Chase Jarvis, a famous photographer, said, "The best camera is the one that's with you." In today's world, the camera that's with you at all times is your smartphone camera.
The good thing is that the smartphone camera has improved exponentially over the years, so you don't have to worry about the image quality. Even mid-range smartphones today come with multiple camera lenses to give you the best possible results.
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We take a look at some of the tricks that will help you take better photos from your smartphone.
Clean your camera lens – This is one of the things that is often overlooked. Your camera lens is prone to catching smudges and fingerprints with day-to-day usage. To avoid your captures from getting blurred or lack details in some areas, it's highly recommended that you clean the camera lens every time before taking a photo. Ideally, you should always use a soft cloth to clean the camera lens and avoid using any tissue papers or rough material.
Enable shooting grid lines – Grid lines are now available as an optional setting for almost every smartphone, iOS or Android. The grid lines show horizontal and vertical reference lines in your camera frame to help you compose a shot better. As a rule of thumb, you want your subject to be placed at one of the points where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect for better composition. To enable them, open the camera app on your Android device and check for grid option in settings, whereas for iOS, head to Settings > camera to enable the grid.
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Use built-in shooting modes – Another function that is often overlooked by smartphone users. Instead of always sticking to the automatic mode, check what camera modes are available on your smartphone. All smartphones offer a portrait mode nowadays to get a blurred background portrait image and a night mode to take better photos in the dark. In addition, a lot of smartphone brands offer dedicated shooting modes for food, macro, documents etc. When shooting a picture, always switch to its dedicated mode to get a better result. Moreover, there are also additional filter options, and AI features not available on your device as well – using those can also make a world of difference in improving your photos.
Focus lock your subject – Have you noticed that even though you had kept your subject in the center of the screen, the resulting image is not as focused as expected? To solve this issue, use the built-in focus lock feature on your smartphone. The majority of users just do a simple tap on the screen to focus on the subject; instead, tap and hold the screen to bring up the focus lockbox, which would ensure your subject is captured correctly. The feature also lets you lock the exposure settings of the image before taking the shot.
Avoid the digital zoom – Do you remember using a pinch to zoom in on your camera to get a closer image of a subject? Today, most smartphones come with a telephoto lens that lets you zoom up to 2x without any issues, but anything above that is digital zoom, and we highly recommend that you avoid using it. With digital zoom, you are not actually zooming to the subject. Instead, the phone is just cropping the camera sensor to make you feel you have zoomed in – this results in images losing details and even getting so much pixelated that they are unusable.
Get Better Apps – The default camera app on your smartphone is great for use, but there are several better camera apps available as well with advanced features. VSCO Cam is our favourite for Android and iPhone for its rich manual controls and built-in image editor. Android users also have the option to use Open Camera or ProCam X that offers advanced manual controls and extra features such as noise reduction, auto-level, configurable volume keys etc.
Utilize your surroundings – Composition is the crucial factor in making your images stand out. Learning how to compose images requires time and practise but to start, you should try to use your surroundings while taking photos. Ensure that you pay attention to where the light is coming from to avoid overexposing or underexposing your image. Try to place the phone on a flat surface around you while taking photos to minimize the blur caused due to the handshake. Last but not least, use contrasting colours between your subject and your surroundings to make the subject stand out. With these simple tricks, you will notice your photos will look a lot better than before.
Use Third-party accessories – There are many third-party accessories now available that can help you improve your photos. You can get ring lights to improve lighting for your subject and yourself when taking selfies. Remote shutters and tripods are great if you want to get group selfies, as well as if you're going to try long-exposure photography. You can get a handheld gimbal such as the DJI Osmo Mobile that works great with most smartphones for recording videos.
Karan Bajaj is a senior tech journalist based in Delhi
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