9 tips for taking better smartphone photos

Use these handy smartphone photography tips to take awesome pictures with your camera phone.

GET CLOSE

Most amateur photographers don’t get close enough to the subject. Do you really need to see the whole body of the person you’re photographing, or would a waist-up shot showing more detail be better?

ZOOM WITH YOUR FEET

Avoid the so-called digital zoom, which just lowers the resolution of your picture. If you want more detail, walk closer to your subject.

REMEMBER HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL

Use the smartphone either horizontally or vertically as it best suits the subject. Horizontals work well for scenics, and verticals work well for portraits.

GO FOR EVEN LIGHT

Avoid having bright sunlight and deep shade in the frame. If you’re shooting in the shade, try to have everything in the frame in shade. Some phones have a High Dynamic Range feature, which helps with wide lighting differences. If your phone has such a feature, explore it for more shadow and highlight details.

WINDOW LIGHTING

For pleasing portraits, use window light, but don’t include the window in the frame. Shoot along the window. This works even better if it doesn’t have direct sun, such as a north-facing window. The light will be softer and better for portraits.

BE STEADY

Rest your camera on stable objects. Hold a hiking stick in one hand and place your smartphone on that arm or use an object such as a rock or fence post. Look around; usually you can find a stable support. Also, click here for a BL Workshop article for how to build a camera-phone stabilizer.

USE BUTTONS

For the iPhone camera app, use the volume control buttons as shutter releases. Holding a button down will take sequence pictures. This is more convenient than poking the screen, and it keeps the phone steadier too.

LOOK FOR CANDID PICTURES

Don’t just take selfies or posed shots.

EDIT YOUR PHOTOS

There are countless apps for modifying your image to create a better dynamic range, color balance and saturation, etc. Many pro photographers use several apps to achieve an effect. Start with exposure correction (lighter or darker), and then adjust saturation (color intensity). Many apps have filters to vary the color scheme or convert to black and white, etc.

Instagram lets you crop and scale the image, process it with filters and share it on various social media websites. Check out Tadaa HD Pro Camera as an app with similar features.

CAMERA-PHONE LIMITATIONS

• Smartphones are not great for action photography. Compared to digital cameras with interchangeable lenses or point-and-shoot cameras, they are much slower to operate and more cumbersome to control.

• Camera phones have very small sensors compared to larger cameras and are not as sensitive to light.

• Smartphones are slower in focus time, so you need to anticipate the picture you want.