Motion blur photography with a mobile phone

Tablecloth, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Light passing, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today was a day when I didn't have the LX3 with me for taking photos. So, what I did instead (in a restaurant) was to experiment with my Nokia E90 mobile phone. As I have written here previously, the E90 may have one of the worst cameras ever in terms of the unpredictable shutter (focus/exposure) lag. Also, the sensor is extremely noisy in low light, and the camera interface is a nightmare.

But I thought that perhaps the badness of the camera could serve a useful purpose. What if I would use the E90 in the same way as a Lomo - photographing random things, shooting "from the hip", not minding the blur.

Well, this was not so easy, but after switching of the flash and not using the automatic exposure mode I got a bit of progress. I experimented with macro, portrait and night photography modes, switched off the auto ISO feature (the photos were still noisy but not so extremely), and learned to estimate the probable focus/shutter lag. I moved the camera around, tried the same subject several times, and finally got some results which were not impossibly bad. Here are two examples of the results.

Perhaps this way of photography is worth exploring further. I wish there would be a way to save the camera settings, but it seems that you need to do the setup again and again. Is this so?

A further thought: is the E90 as good as a Lomo? (At least is is not cheaper.)