would be blown up onto the main stage later in the day. I don’t think I’d have been so quick to say yes if that was the case!

The tent was a good way to test out LG’s selfie gesture feature on the front facing camera. Rather than having to press a button on the camera to take a photo, if you hold your palm up, the camera recognises you want to take a photo and then counts down from three once you from your palm into a fist. Quite handy if you’re one for taking group shots.

We found ourselves going between the Virgin Media stage and MTV stage for most of the day, with James Bay being the first act we managed to see and also the first chance I’d get to see how the camera would act. It has three settings: simple, auto and then manual. Simple and auto were very easy to use and I was quite impressed with how quick the camera focuses and deals with light conditions, especially with it being so sunny!

I was then a little braver I switched the camera over to manual, where the phone really comes into its own. The camera allows you to change the ISO, focus, white balance and exposure. While I don’t feel I would swap it permanently for my DSLR camera, it sure puts up a fight. Particularly at places like a festival where you wouldn’t want to be carrying around your camera so having a phone like this, with a rather long battery life, it is rather handy. For events such as this, the LG G4 is perfect. If you want to know the specifics of the camera, it can all be found on my previous post.

What I liked a lot was how if you pressed the back button twice, it launches the camera as well as takes a photo straightaway, so if something happens rather quickly, you can hopefully get a quick shot, something I sadly failed at when a person dressed as a Lego man was holding a flare during the headliners of the night, Kasabian.

With it now being dark, the phone had a different challenge, but seemed to handle all the flashing lights and contrast of light in the frame. There were times when the lighting would be a little off in auto, but this was where changing the ISO in manual was really useful, meaning I could keep the harshness of the light from the stage down to a minimum.

In short, the camera on this phone is probably the best camera phone out there. So I think next time I’m heading somewhere where I want to travel light, I might be leaving the DSLR at home next time and taking the LG G4.

LG invited me to V Festival and gifted me an LG G4 to take some festival snaps in Chelmsford, however the views on the phone and its camera functions are my own.