Don’t just whip out your camera and start clicking.
Even the most straight-up documentary photos can’t replicate the experience of being there. It’s always about selecting some aspect of the world and calling attention to it.
Composition & Framing
What’s the important thing here, the subject? What do you want to emphasize?
And what do you want to de-emphasize?
How can you best present the subject?
Don’t just stand there with the camera at eye level and the subject facing you
Or at least don’t always do that…
Try getting down on the ground
Or up on a ledge
Off to one side
Really close
Far away
Think about where in the frame you’re putting the subject
It doesn’t have to be smack in the middle
But it (generally) shouldn’t be jammed into a corner
The viewer should know what the subject is when they see the photo
Do you want portrait, landscape, or square?
This is mostly a matter of fitting the subject into the frame with the minimum amount of clutter and distraction.
You generally want to devote most of the frame to your subject.
A landscape shot of a tall tree is going to have a lot of not-the-tree in the frame…
A portrait shot of the ocean will have a ton of sand and/or sky.
Look for distractions
Stuff that might take away from the subject or the statement you’re trying to make.
The eye tends to filter out distractions in real life, but in a photo they become glaring problems.
At the simplest level, photography works better with more light
In low light you have to sacrifice something
Either you make the sensor more sensitive
This is “Higher ISO”
And it gets you a duller, less saturated, and grainier photo
Or you take a longer exposure
This blurs anything moving in the shot
And means that camera shake will blur the image
Your phone juggles the ISO and exposure time according to its whims and desires, but the end result is that as you decrease the amount of light you start to make compromises. Eventually you get down to “potato quality”
If you get a Real Camera you’ll need to learn about “The Exposure Triangle”, but as of 2023 cellphones don’t have variable aperture lenses so it doesn’t really apply.
You (generally) can’t have very bright and very dark areas without losing detail in one (or both).
Unless you are specifically doing it for the effect the resulting photo will look “off”.
Because the eye rapidly adjusts light sensitivity when looking at different parts of a real scene, what looks fine in real life can be jarring in a photo.
This is an area where phone cameras are better, since they often do on-the-fly HDR. They take two or three shots in quick succession, one exposed for the shadows, one for the highlights, and then merge them.
Basic rules-of-thumb for low light
You can’t photograph anything fast moving in less than full sunlight
Any indoor photography is harder than outdoor daytime photography
Night photography requires a steady hand and a static subject
Close-up photos in direct sunlight tend to look washed out and harsh
Indirect light or moderate shade is better
For wide-angle shots this is much less of an issue
Low light shots tend to look brown and dingy
You’ll want to adjust light balance or “warmth” when editing.
It’s hard to get a good shot using the flash on a cellphone
Very harsh light for close-up shots
Too weak for much more than halfway across the room
To be fair, flash photography requires actual skill even with good equipment.
You can (usually) exercise some manual control on exposure
The easy way is to tap the screen on the part of the scene you want exposed correctly. This also focuses on that spot, which is usually what you want…
There may also be some way to lock the tap-for-focus-and-exposure point so that you can re-center the composition elsewhere.
Often there’s an optional on-screen slider for exposure if you want to get more creative.
None of this is exactly quick and intuitive, so you’re at the mercy of the automatic stuff for anything that’s not sitting still.
Focus & Depth of Field
This is one of the most important aspects of Real Camera photography
All those pretty photos where everything but the subject is blurred out.
But it’s mostly out of your control on a phone
Phone cameras don’t (as of 2023) have variable aperture, so you can’t really control depth of field
Phones are pretty aggressive about autofocus
You can direct where in the frame the camera focuses by tapping the screen
Useful for “this flower here, not that car across the street”
The camera will also adjust exposure for the spot you’re focusing on.
Beyond that you need to be crafty about working with the limitations
If you focus on something really close to the camera (4" to 10") then the background (> 24") will be pleasantly out of focus.
If you focus on something at “infinity” (e.g. across the street) then stuff close to the camera will be blurry.
But probably not “professional photo” blurry
These effects are usually more pronounced when using the telephoto lens on your phone.
Though be aware that the phone might decide to overrule you and actually use a different lens and do digital cropping. The phone knows best, and you must obey.
Avoid AI “portrait” filters
The effect is often ham-handed and obvious
You’ll get more long-term value out of learning to use the camera, rather than the AI crutch.
Actually Taking the Shot
Wipe off the lens
Crud on the lens makes for a cruddy shot. Wipe it on your shirt or something.
Use tap-to-focus
Most cellphone cameras will focus on the point where you tap the screen. This can be really valuable when you’re doing close-up shots (e.g. flowers) or when the camera insists on paying attention to something you don’t want.
Hold the phone steady
Be smooth
Don’t jerk or twitch when you hit the shutter button
Volume button as shutter
Most phones have an option to use the physical volume buttons to trigger the shutter.
This makes it much easier to shoot one-handed
Great when you’re wearing gloves.
Note that it’s sometimes difficult to push the button w/o moving the phone.
Editing
You don’t walk up to something, take a single photo, print it out, and hang it in a gallery.
Photography is an iterative process
You’re probably going to take several shots of any given subject.
Choose among them to select the best one
And then edit it to achieve the look you’re going for
Editing is actually two processes…
Culling / selection / grading
In most cases you’ll be taking more than one photo of a given subject.
