In pictures: Photographing the NDP 2024 preview shows with your mobile phone

With fast moving vehicles, soaring fighter jets overhead and night performances, the National Day Parade (NDP) could be a challenging environment in which to take photos – especially if you’re relying on your mobile phone. 
Ahead of the big day this week, I tried doing just that, spending two days capturing some images at the NDP 2024’s NE4 and the Preview 1 shows last month. My phone of choice? The new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6. And as I found out, it’s not only one of the most portable phones in the market right now but it also proved to be useful in other ways.
The 10x optical zoom on the rear camera was handy at times, especially when the subject I wanted to photograph was very far away.
Another feature on this phone is the “Pro” mode that gave me more control over taking a particular photo that needed extra controls, in this case, the State Flag Flypast and the F-16 bomb-burst.
The Pro mode has controls to manually adjust the white balance, shutter speed and ISO, and this worked out in my favour to correctly expose the sunset, while also capturing the aerial action.
I was allowed onto the parade grounds to capture the Parade & Ceremony when the various contingents were standing at attention. There was no stopping as I was being ushered around and I was only able to take pictures while “on-the-go”, and with just a touch on the screen, the phone’s autofocus tracking helped keep the images tact sharp. This was also the case for moving objects like the mobile column segment.
I would highly suggest turning on this “Tracking auto-focus” feature in the phone’s camera settings where it would keep the rear camera focused on the selected subject even if they move.
Photographing the night performances was also made an easy feat by using the 12.0 MP rear camera’s regular photo mode where the settings are automatically configured to give my low-light images the correct exposure and all that’s needed is to fire away. 
I would have thought that towards the end of the night, the phone would be heating up but despite having it on camera mode almost entirely throughout the show, the phone only felt warm to the touch. This is due to the Vapor Chamber on the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip6. And even at this point, my phone still had more than half of the battery life remaining.