1 week ago
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Whilst there is still some snobbery around smartphone photography, many photographers today openly embrace the power of a camera that resides in your pocket.
Smartphone cameras are truly incredible pieces of kit. Multiple focal lengths, decent resolution, outstanding video plus you can call home to ask your partner to put the kettle on when you have finished shooting.
However, the power of smartphone cameras often goes deeper than you might think. It’s possible that you are not getting the very best out of your smartphone’s camera. Today we are going to look at 8 tips in order to get great images from your pocket camera. Although I come at this as an iPhone photographer, most if not all of these tips
Shoot Raw
Owners of bigger cameras have been telling each other to shoot RAW for many years, and for good reason. RAW files capture much more information than JPEGs. Until a few years ago, JPEG was the default image file type on phones. However, these days any phone with a decent camera set up will have RAW capability.
On Android the RAW files will be predominantly DNG, Adobe’s proprietary RAW format. On iPhone’s it is Apple’s ProRaw, this is an Applecentric version of DNG.
Shooting RAW on our phones it's a good idea as it helps overcome some of the limitations of smaller sensors. We can better control highlights and dynamic range, we can change white balance in post production and we can reduce noise in our images.
There is a caveat to be aware of. Smartphone RAW’s are often not quite the pure RAWs that you know from your larger cameras. Both Apple and Android manufacturers apply computational algorithms to their RAWs. These, for example, might boost dynamic range or help create a faux shallow depth of field. Despite this shooting RAW is a great way to improve your smartphone image quality.
Shoot Real Panoramics
Modern smartphones will have a panoramic mode. In it you will sweep the camera left or right and it will capture the scene and stitch it together automatically.
There are some issues with this though. First, that sweeping action is not always very accurate, leading to disjointed strange looking images. Secondly, you are not capturing the image in RAW, so your post production leeway is limited.
However, a great way to take good panoramas with a smartphone is to simply replicate the way you might do it with a larger camera. That is to take separate images and stitch them in post production software. In most cases it’s best to shoot in a vertical format with a standard or moderate telephoto lens. Allow around a 30% overlap between each image for the software to work its magic.
This is a very useful technique when shooting cityscapes as it helps eliminate the issue of converging parallels. I have made a video about using this technique on the Singapore skyline.
Use The Exposure Slider
As good as camera phones are, they are as prone to getting the exposure wrong as larger cameras. Some smartphones can display a live histogram or indicate blown highlights. If you feel that your exposure is off, there is one quick and simple trick to change it. Simply slide your finger up or down the screen to increase or decrease the exposure.
Many cameras now will also have an exposure compensation setting, this is useful if you are trying to take multiple shots in tricky lighting and want to maintain a different exposure from the metered suggestion.
Keep The Lenses Clean
We often encase our phones to protect them. However these cases generally do not cover the lenses. Because smartphone lenses protrude, they are magnets for dust and dirt. Even more so because we tend to keep our phones in our pockets.
Given the relatively small sensor size, dirty lens elements can seriously degrade our smartphone images. This often manifests itself as a soft, smeared looking image, especially of shot towards the light.
Cleaning tools for smartphones are broadly similar to larger cameras. Lint free clothes, lens cleaning fluids and blower brushes. The latter is particularly useful for smartphone lenses. There are even small Lenspens available now, specifically for smartphone cameras.
Use A Tripod In Low Light
Hear me out on this one as it might seem counter productive to take a tripod on a smartphone shoot. Most smartphones have a low light/night mode. However this uses a lot of computational photography to get you an image. Whilst that image might look good on a smartphone screen, it will not hold up well when edited.
Carrying a small, table top tripod with a smartphone mount adapter will allow you to maintain low ISO’s and shoot with slow shutter speeds to get amazing low light shots. You will definitely see a difference in image quality.
Go Macro
Most decent smartphones include one lens that has a macro capability. On my iPhone 15 Pro, it is the ultra wide lens, not an ideal focal length however it does allow me to get extremely close in.
Check which lens is macro capable on your phone and utilize it to get on very close on classic macro subjects. The beauty of using a smartphone for macro photography is it's portability. You can quickly follow insects or maneuver close to flowers without needing to set up a tripod.
Get On Grid
Just like on larger cameras, you can put a compositional grid on your screen when shooting. This is very useful for smartphone photography where you cannot tilt the screen to be facing directly to your eye when shooting. The grid overlay can help you get the right composition when using the phone at more acute angles, for example down low.
Use Third Party Camera Apps
Third party camera apps often give us much more control over our picture taking. For example we might be able to set shutter speeds and ISO. We may also be able to set a manual white balance or shoot different file formats and compression rates.
Third party apps can be very useful to photographers however there is a caveat. Often smartphone manufacturers lock out certain features from 3rd party apps. An example of this is Apple. You can only access the full 48mp of their main camera if you use the native camera app. If you use something like Lightroom Mobile, you will be restricted to a 12mp file.
Smartphones are incredible photographic tools and getting better as each year passes. However like larger cameras, to get the best out of them you need to understand how deep the controls and setting can go and utilize them to your advantage. Hopefully this article will help you with that
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