DIY: Capture great shots with your phone

Bought a shiny new camera-phone? Check out these tips and put them to good use.

One of the reasons people leave their pictures imprisoned in their camera-phones is that they're disappointed with the shots they've taken. The images are too blurry or too washed out, or the perspective is distorted. In detecting details, film cameras and digital cameras are more limited than the human eye and camera-phones, in turn, are more limited than both film and digital cameras. For that reason, you not only need to apply basic photographic principles to get the best-looking pictures possible, you need to be aware of and know how to compensate for your handset's deficiencies.

Framing your shot
The camera-phone is a great way to capture a spontaneous or otherwise unexpected moment. With that in mind, many people attempt to snap a picture without thinking about the composition of the shot. That's the wrong approach if you actually want to display your pictures in some fashion.

• Use the entire frame
  Any photographer will tell you that one of the most basic techniques is to use the whole frame. Many people tend to focus their attention on only the centre of the frame or the main subject of the picture, while ignoring the rest of the scene. When you take the whole frame into account, you pay close attention to objects in the background or on the periphery of the image.
  
  
• Place subjects off-centre
  Another classic rule is to avoid placing the main subject in the centre of the frame. Placing the subject slightly off-centre gives a more interesting sense of space, as you can see in the difference between the two images below.
  
  
  
  

  Slightly off-centre subjects makes this shot more appealing.

Adjusting for lighting conditions
It would be nice if the lighting conditions for taking photographs were always optimal, but that's not the case. Many of those buttons and dials you find on traditional cameras deal specifically with this problem. Unlike 35mm-film cameras or digital cameras with manual settings, however, camera-phones don't offer a wealth of user controls for manipulating the lens to adjust for lighting conditions. With that in mind, you'll have to do your own compensating for less than ideal lighting conditions.

• Avoid low light
  Because they automatically make adjustments to the shutter speed based on the amount of light available, camera-phones have difficulty capturing details in low-light environments. Taking pictures in bright environments provides a faster shutter speed and more depth of field. Therefore, the more light in your environment, the sharper the image. Even a unit with a built-in flash will provide minimal support since the range is only about 60 - 90cm, compared with the 300 - 460cm range you get with a midlevel digital camera.
  
  
• Adjust the brightness level
  If the image on your display seems too dark or too light, try adjusting the brightness level before taking the picture. You'll be able to see the difference on the screen as you make the adjustment, especially when taking pictures of subjects that have light-coloured elements.
  
  
• Adjust the white balance
  In some cases, it's not so much a matter of having enough light as it is what kind of light you're dealing with. In these instances, adjustments to the white balance can improve your pictures. Experienced photographers use blank white or grey cards to help judge the white balance. Not everyone will have the time or the inclination to go through this procedure to take a quick snapshot. If that's the case, you can simply keep the white balance set at Auto. But if this setting doesn't properly compensate for lighting conditions and if you have a couple of minutes to spare, you can use the same technique the professionals use:
  
  
  1. Place a white card or sheet of paper in front of you.
  
  
  
  2. Go to picture-taking mode.
  
  
  
  3. Look at the white card through the screen.
  
  
  
  4. If the card appears off-colour (too yellow or red, for example), go to your camera-phone's white-balance settings and toggle through the selections until the card appears as close to white as possible.
  
  
• Avoid backlighting
  Before snapping a picture, think about where your light source is coming from. When the light source is behind your subject, it will appear too dark, almost like a silhouette. Cameras with fill-flash options can compensate for this, but camera-phones, even those with built-in flashes, have no such feature. Unless you want your subject to appear as a silhouette, it's best to stand with the light behind you, not your subject.
  
  
• Keep your subject close
  Camera-phones use fixed-focal-length lenses, and the focal length -- the distance between the optical centre of the lens and the place where it focuses the image -- is very short. That means the lens can capture details in a wide area but not a deep one. If your subject is too far away, it will appear very small. It's best if you keep your subject within 60 - 90cm of the camera.
  
  
• Avoid zooming
  Phone makers, like manufacturers of digital cameras, love to tout their products' digital zoom capabilities. Digital cameras at least have some optical zoom capabilities, which actually uses the optics of the lens to bring the subject closer, but camera-phones are stuck with digital zoom options, if they have any at all. Given the limited focal range, you may be tempted to use this feature to capture faraway objects. Not only will this degrade the image quality, but you may be able to use it only when the camera is set to take pictures in a lower-resolution setting, which will result in a smaller image.




John Frederick Moore is the author of the book, How to Do Everything with Your Camera Phone.