Take Better Pictures Through Your Smartphone With These 10 Simple Tips

Cropping

Many smartphone camera offers a wide digital zoom functions, but we love it when our camera zooms into everything. Even in the liveview preview, you'll be able to see how noticeably your images degrade the second you start to "zoom." The camera is simply extrapolating what's already there and basically guessing what the image looks like.When you're cropping, however, you're actually just sampling pixel info that was actually recorded. Many smartphones have 8-megapixels of resolution and sometimes more which means you can crop substantially and still have plenty of resolution left for display for the web. And the lack of gross upscaling artifacts will help mask the fact that it was taken with a phone.

No Filters

If you want your images to turn out to be unique, the last thing you should do is paint them with the same filters that literally millions of other people are using. Editing helps you give the image a better touch and makes it look amazing without using ready made filters. You can play around with contrast, brightness and saturation which is tha basics of filters. Using Pixlr, photoshops and other editing softwares your picture can be unique definately.

Blur

Depth of field shall always be one of the biggest challenges for a smartphone camera. Wide angle lenses and tiny sensors make any substantial background blur which is difficult to achieve. First, blur added with an editing app is usually applied uniformly across most of the frame. That's not the way a lens works, so it looks unnatural. Second, it's hard to be precise when selecting the object you want in focus so you can end up with harsh transitions from sharp to blurry. If you want the viewer to focus on one specific thing, make it the central object in the frame. Try to keep your backgrounds as simple as possible.

Camera App

This is more applicable for iPhone users than Android users. There are a couple of standard choices in this category and any of them will treat you better than the stock camera app.Camera Awesome is a good app because it allows you to shoot in bursts and separates the AF lock from the exposure lock.In other suggested apps would be Camera+ which has similar options for more controlled shooting. It seems silly to take out your phone and practice taking pictures, but you'll be glad you did it if you manage to catch a great shot while others are still flipping through pages of apps or trying to turn off their flash.

Less flash

The problem with many smartphone flashes is that they don't actually flash properly. They're glorified LED flashlights, which are not ready for professional photography. They are bright, but the color temperature can be gross and they miss one of the primary duties of a strobe: freezing the action in the frame. The actual "flash" duration is much too long, so you end up with an image that's both blurry and terribly-lit.

Lens Cleaning

Your pocket is not a clean place, and the dust particles that lives within loves to glom onto your smartphone camera lens. Which results in hazy images & dark images that won't look good no matter how many retro filters you apply on them. The lenses are now remarkably tough, so giving them a quick wipe with a soft cloth can't hurt. Once in a while, it's worth the effort to break out the lens cleaning solution and really get the grime off of it. It may not look dirty and you might not even notice it in your photos, but often a deep clean will make a difference.

Lens Flare

Adding lens flare is another trend in mobile photography right now that's getting more and more exposure by the minute. But, this one method can actually work for you if you do it the natural way. The tiny lenses are often more prone to immense light effects than their full-sized counterparts, so you can really play it up if you want to. If you want to control the flare in your shot, move the sun around in the frame. As you get closer to the edge, you'll often see the flare spread out and become more prominent. You can also cup your hand around the lens in order to make a DIY lens hood, which will cut down on the amount of flare if the light source happens to be out to the side of the frame. It may even be able to get rid of it all together.

Photographs

There's a difference that exists between digital and analog photography. Many photo enthusiasts barely make prints anymore. Putting photos to paper makes them tangible and take away some of the assumptions people often make when looking at photos online. Chances are, if the photo is good, you'll get the whole "you took this with your phone?" reaction that you're looking for.

Photography

This is by far the most important suggestion of all. The rules for taking a good picture don't change when you switch between cameras. Just because the camera can also make calls, doesn't mean you should ignore everything you know about balanced composition and expressive lighting. You need to keep the rule of thirds or golden ratio layover on your screen at all times to help remind you, certainly turn it on.

Close shot

Many cell phone cameras, especially the iPhone, really starts to shine when you bring them in close to your subject. The small sensor provides a relatively wide depth of field so you can get entire objects in focus where cameras with bigger sensors and longer lenses would have trouble. When getting close, you can also usually have more control over the lighting of your subject.