Top tips for great smartphone photography

A few podcasts ago I spoke about what to think about when buying a camera. However, most of us carry around a smartphone and some of these cameras can outperform pro cameras.

So here are some tips to help you to get the most from your smartphone:

• Keep your lenses clean!
• When you have your subject where you want it, tap on the subject on the smartphone screen. That tells the camera where to focus and you should also see a slider control appear. Use this to make the image brighter or darker.

Take a look at the features offered by your particular phone:

• Do you have a manual or pro-mode?
• Can you use high dynamic range (HDR) and what difference does that make to your images?
• Shoot in RAW if that is an option.

Composition

• Use the rule of thirds (this is likely to be there as a grid on your touchscreen).
• Look for leading lines.
• Lighting
• Remember the basic rules of lighting (yes, they will stay the same!).

Stability

• Keep your smartphone steady and think of investing in a small tripod if you want to make regular use of it. These tripods are often small enough to fit in a pocket or small bag.

Other tips:

• Do you have a portrait mode to simulate the effects of a narrow depth of field and bokeh?
• Make the most of the phones’ physical size to get viewpoints that are almost impossible to get using larger cameras.
• Put the camera low down and shoot, or high up. Remember, you may be able to use the volume control keys on the side of the camera to release the shutter.
• Finally, remember that zoom is likely to be digital zoom, so try to shoot without it.

In all, smartphones are very versatile. Are you getting the most from yours?

If not, check out these links:

Download my 10 tips to improve your photography today.

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Remember that there is a new podcast every Friday.

So, drop me any comments and questions you might have, either in the comments or via my email, graham@ge.photography, and I will answer them in a future podcast.

And, please remember to Like and Subscribe.

