Camera Phone Tips

Darren writes "It is getting hard to find a cell phone WITHOUT a camera in it - as a result millions are flooding the internet through moblogs with camera phone images - many of which are poor quality. I'm sick of seeing poor quality camera phone images being posted to moblogs and so have collected a series of camera phone tips and links that will hopefully help us all improve our camera phone images."

Comments

Want high-quality? Get a real camera!

[LaserLyte]

It's always nice to see a photo of some random cat or an interestingly shaped rock from another continent. :)

The tips on the site seemed pretty obvious to me...get close, increase resolution, don't use digital zoom... the site even states they are obvious. From my brief look at the other linked sites, it looks like there are a few slightly more interesting points, but also a lot of repetition (between the sites).

I think if anyone is a budding photographer, interested in building a gallery on their site, they should get ahold of a "real" digital camera (a device whose primary function is as such). It seems to me that people running "moblogs" aren't going to be too bothered about having high-quality photos anyway.

Lint

[tttonyyy]

I know so many people that just shove the phone in their pockets, then wonder why their lint-filled aperture gives them crappy results. Great for sending a quick pic to your mates, but not for anything else. Quality digital cameras they are not.

Too many features,

[orion41us]

If I wanted a PDA, I would get a Palm or PocketPC, If I wanted a digital camera I would get a Olympus or Kodak, How about just a plain phone where the battery actually works through the day and does not cut out every time you order Chinese takeout?

Re:Select the camera with most pixels

[DrEldarion]

Just because a picture is bigger doesn't necessarily mean it's better quality.

I'd much rather have a 1024x768 picture that was good quality than a 1600x1200 picture with image flaws.

This is true of most technology

[spidergoat2]

I really doesn't matter if it's a cell phone or not. People will go out and drop $1000 on a video camera, but won't spend $15 on a book about how to properly film a subject. People will spend $1000 or more on a PC, but again, won't drop $15 on a book about how to use it. I don't think that it matters if it's a table saw or a gun, most folks won't spend the tiome to learn how to use it correctly.

Re:Select the camera with most pixels

[babbage]

There's more to it than that though. The cheap plastic lens on these phones isn't really capable of taking high quality photos, even if you had a high megapixel system behind the lens. This becomes especially true after the thing rattles around in your pocket for a while and you get lint, sand, fingerprints, etc on it.

Another poster had it right: if you want good photos, get a good camera. If you're not worried about being the next Ansel Adams, use your camera phone.

The beauty of camera phones isn't that the picture quality is worth a damn -- it isn't. The great thing is that you always have the thing with you, so if something interesting happens you've got the ability to capture it on the spot without having to run home for your Nikon, by which time the moment will inevitably have passed.

If you want spontaneous pictures that are also of high quality, lug around a nice Nikon SLR -- the D70 looks fantastic. If on the other hand you'd rather not lug around an expensive camera body and a bag full of delicate lenses all the time, then the Lo-Fi, cheap-o camera on modern phones or PDAs can do in a pinch.

But don't bother mixing the two -- I can't imagine wanting to carry around a phone that doubled as a high megapixel camera. Think about it: the image sizes will be far too big to send to other camera phone users, which is a big part of the appeal with camera phones. You could have some kind of removable media, but at that point you have a crappy, expensive camera-phone hybrid that is cumbersome as a phone and inept as a camera. Why bother?

******

Composition, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the image. Look at the ways movies & magazines do photography, and copy what they do. Random examples off the top of my head:

• If a photo is of a person, fill up the image with the person. Don't stand 15 feet away so that the person is just this little vague sliver down the middle of the frame -- get close, or zoom in! With traditional SLRs, my favorite lens for portrait photos is 105mm, which is roughly a 2x zoom. This is nice, because you can stand several feet away from your subject (which generally allows the person to relax & look more natural), but you still get a nice close-up effect that looks really good.
• If the photo is of a person, center the whole person in the image. That is to say, don't make the standard snapshot error of putting the face in the middle, then the torso (and maybe feet) at the middle of the frame, and then have the top half of the photo filled with ceiling or sky. If you want a picture of something in the background, then get what you want of that background into the frame and then find an interesting place for the people to get in front of it; on the other hand, if the picture is of the people and not the background, then don't give 70% of the frame to the background!
• Be aware of, but not necessarily a slave to, the rule of thirds. For those not familiar with it, the idea isn't very complicated: if you imagine a 3x3 "tic tac toe" grid over your composition, then you end up with a box in the center of your image. The rule of thumb is that the "interesting" bits of the image should be aligned with one or more of the edges of this center box. For example, if you're taking a picture of the horizon, don't put the horizon exactly across the middle of the frame; if you want to emphasize the sky a little, put the horizon along the bottom third of the photo, while if you want to emphasize what's going on on the ground, put the horizon along the top third of the photo. Likewise, shifting the subject of the photo from the center to the left or right thirds often makes a photo more interesting.
• As a corollary to the rule of thirds, when taking portrait shots, never ever put the person's face right in the middle of the image. It's boring & unflattering. It has lon

Re:My tips

[mysticgoat]

Don't be afraid to throw away the crap ones

YES!

The biggest improvement an amateur photographer can make is a simple matter of self-discipline:

Throw away 8 of every 10 photos you take, before showing them to anyone.

There are many reasons why this works. If you adopt this practice now, by the end of the summer you'll have discovered several of those reasons on your own. You'll also have taken many more pictures than you would have otherwise, yet have fewer to show for it. OTOH, you'll start getting more compliments on your work.

Later on, if you decide you like this and want to go to the next level, you can start reading about digital photography and throwing away at least 9 of every 10 shots.