How To Take Great Pictures With Your Cell Phone
What's the secret to taking great pictures with your smartphone, then? As it turns out, there are a few of them. Check out these tips below to improve your smartphone photography game. (And once you have the photo-taking part down, check out some of the best photo editing apps for mobile.)
How To Take Great Pictures With Your Cell Phone
Today's phone cameras automatically focus on the foreground of your frame, but not every picture you take on your phone has an obvious subject. To adjust where you want your camera lens to focus, open your camera app and tap the screen where you want to sharpen the view.
Mobile tripods give you the freedom to mount your smartphone for quick hands-free shots without lugging any heavy equipment with you. Most mobile tripods are barely bigger than your mobile device and can bend to any angle. Learn how these miniature tripods can help enhance your mobile video experience below.
Your phone is usually in your pocket or your bag when you're out of the house. All the while, the device's camera lens is collecting all kinds of dust and lint. Be sure to clean this lens with a soft handkerchief before taking a photo. You might not be able to tell just how dirty the lens was until you start editing your picture, and making sure the lens is crystal clear before taking a shot can keep you from starting from scratch.
This also makes your phone your take-everywhere, shoot-anything digital camera. Just a few short years ago, making images and video with smartphones was a compromise, with poorer image quality but a heck of a lot more convenience than a good point-and-shoot camera.
Check out these tips to get the best images you can get from your phone. But remember, even with the latest tech, phones aren't as versatile imaging tools as modern interchangeable lens cameras. An iPhone 14 is better than a basic point-and-shoot, but not as versatile as a full-frame camera.
Smartphones are incredibly lightweight devices and, folding phones aside, are thin for a better fit your pocket than most dedicated cameras. That's good news for portability, but it's hard to hold a featherweight phone steady, and it takes some care to keep its lens plum and parallel to your subject. You'll also want to be careful to keep your finger out of the shot, especially when using your phone's wide-angle lens.
It's not all about images. Basic compact cameras are stuck at 1080p, but if you've got a recent flagship smartphone you have a 4K-capable video camera in your pocket. Flagship models include optical image stabilization, but that can only go so far. If you want truly smooth, great-looking video, think about a powered gimbal to keep your phone steady. Our favorite is the DJI Osmo Mobile 6, a $160 device that steadies video, can track moving subjects, and also supports time-lapse and panoramic stitching.
Whether it is a random, spur-of-the-moment snapshot or well-thought-out compositions, a camera phone is a valuable tool for photography. Often, the most inspiring pictures occur in everyday life when you do not have a standard camera with you. The phone that you are carrying in your pocket can capture those impromptu photo moments when it's impractical or even impossible to have your SLR or other camera with you at all times.
Of course, there is more to cell phone photography than just pressing the big round button and letting the camera make all of the decisions for you. One of the biggest things you can do to immediately improve most photos taken with your phone is to tell it where to meter. Here you can see the default exposure for this scene:
When you see AE/AF Lock, your phone has locked the focus and exposure and you can take multiple images without the settings changing. To return the focus and metering back to normal, simply touch anywhere on the screen again.
In this section, I want to go over how you can edit photos with different apps on your phone. Of course, you can always import photos from your phone onto your computer and edit them with your software of choice, but if you plan to share images on social media and want to upload them directly from your phone, you can save a few steps by doing everything on your phone.
Non-Destructive Editing: One very important thing to note is that many apps like VSCO and Lightroom Mobile are non-destructive editing tools. The edits you make in them do not actually alter your original image. On the other hand, if you edit your image with the default editing app, chances are your original image will actually be altered. On my phone, the edits made with the default app are saved and can be reverted, but this might not be the case on all phone models. As a rule of thumb, if you have to import your image into the app, it should be non-destructive.