Transcript

>> Graham: 0:08

Foreign. Hello. A few podcasts, ago I spoke about things to think about when you were looking to buy your first camera or maybe moving from a more basic camera to something with a bit more performance. But I wanted to step back a bit. Now I have spoken about this before and I did a podcast with Colin, Wilson Winter Seaton a few months ago now and specifically talking about smartphone photography. And that is the subject of this particular podcast. And what I'm going to do is just go over some key tips really to help you get the most from what is in most cases very sophisticated camera. In many ways, smartphone cameras can give professional cameras a run for their money and they have certain advantages in certain situations as well. So I'm going to talk about all of that. But before I do, please remember to like and subscribe. And all of that really does help me out. And also take a look at the website because I've got free things you can download to help you with your photography. There's also online courses and the aim of it all is to help you get the most from your photography. So let's jump in and talk about top tips for smartphone photography. Now obviously I don't know what smartphone you're using and features do change as new models come out. They have different features. So I'm going to. This by its nature will have to be a fairly generic podcast and I really want to as far as possible cover things that are likely to apply to most smartphone users. And I do recommend this. If you are not using your smartphone much for photography, I really recommend you do. because if you are thinking about investing money in a larger kit, whether it's a mirrorless, setup or possibly a dslr, a lot of the principles of photography are the same. So I think when it comes to things like composition, visualizing, what's there, that side of it, it doesn't really matter what camera you're using because that side of the, let's call it the creative process, which I know some people bull can a little bit. But there you go. You might have to accept that you have some element of creativity about you. So that aspect of photography is the same regardless of what camera you're using, whether it's a smartphone, a mirrorless camera, film camera, medium format, movie camera, whatever it is. Okay, so the very first one, really basic is just to make sure you keep your lens clean. And it sounds really stupid but if you're anything like me, my phone Tends to end up in my back pocket a lot of the time, or in a pocket or thrown down in the car somewhere or whatever it might be. Now I do have a case on it because I'm quite good at dropping it as well. So I have invested in a case to protect it and that has holes in it so that obviously you can see things through the lens with the the case closed. that is the lenses at the back of the camera, so not the front one. However, that does mean that they are pretty much constantly exposed. And the best way to ruin any photograph is to have dirt on your lens. So very, very simple, very, very generic. Just make sure you keep your lens clean. Now if you're not sure, clean cloths of fine, microfiber cloths if you want to get a bit more into it, or even lens, cleaner. So I wear glasses and the optician where I get my glasses from, they've given me a bottle of cleaning fluid and then every time it gets empty, I just turn up there and they fill it up and off I go again. So something like that is good, particularly if you might be in an environment where your lens. And this obviously applies to any camera where it might get a bit dirty. And when I've been photographing humpback whales, every now and again, I'll get splashed because one of my superpowers is finding the wettest part of the boat and standing there. So occasionally I have managed to douse my camera in seawater and I have stood in the back of one of the boats in the, in the toilet with the hand dryer trying to get everything dry again. So, it is always worthwhile carrying some cleaning gear with you. the next thing is to sort of go from the simple to the more complicated. And that is to just look at the kind of features that you have on your camera. Now the default for most people is to just use it fully automatic. You just point it at, ah, whatever you're going to photograph and press the shutter button and that's it. So I always like to get a little bit more creative than that, where that's possible. So one of the things you may not know is that when you do point your camera at something, the thing to do is to actually tap on the screen, on the phone, tap, the thing you want to focus on. So if it's, if you're doing a portrait, for example, tap on the person's face on the screen and what you'll See is a little bar comes up. In fact, a couple of things will happen. One of them is a little bar will come up and that controls how bright the image is. And all you do is put your finger on the screen close to the bar and slide it in the direction the bar is lying. So if it's lying horizontally, slide it either left or right and that will brighten or darken the image. Or if it's vertical, just do it obviously up and down until you get the kind of, contrast, which is what we're really looking at here, the kind of contrast that you want for that image. another thing that happens when you tap on something on the screen is that you're telling the camera, that's what I want to focus on. Now, generally you don't get much in the way of depth of field on a smartphone camera. The standard lenses, now they will have a telephoto lens, and this is something you'll have to try on your own camera. but the rule is, if you're using a wide angle lens, generally the aperture doesn't change the depth of field very much. Whereas if you go on to telephoto, a small change in aperture can have quite a big effect on depth of field. So when it comes to smartphone, you're typically using a wide angle lens. So you won't often be able to optically control your depth of field too much because that's essentially what you're doing. so one trick you can use if your subject is very close to the camera, if you're getting very close to it, is to just get the camera in as close to your subject as your image will allow. And, and they just tap on the subject on the screen, on the camera. That might be enough just to put the background out of focus optically, but you do need to be very close for that. An alternative that you may have on your smartphone camera is to be able to digitally introduce bokeh or some other effect that puts things that aren't the subject out of focus to one degree or another. So I have seen some of these, some of them weren't terribly impressive. But again, with all of this stuff, it's getting better and better. AI is obviously in most of the kind of creative stuff we do. my computer won't stop nagging me about pretty much everything these days. So AI is everywhere. And the chances are you've got it on your phone. And, one of the functions of it is to allow you to simulate what would be an Optical effect on, a larger camera, more traditional camera, but simulate that effect digitally. So have a look at that, see how good it is. You might like it, you might not. but if you have a look at these things then, you know whether or not they might be something you'd want to use. hdr, ah, is a good one. So high dynamic range basically means that what the camera does. And this, I think this is pretty standard these days. So without, with HDR off, so high dynamic range off, you just find your subject, you might do some adjustments on the screen, you press the shutter button and that's your photograph. it's a single exposure. It's a single photograph with high dynamic range. What the camera will do is to actually take three photographs. So you've got your standard exposure, as it were, the kind of photograph you would