5 Secret Tips How To Make Great Photos with Smartphones

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Nowadays every person is a photographer. We make more photos than ever, but most of these images are not made by digital cameras. Smartphones dominate photo shooting today.  Now only Instragram service gets more than 200 images per second!

And it is not so important what you shoot, it is more important than how you do it. We'll give a few guidelines that will help to make a great shots using your smartphone camera. Surely, these tips will be useful for shooting with any budget digicam as well.

1. Beware Rear Light

It is good advice for shooting with any camera, but the smartphone camera due to modest (usually) size of the matrix is particularly sensitive to poor lighting. So, be sure that there is enough light in the room.

The light source should be behind the photographer. Otherwise, the image will be only a dark shadow. In some cases, this technique may be part of the photographer’s artistic intent, but in most cases it is a mistake.

2.  Install additional software

Despite the fact that the software which is built in the smartphone provides a minimally adequate functionality, third party software may provide for much more interesting results. There are lots of mobile apps developed specially for Android, iOS, and WinPhone devices to make photos outstanding. 

3. Adjust the focus and exposure

Smartphone makes automatic intellectual focus when you press the shutter button, but you can additionally make sure that the focus is done correctly and in the right place just by clicking on the desired item on the screen. This is important not only because the focus will be set in the right place, but also because the exposure will be adjusted depending on the space frame.

4. Use additional lens

Almost every smartphone has a fixed focal length, which means that it is virtually impossible to zoom the picture, as it is usually done in most digital cameras.

The creative possibilities can be expanded by attaching  extra lens to the back of the smartphone. There are both wide-angle lens and photo lenses. Of course, it will look a little weird, but not more than, for example, taking pictures with a 10-inch tablet. By the way, extra lenses for smartphones are becoming more and more popular.

5. Turn off the flash

Haphazard use of flash gives a too aggressive light in the frame. To get good results in low light without using a flash is necessary to increase the ISO in the camera settings (if it is possible) or use the High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode.

HDR mode usually combines several photographs taken with different exposures, so the pictures in this mode have a much deeper dynamic tone range. But, many smartphones only simulate HDR effect without making several photos. Nevertheless, it may be preferable in low light conditions than the use of flash.