About iphone7 image quality. It looks strange but in my opinion the quality from iPhone 5 or 6s to iPhone 7 drops dramatically. I compared face to face the same shot that I took from iPhone 5, iPhone 6s and iphone7. The iphone7 images look always like watercolour (especially if you shot in low light) and unnatural. The best picture comes from iPhone 6s with great resolution, details and pleasing without strong NR that flat the image. This is unbelievable how I was disappointed after I bought new iphone7 and discovered this issue. I tried several iphone7 from a friend of mine and all of them have the same bad quality. When I made the comparison between different iPhone no one of my friends can believe that the shot was took with iphone7. Have you faced with this silimar issue?
Dear Matthias My experience has been close to yours. Lumia 64 then iPhone 6+ and Huwai 9 for its B&W performances. But when it is low light or fast action it is back to d810 or Summilx. The good thing is that your telephone is with you all the time. Be well
Controlling the lighting is key when learning how to take product photos with an iPhone or Android. Bounce boards help minimize strong shadows and create a more balanced lighting environment to bring out the finest details of your product. You can buy a white bounce board made of foam on Amazon.
Choosing the right editing apps is an important part of mastering product photography with a smartphone. Many come with an in-app editor, but there are plenty of third-party apps that give you everything you need to make your product stand out.
Choosing the right camera app is an important part of the shooting process. Most smartphones come with a serviceable app, but there are third-party apps that offer many of the same manual controls as a DSLR camera that you can use to customize to your needs.
Or you might not want to spend your own precious time editing images when you can get them professionally edited by Pixelz. Post-production is a great opportunity to take advantage of the efficiencies available in our interconnected, technology driven world. Compare retouching features on different Pixelz plans, and integrate with the free Shopify app if you're on Shopify! Here's a quick Shopify app walkthrough if you need it.
Side note: If you're interested in learning more about Lightroom features like Tethered Capture, Presets, and Batch Editing, I collaborated on this guide on how to use Adobe Lightroom for product photography. It goes well with the non-smartphone DIY guide to building your own photo studio.
You can take what you have right now, pictured below, and put it up on your e-commerce website. If you've followed the steps in this blog post and your product is fairly straightforward, it should look great!
Whether you have an iPhone 6, iPhone 7, or newer model, learning how to take good pictures with your iPhone is easy once you understand the mechanics. From burst mode to portrait lighting, iPhones come packed with plenty of useful photography tricks that enable you to take better photos. And while you may not need all the tools that come with the iPhone, understanding the basics can help take your photography to the next level. Key features and tools that come with most recent iPhone models include:
How can you take even better pictures from your Android phone? A great camera is only as good as the person using it. So, it's time to level up your photography skills if you want to take breathtaking shots from your Android phone.
When taking a photo using your smartphone, it is vital to know the light source position. Smartphone cameras can only take a limited amount of light. A lot of light can overwhelm the sensor. It can also throw off their exposure, especially if it is a challenging scene.
That's no longer the case, with most flagship smartphones now featuring a dedicated camera with optical zoom. For example, on the Galaxy S22 Ultra, you get two telephoto sensors with 3x and 10x optical zoom. This means you can zoom into a subject with a minimal impact on image quality. Another benefit of the telephoto sensor is that it lets you take photos with a tighter frame, thereby putting the focus entirely on the subject.
Even if your phone does not have an optical zoom sensor, you can zoom 2x to 3x into a scene without a noticeable change in image quality. That's due to modern smartphones using bigger and higher resolution camera sensors that capture more details.
That's not it, though. You can remove unwanted objects from your photos with Google's Magic Eraser. And if you don't use a Pixel, you'll find plenty of Magic Eraser alternatives you can try on your Android phone.
Place your phone on a steady surface when taking photos in low light or using Night mode. This allows the camera to open its shutter speed for longer by eliminating unwanted jerks and shakes from your hand. In turn, the sensor takes in more light, which should improve the final photo.
Smartphones come with multiple cameras: wide, ultrawide, macro, and telephoto sensors. Don't always shoot a scene using the primary camera. Get innovative with the camera lenses and angles. Ultrawide cameras can fit in a lot more of a scene and can be used to take some breathtaking photos.
Similarly, not every photo needs to be clicked with the subject directly looking into the camera. Flip your phone or bend down a bit to create new angles while taking a picture. The final results could be a lot more dramatic.