have taken with a single shot, but with high dynamic range. You've got one that's a little bit overexposed, another one that's a little bit underexposed, and then what the camera does, it combines those three images to give you the sum of those images. And I must say on, there was an old iPhone I used, which I used to produce a smartphone to. So a lot of that is still relevant even though the camera itself is quite old. And I do talk about apps and things as well, a lot of free apps in that course. So it's quite a good one to get started on. but there is a, I could see quite a difference with the HDR version of the image versus the standard, just regular single shot. So again, it's something to experiment with. It might suit your style of photography, it might not, but it's something that the camera has. And as with all of these things, it's good to know that it's there, because it could be just what you've been looking for to give your, Your images that little oomph, that little sparkle or whatever it is that makes them stand out. the other thing I would also say is if you do have the option to shoot in raw, a lot of the time you might be limited to JPEG or something like that. But if you can shoot in raw, I would, I always recommend doing that. And personally what I would do in that situation is to just pull the images off the camera so that I can use Photoshop, or I tend to use Photoshop because I'm familiar with it. but using RAW Alert gives you a lot more subtlety in the way you can Edit the, the image. If you are only working with JPEGs, JPEG is what we call a compressed format. It means that a lot of the original information that would be in a raw file, which is much bigger. but in order to get the file size down, a lot of that information is thrown out. So it means that, you will generally have a low resolution image, which may or may not be a problem, depends what you're doing with it. and you also have a lot less granularity if you think of it that way, in doing fine adjustments to exposure, contrast, that kind of thing. Okay, what else you need to think about? I'm going to jump on just some standard stuff. So Rule of Thirds is a good one just on the composition side. And the reason I want to talk about that is that you most likely it's either the default or you can select it, but you will have a grid, you might have several grids, that you can put onto the display, when you're taking a photograph. But one of them will be the Rule of Thirds grid. And that one simply is, two vertical lines have been added and they are, at equal distances in the, in the kind of vertical plane. If you're looking at the, the image, you've got another two in the horizontal planes. You have this grid of four lines. And they divide the horizontal and the vertical equally into thirds. So that's where the rule of thirds comes from. From. And if you've never tried this, and if you are always putting your subject dead center of the frame, do give this a go. Just try putting your subject on either one of the four crossover points on that grid. So there are two high up, obviously, one left and right, two low down left and right. And if you can't do that, if that doesn't still doesn't quite work for you, at least put your subject on one of the lines because what it will do, it takes your subject off center. It creates space in the image. And if you've heard any of my other podcasts, you won't have to listen too long before I start talking about visual storytelling. It's fundamental to how I teach photography. But we love stories. People love stories. So if you create space in an image, people will want to fill that with a story. And it doesn't have to be a very long one, can be very short. But the point about it is it engages the viewer because if the viewer is looking at it and now starting to fill in that empty space, you've created in the image. They are now far more engaged with that image than if you just slapped your subject dead center. They've had a look, okay, that's whatever. And they move on to the next one. So rule, of thirds is very simple, but it's also very effective. And if you take nothing away from the com on the composition side from this podcast, please, please take away rule of Thirds. And it is something that's in one of the giveaways that you can download from the website. So I do recommend that, another thing to think about, on the composition side is just leading lines. And there's simply any kind of line that goes from generally the foreground towards the subject. And what you're doing is taking the viewer on a little journey through your image. so once you start looking, once you recognize leading lines, and again, they're in the free download that you can get off my website. So that's www.ge.photography. and once, you start seeing leading lines around you, you realize they're pretty much everywhere because it doesn't have to be a solid line, but you're simply guiding the viewer, whoever's looking at your image through that image. And as they do that, they get more engaged with it. And this, the reason I talk about this is this is fundamental to good photographs. Any good great photographs draw you in as a viewer. and ideally, you'll get some kind of emotional connection with that image. Although that's, a little bit beyond this podcast. But it is something I talk about in the online courses. Okay, so, think about your light. Obviously, we're working with light, so you do want good light, but depends what you're doing. If you, want something highly contrasty, then bright sunshine is great and you get strong light areas, strong dark areas. If you are shooting photographs, you want a more even light, not only to give a softer light to the subject, and here I'm assuming you're outside, but also it stops the subject squinting, which isn't the best look for most people. another thing to think about is how you're holding the camera and how you're shooting, as in pressing the shutter button. So you obviously want to hold the camera steady. And if you do a lot of photography with, your smartphone, it's probably worthwhile investing in just a small tripod of some sort, to just allow you to just stand, the phone up. it gives you a nice, solid platform to work from. And you might want to do selfies. You might Want to work in low light, but it just expands your options. you might, if you can use a timer or a remote control, if there's such thing, or maybe in a voice command for the phone you're using and that allows you to get it to take the shot without you actually touching the camera, which is ideal in those sorts of situations where you're pressing the phone, might just move things slightly. And another thing you may not know, obviously when you use the camera, the cameras that I've used on smartphones, generally when you go into camera, you have a button there somewhere which is a kind of filled in circle, a white circle somewhere, that might be at the bottom. If you're holding the thing in portrait mode, it might be at the bottom of the frame. Sometimes you get another one that you can move around the screen so that when you press that you, you can take your photograph. But if you try a different angle, which is another thing I recommend. So maybe put the phone down on the floor or hold it up high, so you can't actually see the screen anymore. But that's not a problem. often you can use the volume control keys to fire the shutter as well. And that byte might be more convenient for you because they're on the side of, generally they're on the side of the smartphone. And depending on how you're holding it, it might be a lot easier just to press one of those than fight around trying to find where this little white circle has gone to. So that brings me on to the next idea. So next tip is just to shoot from different angles. And one of the great things about smartphones and where