Guest Post: Samsung at All Points East

Generally speaking, festivals are great fun. Losing your mates before you’ve even had the chance to utter the words ‘right by the massive speaker at  the main stage’, soaking up the atmosphere with great food and drink and being surrounded by hundreds of beautiful people in their flower crowns and crop tops – there’s not a lot to hate.

On top of that, you also get to see some of your favourite bands/DJs live. And while we’ve all got pretty good at capturing the perfect group picture, sometimes it’s nice to get one of the musicians you’ve trekked across a field to watch. For the memories, right? But as anyone who’s ever been to a festival will know, it’s virtually impossible to snap anything decent. Either you’re too far away, or the light is so rubbish you might as well be taking selfies in your pitch black tent.

What you really need to capture your best festival moment is technology that’ll do all the hard work for you. Enter Samsung’s Galaxy S9. I took the phone to All Points East, a new weekend festival in Victoria Park, East London, and used it to capture a variety of content throughout the day.

Naturally, the snaps of (soulful British singer) Sampha at 8pm turned out great – the sun was beginning to set and everything looked mesmerising. The Live Focus feature meant I could get some pretty awesome selfies in front of the set.

Where the camera really excelled, however, was in a hot, sweaty tent during Justice’s hour and a half set. It was dark and the stage moved consistently, shooting different coloured beams and lights into the audience. Chuck in a rowdy crowd, and you’ve got pretty tricky conditions – yet the phone took exceptional pictures. The rear camera features something called F1.5 aperture mode, and multi-frame noise reduction, which adapts to low and super bright light automatically –like the human eye.

What this means in reality is you literally don’t have to do anything. Simply press the middle button and your photos come out clear and bright – no post-production in four different apps needed. Video is equally impressive. Again, the camera adjusts and captures crystal-clear footage (that you’ll actually want to Instagram).

Of course, you don’t have to let everything be decided for you. The camera settings can be adjusted by hand, including the aperture (brightness) to get the picture just so. During The XX’s headline performance, I was standing on the Samsung platform (available to all festival-goers) from which you can see panoramic views over the main stage. I was pretty far back, and the stage was being doused in white light from either side. To get a clearer picture, I simply dragged the ‘lightbulb’ dial down until I could see more details in the background.

The other fun bit? Super Slow-motion video. There are two modes: the auto detect function (you tell the phone where to watch for movement) or manual mode (you just select when you want to record) – and off you go. For a festival, the latter is probably better because you don’t exactly have control over a moving crowd/band on stage. You can then share the videos as a gif, do things like reverse the video and set it as a moving wallpaper. Festival goers who haven’t brought their S9 handsets with them, can also head down to get their own Super Slow-mo selfie video at the Samsung platform with music and a cool backdrop.

Essentially, the possibilities are endless. Well, as long as you find your mates again.

You can check out some of the best highlights from All Points East by searching for the #WithGalaxy and #GalaxyS9 hashtag on Twitter and Instagram and you can read more about the Galaxy S9 phone here: http://www.samsung.com/my/smartphones/galaxy-s9.

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Guest article has been written by roving reporter who writes for numerous titles including; ELLE UK, VICE and BBC.