Improving your mobile photography game.
Welcome back.
As promised in the previous post, I will be listing some of my tips for a better smartphone photography experience.
Taking pictures have never been easier in all of history. During the early ages of cameras, models often had to stand still for hours in front of the lens to get the film-plate exposed! Even the cameras themselves were heavy, and quite complicated to operate. Of course, smaller cameras did crop up later on, slowly progressing from bulky, huge, 19th-century cameras, to the modern and sleek smartphone camera.
Smartphones today are insanely advanced, being able to produce photos that look sharp and crisp. Of course, as I debated in the previous post, smartphones can never beat the amount of quality a proper DSLR/mirrorless camera can achieve. But that does not mean that smartphone cameras are entirely a waste of space.
Here are some tips, to make your smartphone photography a little better than before.
Have a decent camera.
I have many people asking me “Hey, why can’t I achieve the same results as you do?”. It’s because of the camera itself. You can’t take amazing pictures if the camera setup is ghastly and lacks features.
Clean the lens.
Your phone’s lens is covered by a piece of clear plastic, or glass in some cases- both of which can get easily smudged with fingerprints and dust when the phone is put into a trouser pocket or a purse. It’s best to carry a small micro-fiber cloth around in your pocket so you can clean off the lens covering in case there are any smudges. Beware to not ever scratch or even crack the covering, as that will ruin every single picture you take.
Use rules-of-thirds guidelines.
These guidelines are there for a reason. Usually, it’s just 9 boxes that are spread on the screen. The rule of thumb is that, you want to place your subject in the photo along the lines and corners of the box in the center. That rule allows for a proper balanced picture where both the subject and other elements can be seen easily. These guidelines can also help keep your phone straight, and they are a massive help for architecture photography.
You can enable this mode in the settings of the camera app. Poke around a little, it’s there.
Take advantage of lenses.
Most modern smartphones often come with a multiple lens camera system. Most commonly, a wide-angle lens, an ultra-wide angle lens, and a macro lens. The resolution and quality varies, of course. There are some other types of lenses too, such as the tele-macro, telephoto, microscopic, and more.
When there are more than one lenses you can use, it is best to use all of them in one single place in order for you to get the best possible composition or get nicer looking photos.
Do not ever zoom in too much.
I once saw someone post a rant about their picture. It was a very zoomed in picture of a forest, and it was very blurry and noisy, with barely any detail at all. This person was lamenting on the caption saying “why are all my pictures so blurry?!”.
The answer is because of digital zoom. Most phones can only zoom into a subject digitally. What it essentially does is that instead of zooming in, it just crops into the photo you see on the screen- resulting in a bad quality noisy picture with no detail. Some phones like the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and the iPhone 14 Pro series do have a telephoto lens, which means the lens itself is a dedicated zoom lens therefore producing much better looking pictures.
If your phone does not have a telephoto lens, it’s best to not zoom in more than 2x as the quality will start to deteriorate. When possible, walk closer to your subject to get the same close-up picture you wanted, but without the zoom and without the low-quality output.
Take advantage of all the modes.
The smartphone camera comes built in with many modes such as a portrait mode, panorama, cinematic, high-resolution, pro mode, and etc. Use them all to the best of your efforts to make the picture taking experience more seamless and simple. Pro mode also gives you a ton of control over the camera, using that also can improve the quality of pictures you take.
Use an image editor.
Using an image editor greatly improves the quality of your pictures. You don’t have to learn how to color-grade and etc, simply some basic light adjustments are more than enough to make your picture look amazing! Play around with the saturation and vibrance sliders a little and the pictures will look even more like real life!
The best image editors that I can recommend for smartphones are:
- Lightroom Mobile: Photographers favorite, easy to work with, advanced features.
- Polarr: Very easy to work with, lots of features similar to Lr, and it’s 100% free (apart for some filters).
- Snapseed: Suitable for quick adjustments, very user-friendly and simple UI.
Shoot in RAW mode.
If you do plan to edit your pictures before sharing it on social media, it’s best to shoot in RAW as it enables loss-less quality. Besides, it also gives you more control over the highlights and shadows of the picture when you are editing it.
The End
Thank you so much for reading. I hope I have managed to enlighten you a little more about smartphone photography. There are many more tips out there but in my opinion, the ones I listed above are the absolute basic that everyone simply has to know. Armed with the tips above, I hope you can create better photos that can inspire you, me, and the world. Happy snapping!
STAY SAFE, AND STAY CREATIVE.
