I’m sure a lot of regular photographic techniques apply, but what might be some specifics to keep in mind with smartphone cameras in particular?
For example, would camera app choice make much difference, or is stock preferred as being more likely to have the most access to the camera’s hardware/sensors? What are some ways to mitigate or prevent any automatic “improvements” to photos taken via smartphone outside of whatever simple settings stock camera apps may provide?
Regarding that last question, might that be the breaking point where one might prefer a more dedicated camera over a smartphone’s camera?
The way I see it, there are three main differences to be aware of:
- What can be done with the camera?
- What is easy to do?
- How much control do you have?
It’s always important to just look at the target, assess the situation and think what can be done with it. Experience plays a big role in this, and the best way to gain experience is to try anything and everything. Go out in the woods and don’t come back until you’ve taken at least 100 photos. Play around with all the settings you can find, and see what works and what doesn’t.
If you can correctly identify the possibilities, you can get stunning photos, no matter where you are what equipment you have with you. In some situations, there might only be one or two easy photo opportunities and a hundred difficult ones. Instead of struggling with the hard photos, go snap the two easy ones and move on.
Occasionally, its also good to reach for the moon, but doing that all the time will be frustrating and can kill the joy of photography. Hitting a wall like that is important experience for you, so that you’ll know to avoid those situations in the future.
The software on the phone has been specifically designed for taking pictures of people in parties and family gatherings. If that’s what you mainly do with the camera, just about any mobile phone should serve you well.
Aperture is the biggest problem with mobile phones, so don’t focus on situations that demand you to control it. Usually, you’ll have deeper DOF than you really want so try to focus on situations where that is a benefit.
Zooming is problem too, so don’t worry about the bird sitting on the top of a tree across the road. Instead, try to find something interesting a bit closer by.
Long exposure night photography is the breaking point for me. On a mobile phone it’s difficult or even impossible to take the kinds of night photos I want.
Thanks! Trying to get a better sense of working within the constraints of smartphone cameras to learn when or if I might want to move on to a dedicated camera is why I was asking this, and I think your points have helped get a better sense of some of the constraints to take into account. Appreciate it!
Glad I could help.
I found some exmaple photos of super shallow DOF and the effect of aperture size in night photography. Doing this sort of magical stuff requires inconveniently heavy and expensive hardware upgrades. If you happen to like architecture, you’re absolutely going to need a tilt-shift lens. You can also use those lenses to make a real scenery appear as if it’s from a scale model. Nowadays you can also find lots of photos where that effect has been faked in post, but a tilt shift lens will be able to do it for real. Also, the fake versions don’t take distance into account and might blur the wrong parts of the photo for that sexy miniature look.
If you already know you don’t care about bizarre photos like that or if you know that carrying heavy equipment isn’t your thing, then going with a nice point and shoot camera will open up several new possibilities too. For example, having the ability to control depth of field even a little bit is incredibly valuavble in many situations.
I think the app can make a different, but not always. I used to have like 5 different camera apps because each did something a little different. Ultimately, it’s you and the phone that matter. Some phones will take shitty photos no matter what you do. Some people take shitty photos no matter what they do. The more you know how your gear works and where it falls short and where it excels, the better your photos will be. And do some post processing: never accept something without giving it some polish.
I like the app “Camera FV-5”. It allows you to basically have all settings manual, giving you a lot of control. And yes, it is a paid app.
For my phone using the expert raw app from Samsung let’s me have access to a lot more settings plus being able to save raw images for editing a bit later if I wanted