Then you go through the shots and winnow them down until you’ve got one or two that look to be worth keeping.
I like to make two passes
First pass you throw out the obviously bad shots (blurry, bad framing, bad light, etc.)
Second pass you decide which of the non-terrible shots is actually good enough to maybe print / post / send to your mom
On the phone I trash rejects until there are two left and then swipe back and forth between them and pick one.
When you’re using a real camera and editing on the desktop you’ll develop a more complex process
Sometimes none of the shots are any good
Then you get to decide if it’s worth trying to salvage the best of the bad, or give up on that shot.
Editing individual images
Your initial goal should be to make your photos look great, but still very natural and un-processed
Once you can do that reliably you can start to experiment with a “look”.
Stop using “filters”
At least until you can replicate the effect with the manual adjustments.
You need to understand how to control the appearance of your photos
Crop, resize, and level
Crop out distracting elements
Change the aspect ratio to better emphasize your subject
Fix tilted shots so buildings and trees are vertical & the horizon is horizontal.
You can do a certain amount of “digital zoom” here, but don’t get overzealous. Anything past about 3X and your photo starts to look like an abstract painting.
Adjust the sliders
Play around with all of them
If you can’t figure out what one of them does, dial it all the way to the extremes
And then dial it back to something reasonable
Brightness, contrast, and saturation are the best ones to start with
In 90% of the cases you shouldn’t be adjusting any of them more than 10% away from the baseline
The further you go the more your photo looks like something out of an ad for Instagram
When the original shot was taken in poor conditions you may have to get pretty heavy-handed to get it looking reasonable.
Don’t be afraid to discard your edits and start over
It’s easy to get carried away
Or to get the photo “in a state”
Once you’re comfortable with editing, you can start the process by using the “Enhance” (Android) or “Auto” (iPhone) filter
This will auto-adjust the sliders to something “pretty good”
Then you can tweak the sliders further to get the edit you want
I usually add a bit of contrast and dial back some of the color adjustments, your tastes will probably be different
Why not buy a “Real Camera”?
You already have an excellent camera in your pocket
Any iPhone or high-end Android made after 2018 has a phenomenal camera
In most ways superior to any 20th century camera costing less than several thousand dollars
And in many ways as good or better than any “real camera” you can buy today
In most situations a Real Camera will produce significantly worse photos than a good cellphone
It takes real skill and practice to get good results from a camera
For indoor (and especially nighttime) shots of people and pets the phone is superior to any Real Camera wielded by a non-professional photographer.
You don’t understand composition, light, focus, and a dozen other concepts
You don’t know what you want out of a camera
You don’t know how to use a camera
You’ll appreciate the real camera a LOT more once you understand photography.
Real Cameras have a steep learning curve
It’s easier to learn fundamentals with a (relatively) simple device like a cellphone camera.
A Real Camera is a nightmare of knobs, buttons, menus and settings. It takes a lot of time and effort to get comfortable with one. That’s time you won’t be spending learning the important basics.
If you’re trying to learn everything about photography at once it’s going to be a hard slog.
The one exception to this rule is if you are positive that what you want to do is take photos of birds in the wild
That really does require something more specialized than a cellphone
BUT it also requires a lot of skill and experience, so don’t expect that you’ll get anything good even if you do buy a nice camera and a big “birding” lens.
I had several years of photography experience, along with a camera / lens combo considered quite good for birding, and despite many hours of trying, I got a whole lot of nothing good…
If you’re going to leave your Real Camera in “Auto” mode just stick with the cellphone.
The phone’s Auto mode has 100X the brainpower of any Real Camera.
I’m in the market for a new cellphone, what camera features should I look for?
Any high-end phone should be pretty good.
iPhone
Google Pixel
Samsung Galaxy S
Other Android “flagship phones”
You’ll want at least a “telephoto” lens and a “wide” or “main” lens
Phones with only one lens always have a wide lens, which isn’t very good for getting detailed shots of anything more than ten feet away.
The usual 3X - 5X telephoto lens isn’t very “tele” by real camera standards, but it gives you a LOT more choice in how you frame and compose your shots.
Telephoto lets you take good portraits of people without having to get right up in their face.
You probably need a three-lens phone, since most two-lens phones have a “super wide” lens. IMHO this is mostly useful for large group shots, and occasionally for landscapes.
It certainly doesn’t hurt to get the “Ultra” or “Pro” level phone.
They generally have more and/or better cameras
Enhanced macro (close up) capability
Multiple telephoto lenses
Better resolution (means you can crop down w/o sacrificing as much detail)
The trade off is these phones are bigger, heavier, and more expensive.
When will I be ready to buy a Real Camera?
When you repeatedly bump into situations where you understand why and how the phone is incapable of producing the photo you have in mind.
For a few kinds of very specialized photography (e.g. birding) this happens quickly.
For others, like traditional street photography, it may never really happen.
For most people it’s likely to take months or years, depending on how much time and energy you devote to learning.
Once you have a good background in photography you’ll be able to pick a camera that will suit your needs.
You only get to buy your first Real Camera once, so make it count
If you buy a camera early in your journey it’s likely you’ll end up wanting to trade it in once you learn more.