#stunning #photos #smartphone
Nowadays you can take the most beautiful photos with a smartphone. It has just become a bit more complicated to operate the phone camera. It is often quite unclear exactly what options you have. High time for some practical tips and explanations.
It used to be quite easy to take photos with a phone camera. There was very little to set up. To be precise, there was one camera on the back of the device. Oh yes, there was also one on the front, for taking selfies. Furthermore, expectations regarding options and image quality were not too high. You would have been happy if everything turned out nice and recognizable in the photo.
More beautiful and more difficult
Nowadays that is different. Smartphone photography has undergone a rapid development in a relatively short time. The image quality now equals that of traditional cameras, such as SLR and system cameras. The quality is in any case much better than that of the earlier compact camera; you rarely come across them. That enormous improvement comes at a price. The complexity of the phone camera has increased enormously. This has also created more confusion about how things work (or not). Time to clarify the use of the phone camera.
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Cameralences
Let’s start with the most visible part. That is the camera lens that usually protrudes prominently from the back of the phone casing. In the early days we were very happy with that one camera lens. Nowadays there are easily two, three, four and sometimes even five lenses in the same place.
Yes, you read that right. Nowadays you walk around with a complete set of camera lenses. Just look at the back of your phone. You can recognize the cameras quite easily by the round shiny lenses. Well, easy. Some smaller rounds turn out to be completely different than you might think. For example, the circle can be a flash or a depth sensor that helps you focus.
But why so many lenses? On a traditional camera you use a zoom lens to quickly and easily choose whether you capture a lot or a little of the environment. To do this, you turn a ring. Such a zoom lens is far too large and too complex to fit into the thin housing of a smartphone. That’s why phone manufacturers have come up with a solution to use multiple cameras with different types of lenses. Unfortunately, you cannot zoom in or out with a phone camera. Do you want to see more or less in the picture? Then you switch from one camera to another camera instead.
Would you like to visualize something far away in a large format?
This telephoto lens for your smartphone offers a solution
No zoom lens
This immediately brings us to a crucial point. Manufacturers often talk about, for example, a 10x zoom lens. This would allow you to zoom in up to ten times without losing quality. That is not true. The lens always magnifies everything exactly ten times. Do you want to photograph a remote castle? Or a plane high in the sky? Then you cannot move this object steplessly closer by choosing a value between 1x or 10x. So how does it work?
Suppose you have a smartphone with two cameras, a 1x camera and a 10x telephoto lens. If you choose the 1x camera, you will see a lot of your surroundings. Ideal for landscapes, urban images and interior photos, for example. If that plane suddenly passes by, you switch to the 10x telephoto lens. This way you get a large view of the device.
So far everything is going well. But what if that plane flies a lot lower? Or what if you want to take a portrait photo of someone? Then the 10x zoom lens is far too strong a magnification. Then you only see the nose of the plane, or of your model. To take good photos, you tend to need a 3x or 5x telephoto lens.
Digital zoom
Many people solve this by placing two fingers on the phone screen and moving them apart. This is called pinch-to-zoom. You can often also use a sliding bar or some kind of protractor for this. This was also possible with the very first smartphones that still had one camera. It seems that you are zooming in steplessly, but in reality you are only cutting away the image along the photo edges. You are digitally zooming in. The more you zoom in this way, the more you throw away and the lower the photo quality becomes.
You will only get the very best image quality if you switch between the physical cameras of your smartphone. You do this by tapping on the icons with a magnification factor. You can always find this somewhere near the print button. These are often numbers, such as 0.5x, 1x and 3x or 5x or 10x (ultra wide angle, standard wide angle and one or more telephoto lenses). Sometimes you don’t see numbers but pictograms, for example trees. Two trees stand for the main camera, three trees for the ultra-wide angle (more in the picture) and one tree for the telephoto lens (less in the picture).
Optical or digital
More and more often you see more magnifications on the camera screen than there are on physical cameras. These are digital enlargements. These are shown for convenience. Suppose the real cameras are 1x and 5x, then you may also see a digital 2x and 10x. Sometimes you see these extra modes immediately, sometimes they only appear when you tap a real magnification factor. How do you know what are real cameras and what are digital cutouts? It is best to delve into the specifications of your phone. They are stated on the box, in the (digital) manual and on the manufacturer’s website.
Met mate
The use of the digital zoom is of course not prohibited. As long as you use it in moderation, the loss of quality is not too bad. For example, does your phone have a 1x and a 3x camera? It is better to zoom in to, for example, 1.5x and not all the way to, for example, 2.9x. Because the further you zoom in digitally, the less real footage remains. This makes your photo increasingly blurry.
On our example phone, you’re much better off tapping 3x than manually going to a higher value, like 2.7x or 2.9x. From 1.1x to 2.9x, the 1x main camera is increasingly cropped. With 3x, the full image of the telephoto lens is simply used. That makes a huge difference in image quality. From 3.1x it is again a digital zoom. Because this time the telephoto lens is automatically grabbed, 3.1x (telephoto lens) looks significantly better than 2.9x (main camera).
