ℹ️ - Stellar Blade Top Tips

Developer: Shift Up

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Platform: PS5

Initial Release: 26th April 2024

https://youtu.be/fbLqBZ_AVgQ

---

Stellar Blade's stunning visuals, stylish combat, and yeah, even some of the more 'colourful' outfits give the game plenty of appeal for virtual photographers. With an advanced photo mode, you get everything from auto-focus tracking to 3-point lighting and knowing how to get the best out of it can lead to some great shots.

Here's how to improve your Stellar Blade photography then with my 10 photo mode top tips – and that's "tips", with a P!

---

Use The Right Photo Mode

There are technically two photo modes in Stellar Blade and it's important to use the right one. A simpler selfie camera is unlocked by accepting the Photography Club mission from the bulletin board and, while this does have a lot of options, it is entirely limited to selfies taken at arm's length.

For much more creative freedom, you'll want to use the full photo mode that has a free camera for all kinds of compositions. This one sadly can't be assigned to the D-Pad 🠇 shortcut and is instead accessed by pressing R1 + D-Pad 🠄 together. If that's a bit awkward during the action, there's also a way in via the pause menu, but be warned that it takes a whopping 12 button presses each time.

Understand Field of View

The Field of View setting controls how wide an angle is visible within the frame and comes with a range of 17 - 100°. That's equivalent to something like a 15 - 120 mm zoom lens, covering wide-angle and telephoto lengths. Larger values here widen the viewing angle and can help to capture larger enemies, give a more dynamic look, or to capture wide shots that work well in a cinematic aspect ratio.

Going the other way, narrow angles are useful to limit how much is visible and can remove distractions for a cleaner, more isolated view of the subject. For portraits, try a FoV of around 25 - 35° for more intimate results. Just be aware that the character model can sometimes disappear when the camera gets close.

Pose Properly

Speaking of portraits, the photo mode has some useful tricks for controlling the characters, including 26 poses and 18 facial expressions for Eve, most of which are also available for Adam and Lily too. These are nice to work with, though there's a final tough that makes all the difference – "Look at Camera".

This is available for all three main characters and means you can look directly at the camera for more engaging portraits. As the character follows the camera around, it's also possible to lock their gaze in place by switching the setting to "Fix Line of Sight" – perfect for focusing attention on something or getting a relaxed over-the-should look.

Get Accurate Focus

For any type of shot, it's important to get the camera focused sharply on your subject and, for Eve at least, there is a great auto-focus option that will do most of the work for you. Toggle this on and you'll see a focus reticle appear as the camera detects Eve's face. This will stay locked on to her as the camera moves around, keeping focus automatically as you tweak the composition.

To focus elsewhere, like on an enemy or other object, you'll need to do the job manually by setting the Focus Distance. Be sure to use the handy focus visualiser that highlights the focus plane as a bright yellow strip and remember that you can fine tune using dolly focus by shifting the camera forwards / backwards slightly.

Master Depth of Field

Depth of Field goes hand-in-hand with camera focus and is crucial in creating an authentic optical effect. Use smaller aperture f-numbers to better isolate subjects from their surroundings with a shallower depth of field and defocused blur on both the foreground & background. This instantly looks more photographic and can really help to guide the viewer's eye to points of interest.

Larger aperture f-numbers increase the field depth to bring more of the scene into acceptable focus. This is useful when photographing expansive landscapes or when multiple subjects are at different distances from the camera. Try focusing between two subjects and increasing the field depth to get them both in focus for the shot.

Learn Beta / Burst Moves

This one isn't really a photo mode feature as such, but it is something that will help you to find more interesting shots by using Eve's Beta and Burst abilities. These stylish action moves are crucial to dominating battles and also add some dynamic body positions and glowing visual effects that are ideal camera-fodder.

You do have to earn the energy to use them though, so it's worth getting to know them in advance. Unfortunately, the photo mode isn't available during training, but there is unlimited energy to let you spot your favourite animation sequences.

Control the Colour

The Stellar Blade photo mode has tons of options on the Display tab to let you adjust the colour palette. The simplest is obviously Saturation that boosts or reduces all colours, while the Hue option dramatically shifts the colours for a highly stylised shot.

I actually prefer to reduce the hue intensity and use it for tweaking the colour temperature. For example, shifting to a slight blue hue can be useful to control oranges and add cooler tones to the image. If you like preset options, then a bunch of colour filters can also be applied with variable intensity and can even include the option to exclude characters from the effect. This doesn't always work aesthetically speaking, but it's worth playing around with to find some creative styles.

Brightness or Exposure?

Brightness is brightness, right? Well, except when it isn't and this photo mode has a couple of different ways to adjust how bright the image is. One of these is indeed called Brightness and this one simply makes everything darker with lower values or lighter with higher values, affecting all areas of the image equally. A separate Exposure option may seem to do the same at first glance, but notice how this one has a more pronounced effect of highlights and light sources.

Add in the fact that Contrast will exaggerate the difference between blacks and whites, or how Bloom adds a soft glow to the highlights, and there are lots of ways to subtly adjust the brightness of a shot.

Manipulate the Lighting

For more precise lighting control, the photo mode has 3 custom lights (actually now 6 lights as of the v1.011.002 update) that can be freely placed in the scene. Each one is omnidirectional, meaning that is casts light in all directions, but can be set to only target characters to avoid unwanted light falling on the surroundings. In any case, I recommend keeping the shadow casting on to avoid things looking unnatural.

Similarly, if you decide to add colour to your lights, think about whether they make sense in the scene. Matching the colour of nearby light sources will look more believable, though if you do want to do something more individual, then consider turning down the ambient light with the World Lighting Brightness option for an almost dark setting.

By the way, you'll also need to turn down the brightness of the light itself to actually see a chosen colour as they desaturate to white at full brightness. Use intensity here instead to make up for the lost power if needed.

Claim Your ©

My final tip is about owning your work, and I always advise turning off the copyright print that appears at the bottom of the image by default. There is no disputing the fact that Shift Up continue to own all of the IP on the content that you are using to create your image, but that does not include the copyright to original photo mode compositions. That belongs to you, the photographer, so you shouldn't tolerate a copyright watermark suggesting otherwise.

Subscribe to the regular newsletter for all the latest features from TheFourthFocus.com