they have a real advantage over more traditional cameras and even mirrorless anywhere where you've got a long lens. The advantage of the smartphone cameras, you can generally get in very close to things. You don't have a lot of thickness to have to worry about. So you can put it inside spaces where you wouldn't be able to fit a mirrorless camera, even quite a small one. It just won't go in there because you're you can pop your smartphone into very narrow gaps and take unusual views of whatever, it might be. So, or you could take pictures of plants by just putting the camera up inside, among the leaves and shooting from there, which is a lot harder to do with a bigger camera. So the fact that you've got something that is physically quite small, quite light, quite thin has definite advantages. And this is I think one of the Most important things to recognize with a smartphone that it can definitely go places where other cameras can't. So do think about that when you are trying out ideas. And this is the big thing, just experiment, try ideas, stick it places you wouldn't normally stick a camera and see what happens. So you can get in really close to things. Generally you can get. They're quite close, focusing. I'm not sure I'd refer to them as macro in the purest sense. But a lot of smartphones will definitely focus very close to the phone itself. So that again is an advantage. You can get in, get some very unusual viewpoints and again look for inspiration, look at someone like Collins, website. So if you, if you do go find that podcast and it was When did that come out? I think that was in September, October in 24, if that helps. But do have a look at that one and there are some links in the description to Collins websites. And there are other people out there as well doing great stuff with smartphones. But you know, go get some inspiration and then amaze yourself with what you managed to produce. also get familiar with the modes. So things like portrait mode, if you are going to play with that, that might give you a blurred background. Now these are obviously specific to the particular cameras, particular smartphones. So I'm just going to talk generally. you might have a professional mode, a pro mode which might give you more manual control. So I definitely recommend experimenting with that particularly with focus and with the effective aperture. So how bright or dark your images are, because you can then start creating images with real atmosphere to them. really going beyond that. What other modes do you have? So that's something I'm going to leave for you to experiment with really. just see what, what you've got. the other, the other thing on just on composition is think about reflections. So again, smartphones, because they're very easy to get down low or in, you know, maybe in places where it'd be difficult to use a larger camera, quite often you can take advantage of things like reflections in a way that might be more difficult with a larger camera setup. the final thing I would say that I do want to recommend you remember is don't get carried away with the zoom. And the reason for that is that what you're looking at on a smartphone camera is digital zoom. And if you don't understand the difference, what we have on regular cameras, I talk about regular cameras, but DSLRs, mirrorless all the, all the, you know, what we traditionally think of as a camera, anything with a zoom has what we call an optical zoom. So it works like binoculars. You know, you've got lenses in there, they basically magnify the image so you effectively get it much closer to it visually. But that's all done using optics. And the reason that that is important is that what you capture is captured on the sensor in the, camera. And with an optical zoom, you're still shooting at full resolution. If that's what you've got set up on the camera, for that, that sensor will provide. So you are using all the pixels and they all make up the final image. And it doesn't matter how you vary the zoom, you're still using all the pixels. That's, optical zoom. When it comes to digital zoom, what you are doing to make the image bigger is you're basically pulling the pixels apart. Try saying that after a couple of drinks. But, yeah, you're basically pulling them apart. and of course when you start to pull them apart, there's nothing in the middle. So you just create this space between the pixels. And the more you zoom in digitally, the further apart each pixel gets from all of the other pixels. So what happens is you start losing resolution. The image becomes much softer. And what started out as a really great cool image when it was very small, once you've expanded it up a bit, and particularly maybe you've tried to put it on a wall or something without, using any specialized software, suddenly the thing looks pretty horrible because there's just no information there. So do minimize your use of zoom. My recommendation is don't use it. what you may well find these days is that, and it's certainly true on my camera when I go into photo mode, and obviously there are a number of modes and I'm not going to go into those, but when I'm in photo mode, I can choose between 0, uh,.5, 1.0, and I think it's 1.5. And what that is doing is selecting. It's actually different cameras, on the. So the different lenses actually have a different camera behind them in a lot of phones. So they're not actually, it's not actually switching lenses specifically, but changing the camera that you're shooting with. And just be aware that the specs might be different. Okay, so this is where it can get a bit confusing because it looks kind of simple when you're looking at the lenses on the back of the camera. but you, definitely in Some cameras, these are different, some smartphones, these are different cameras and the specs are not the same between each one of them. Another thing you can do, of course, is to buy clip on lenses. And that's something that Colin in fact uses a lot of. And it actually gives you quite an effective photography kit that you can stick in your pocket or in a pouch, something like that, rather than what I would traditionally use, what I still use. I need a backpack for it. So that is pretty much everything I think that I wanted to talk about just on some tips. It's just really running through the kind of things you can to think about with smartphones. But remember, they are very versatile and as time goes on they're getting more and more effective. The cameras are really good now as I've said. So it's well worth spending a little time looking at the kind of things that I've just mentioned in this podcast and just trying them out, seeing what happens. And you may well find that your smartphone is capable of producing far better images than you realized. And it may also mean that perhaps that you were thinking of buying a larger camera. And really the smartphone does everything you want to do, at least at this stage in your in your photography. Okay. So I hope you found that useful. And if you have any suggestions, feedback, comments, anything like that, please get in touch. you can comment on the YouTube channel, I, think on the, well it depends where you're listening to this, but please add a comment if you can or send me an email directly. There's a contact form on the website so you can reach me that way and I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Now I just want to say thank you for tuning in and joining me in the wildlife and adventure photography podcast. If you have enjoyed today's episode, please give me a, like a subscribe, maybe tell your friends and and by all means leave a comment. And if there is a subject you would like me to cover in the future, please let me know and I'll be very happy to do my best. So thanks again for joining, me and I look forward to seeing you again next podcast. Bye for now.