How to get amazing photographs from mobile: Mobile Photography tips
Digital cameras has their fan base from a very long time. The craze and level of photography has increased since the introduction of DSLRs and now is gradually evolving towards mirrorless cameras. But with this evolving technology, mobile phones are also providing great features in their camera. Through this blog, I am gonna share few such mobile camera features and their uses, that you might didn’t knew till now, so that you can capture images from your phone “like a pro”. After all, everybody loves to click photographs. Isn’t it?
- Always Clean Your Lens: The most basic thing we should do before shooting anything is to clean the lens. Believe me, this might have sound silly but not cleaning the camera lens of your phone may reduce the image quality of your photograph. Use any cloth made of soft material and use it to clean your lenses.
- Always use grid feature: You might have been familiar with ‘grids’. They are basically a structure made of a series of intersecting straight lines. These lines help you to frame your subject in a better way. There’s a rule related to composition using grid lines called “Rule of Thirds”. The basic principle of rule of thirds is to divide an image evenly into thirds, both horizontally and vertically, and the subject of the image is placed at the point of intersection of those dividing lines. or along the lines itself. Let me explain this by giving you an example —
Here, the subject is placed on the intersecting points instead of placing it in centre. This makes this image more attractive to the viewers.
3. Avoid using flash: While shooting at night or dark, most of us use the mobile flash which I personally think should be avoided. The reason is simple. The flash fired from the phone will give you hard light which is not a very good thing. Even while capturing a portrait, the use of flash will result in flat photo which is not recommended. (specially in portraits) In addition to this, it might also create red-eye effect in the eyes of your subject. If you need to use flash, try to use flashlight of another phone so that you can get various options of angles to use the flash.
4. Use Burst Mode: You might have tried to shoot something which is very fast in motion (for eg. Splashing water or lightning in sky). We can’t be freezed by capturing in a normal way. Burst mode helps you to capture such shots. This feature allows us to shoot multiple shots continuously in a fraction of second. In most of the mobile phones, all you have to do is tap and hold the shutter release button and the burst mode will start its functioning.
I captured this shot by using the burst mode of my mobile camera. It would not be possible to capture this shot if I just simply clicked on the shutter button.
5. Avoid Zooming In (Digitally): If you use the feature of zooming in digitally (by pinching in the mobile screen), stop it right now, to get the sharp and detailed photo. Digital zooming reduces the pixel count in your image which results in low quality photograph. Although, many cameras nowadays has dual, triple and quad cams which allows the feature of optical zooming 2x. The optical zooming is different from digital zooming. It uses the other camera (instead of primary camera) to zooming in. So if you have the feature of optical zooming, use that. If, unavailable, get closer to your subject and avoid zooming in digitally.
6. Use pro/manual mode at night: You must’ve been aware of exposure triangle from my previous blog. If you haven”t read it yet, “Basics of Camera” tap on this emphasised link and it give it a read. The results you get after shooting normally at night are always grainy because of the high ISO value used by auto mode. To get better results at night, use manual mode which allows you to control the exposure triangle. Use this mode, practice it, and you’ll notice the difference.
7. Panorama: This is one of my favorite mode in mobile cameras. This feature allows you to shoot wide angle shots with full details in it. One can also shoot some creative shots using this feature. To take a panoramic photo, open your phone’s camera and put it in pano mode. Hold the phone vertically for a horizontal panorama, or horizontally for a vertical panorama,and slowly start to pan your phone to the specific direction.
8. HDR Effect: HDR basically means “High Dynamic Range”. This feature helps you to overcome such situations where your subject (be it a building) is dark and the background is over-exposed. HDR mode actually gives you a result after compiling three photos together. First image taken is underexposed, second image taken is balanced and the third image taken is overexposed. HDR mode will combine these images and adds the exposure, highlights, shadows and contrast in an image accordingly to give you the well and detailed results.
9. Tap & Shoot: Before shooting anything, always tap on the screen and adjust the focus on your subject. This will help you get the balanced exposure and sharpen details in your image.
10. Bokeh: How to get blur effect from mobile? This is the most basic question asked by the people. Bokeh works on the factor of aperture and depth of field which I’ve already explained in one of my previous blog. To get the blur effect from mobile phones, first tap and focus on your subject. Secondly, choose the angle from where you can get a great distance between your subject and background. Finally, try to get closer to the subject and then capture the image. You’ll notice the difference in blur effect.
I hope, these few tricks would definitely help you to get some pro images from using your mobile phones. After all, it’s all about who is behind the camera.
Thanks for reading!