Does all these numbers make you dizzy? The essence is that it is best to digitally zoom in as little as possible. Are you still close to the magnification of the next camera lens? Then it is better to select that, because it is then completely optical.
Pixel opulence
By the way, you have a little more bandwidth if the main camera of your smartphone has an extra megapixel. The resolution of phone cameras has long been stuck at around 12 megapixels. But nowadays there are plenty of phones with no less than 48, 96 and even 200 megapixels. More pixels means more image information. This means you can safely zoom in digitally every now and then without it being immediately noticed.
200 megapixels on a smartphone?
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra has it!
With a 48-megapixel image sensor you work with a four times higher resolution. Such a photo still becomes less beautiful as you digitally zoom in, but the image quality remains acceptable for much longer. What is surprising is that usually only the main camera has an extra high resolution. This concerns the 1x camera and not the ultra-wide angle or the telephoto lens. You can also find this out via the specifications of your phone.
More is sometimes less
Many people like it when photos fill the entire phone screen because it immerses you in the image. However, a phone screen is much more elongated than a photo, causing black areas to be shown on either side. In the camera app of Samsung phones, for example, you can adjust the aspect ratio at the top of the screen (with the phone upright). Full Set up. We recommend that you do this anyway 4:3 to leave it alone.
Why? Phone photos simply have an aspect ratio of 4:3. So they are narrower than a phone screen. You choose Full, then the camera image is stretched until the screen is still filled. As a result, you lose a lot of footage again, because you are digitally zooming. For the best and highest image quality, it is therefore much better to stick to the 4:3 aspect ratio.
Unless, of course, you simply prefer to take elongated photos and accept the loss of quality. Then you are of course welcome to deviate from it. Does your phone not have a full aspect ratio? Then choose 16:9 which means you lose slightly less footage. It is also the aspect ratio of videos that you record with your phone.
Outside the frame
With an iPhone it is important to know that the camera can show more than what is in the photo. Only the brightly lit area in the middle of the camera app is captured when you print. The outer edges where the image shines through are only intended to show what is happening outside the image frame.
This has been done so that you can still adjust the image if something important does not appear quite right. Or to print quickly before, for example, a car enters the frame and ruins the photo. Do you find this confusing or is there less and less in the photo than you expected? You can turn this function off by going to Institutions to go. At the part Camera then enable the option View outside the frame out. Then you see exactly what you put in the photo.
Blurred background
Phones are known for capturing almost everything sharply. This makes it difficult to blur a busy background in a portrait photo, for example. Fortunately, manufacturers have come up with something about this. There is also a special portrait mode on your phone. You will find this in the camera mode bar. Or tap first More and find this option there. This allows you to still get something or someone nice and sharp, while the surroundings are beautifully blurred.
The main subject must be at a specific distance. This is often somewhere between one and a half and two and a half meters. Just pay close attention to the camera screen as a warning will be shown if the subject is too close or too far away. For example, you see Samsung Ready as long as everything is correct. Do you notice afterwards that there is no blurring anywhere? Then the distance was wrong and a normal photo was taken instead of a portrait photo.
Before or after
It is extremely useful that you can usually set the desired blur both in advance and afterwards. It is a software effect, i.e. a photo editing. On an Android device you sometimes see a slider in the camera app to set it. Or you tap one first White dot, after which a list of effects appears. On an iPhone you see a f sign. Tap it and adjust the blur using the slider.
To adjust the blur afterwards, tap Samsung in the app Gallery in a portrait photo Change background effect. On an iPhone you choose Change in the app Photo’s. You can then adjust or remove the blur. You can often also indicate which subject should be in focus, simply by tapping on it. Or you add a nice light effect, such as a color portrait on a plain black background. One last tip: portrait mode usually works with the selfie camera too!
In the dark
Nowadays, phones almost always have a night mode that allows you to take very nice pictures in low light and in the dark. Just out of control. Just imagine doing that with a traditional camera. That is really much more difficult. With this night mode you can take beautiful photos in lamplight or candlelight and during performances, festivals and concerts. You can also capture impressive cityscapes in the evening or night. That’s something that was virtually impossible with a smartphone about six years ago.
It is essential that you hold your phone as still as possible while the recording is running. The camera app itself indicates how long this is. This can easily take up to ten seconds. During that time, the device takes a whole series of photos and quickly merges them all into one atmospheric and perfectly exposed photo. So it is not the case that there is an unnecessarily long printing delay. On the contrary, your phone is working hard for you.
Automatically or manually
On Android phones you can activate night mode at your own discretion, possibly by first going to More to go. Do you photograph in low light in normal photo mode? A message will then often appear stating that it might be better to activate night mode. On an iPhone, night mode becomes active automatically as soon as it is sufficiently dark. At other times you cannot reach it.
A yellow moon along the top edge of the screen tells you that the night mode is in action as soon as you print. If the moon is gray, your iPhone doesn’t think it’s necessary yet, but you can switch on night mode yourself. This works via the options bar that appears at the bottom of the screen as soon as you swipe up (hold your phone upright). You can also tap the white bracket at the top. In the options bar, tap it moon and choose Out, Auto of Max.
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