Using The Camera in Your Pocket: Tips For Taking Better Photos on a Phone

The best camera is the one that you have with you. For many of us that is the camera on our phones. It may also be the case that you’re a beginner to photography, and don’t own any other camera yet. Practising on a phone is a solid way to learn the fundamentals of photography. 

However, your mobile device has its limitations, no matter how much money you throw at it. This post aims to provide you with some handy advice for grabbing better snaps with your phone’s hole-punch-sized lens. 

Clean the lens

We tend to take far less care of our phone lens than we would with any other camera. Mainly, I’m referring to the fact that we constantly touch the lens(es) with our fingers. That’s a big no-no with actual cameras, so why should it be different with phones?

The grease, dirt and oil left on your phone's camera by your disgusting fingertips can have quite the impact on image quality by reflecting and refracting the light on its way into the lens. 

What this means is that you should clean the darn thing before you take photos for your Instagram or Facebook. You can always use a cotton T-shirt, but the proper way to do it would be a microfiber cloth like the ones that come with the phone or your new screensavers. 

Using pro mode (and holding the phone steady)

Many phones now possess a “pro” mode where you can enter the photo settings manually as if shooting on a real camera. Although it doesn’t give you a very wide ISO range (due to the image processors being smaller than those in an actual camera) or aperture (as there are no moving apertures blades within most phones), the pro mode does often let you go wild with shutter speed. 

Dialling the shutter speed up will let you take the ISO right down, and do what you want with the aperture. The downsides of this are motion blur makes it near impossible to shoot moving subjects and the potential for camera shake. The way we reduce camera shake in photography is by mounting the camera to a tripod or something of the sort, so let’s apply that thinking to phones. 

Now, I’m assuming that you’re not carrying a full-sized tripod when going out with friends. That’s something only I would do. So, we want something pocket-sized. Luckily, you can pick up small tripods that hold your phone, such as the Manfrotto PIXI which is shown below

Manfrotto PIXI Tripod

Work with the light

Only half of photography is about camera gear and settings, the other half is understanding how to use light.

There are ways that you can produce our own light, as well as manipulating the light that exists already, such as reflectors, diffusers and flashes. However, I’m assuming that if you’re not carrying your camera you won‘t be carrying any of these. Therefore, we need to work with what we got. 

In indoor situations, you can use windows as large light sources which, if the subject is close to the window, will produce a relatively soft light. Indoor situations also mean that you can position lights and lamps for light production, as well as blocking certain light out by closing doors and covering windows. 

When exploring the great outdoors, such as when you visit the city with your mates, you can do extraordinary things when you notice the daylight and what shapes it. Phones tend to have much poorer low-light performance compared to actual cameras, so I would highly recommend shooting in the daytime and using natural light, rather than trying to shoot in darker street lighting.

For more information, check out my blog post about Shooting In Harsh Daylight

Focus on composition

Along with careful consideration of how your shot is lit, it is crucial to also consider composition. Composition, quite simply, is what is in your shot and where subjects are placed within the frame. 

There are many “rules” of composition and I’ll be writing more posts in the near future about them. Perhaps the most well known is the rule of thirds, which is the reason that many phone camera apps display a grid over the frame.

I wrote a whole blog post on the Rule of Thirds if you want more information.

Tell stories by focusing on the subject 

The best way to take interesting photos is to take photos of interesting things. With professional cameras, it is possible to make the mundane seem exciting through proper lighting and even editing. However, phones don’t shoot RAW format images, limiting the dynamic range and editing options we have later. 

With phones limiting the technical brilliance we can display in our images, we must get creative. You can use the aforementioned theories of shaping light and considering composition to tell stories in your images. It’s not all about the pixel count and actual image quality, although those things are nice as well. 

A photo that tells a story or captures a specific, important moment is just as powerful whether or not it was shot on a good or bad camera. Storytelling is the even playing field in photography. 

Lens attachments

Whether your phone only has a single lens or multiple, like many newer and higher-end models, external lens attachments can come in handy. In the case of a single-camera phone, the benefit is obvious. These lenses can be used to achieve a wider or narrower focal length on your phone. 

Even for phones with multiple cameras and different focal lengths, there is a benefit. The high resolution that phone manufacturers brag about is often only located behind the standard lens, while the other lenses have subpar quality. With lens adaptors, however, you can apply different focal lengths to the standard lens and get a wide angle or zoom in front of your highest-resolution sensor. 

If you’re interested in buying lens adaptors that work with your phone and webcam, check out the 14mm fisheye, 58mm tele, or 10x Macro lens from Moment.

Moment 14mm Fisheye lens

Moment 58mm lens

Moment 10x Macro lens

Editing

As mentioned, phone images tend to give us far more limited post-processing options than a professional camera's RAW formats. However, making a series of smaller tweaks to the lighting, colours and crop of your images will make them seem much more professional. 

Being an adobe fanboy myself, my recommendations would be the mobile versions of Lightroom and Photoshop, which you can pick up on the app stores.