Mar 4, 2009
How to squeeze decent photos out of an iPhone
I love camphones. I love “real” cameras, too – I own and regularly use a number of digital and analogue cameras including a Nikon D80, a Canon IXUS, a Holga 120N and a Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim. But the camera in my phone is always with me, and as a result, over the years I’ve found myself using it a lot to capture odd and interesting things spotted during my daily commute and everyday life.
Because some of the most interesting things which we come across in our daily lives aren’t pre-planned or anticipated, the camera in our phones is sometimes the only way of capturing an image, even though it can be very frustrating in terms of quality and available functionality. That makes it even more important to know how to get the best out of the tool which happens to be at your disposal.
I don’t claim to be an expert in mobile photography, but I do take a lot of pictures, and some of my mobile photos are among the most viewed in my Flickr photostream, precisely because I was able to capture something fleeting and interesting, but didn’t have the “proper” equipment.
The photo below, for example, wasn’t taken with an iPhone, but with my rather pedestrian Nokia 6230i, on the tube from Heathrow one afternoon. It now regularly appears (without attribution, I should point out – *seethe*) in those emailed/blog collections of “trick photography” or “neat optical illusions” or whatever, alongside others posed intentionally and taken using decent kit.
The thing about this photo is that if I’d used a “proper” camera, it would have undoubtedly have caused too much attention, and would have spoilt the composition. As it was, I was only able to get this picture by holding the camphone at a most strange angle by my face (perhaps the other passengers thought I was very short sighted, and just reading a text message?) but the crucial thing is that this photo simply couldn’t have been captured in such a spontaneous way without a piece of photographic capturing kit which enabled spontaneity: A cameraphone.
Anyway, with that in mind, I thought I’d share my tips for squeezing decent photos out of your iPhone, with examples where I have them – please add your own tips in the comments if you think I’ve missed something!
A quick note on brand/make/model: Although I had Nokia phones for a long time, I’ve now got an Apple iPhone 3G, which comes with a rather feeble 2megapixel camera. It’s worth noting that even though these tips mostly apply to taking photos with an iPhone, the majority of the tips could also apply to camphones from other manufacturers. YMMV.
- Embrace constraints.
The iPhone camera is limited. Really limited. That being said, it can do some things well, so recognise and accept that you’re never going to squeeze incredible shots with vibrant colours and awesome depth of field in low light out of it. Take loads of photos until you figure out what it does well, and then play with the strengths you know it has. For example:- The iPhone is good at contrast, so you can use that to your advantage
- The focal point is a minimum of 12″ away, so don’t bother trying to take closeups (unless you have a macro adaptor, and even then YMMV.)
- The way a shot is exposed sometimes takes a couple of seconds to settle down, so let the image catch up before you click the shutter. Plus, poor exposure can sometimes be “reset” by pointing the lens at something dark and then moving it gradually to the subject you want to capture.
Of course, you can also exploit this weakness to take photos where the foreground is deliberately underexposed.
- Compose creatively.
Like any camphone, the iPhone copes poorly with strong, direct light, and bright, grey skies (like the ones we have in the UK most of the year) will often bleed into the image or cause the rest of the shot to be underexposed. You can counteract this by cutting the sky out of the frame entirely, and composing to fill the frame with something else of interest. Patterns are good. Strong lines are good.
Cutting light sources out of the composition also forces you to use interesting angles, which can be a good way of capturing patterns or objects isolated from their surroundings. Work the angles. Look up. Look down. Get down low and shoot upwards, or hold the phone up high or at a strange angles to get shots from interesting perspectives.
Camphone photos can also look very flat and/or cluttered because of their deep focal range – everything is in focus – so sometimes it’s worth looking around to see if you can find something to put in the foreground of the image, or lead the eye into the scene, or isolate the subject by choosing a plain or non-cluttered background.
- Be prepared.
I would dearly love to have the option to use one of the volume rocker buttons – actual buttons which give physical feedback – as a shutter button for the iPhone camera, because the placement and behaviour of the shutter release is, frankly, rubbish.However, some of the worst of it can be compensated by a very simple modification in how you take the photo. In fact, probably the most useful thing to know about the iPhone camera is that the capture doesn’t happen when you press the button, but when you take your finger off it. By composing the shot while you have your finger on the shutter button, and then taking it off to capture, you’re more likely to reduce camerashake when you take the photo, and more likely to capture the moment you want (bearing in mind there’s a slight lag).
It’s also worth noting that the camera is much more stable when you hold it horizontally: so rather than holding it the way most things on the phone are oriented, like this:
(please excuse shit photoshop skillz and terrible GCSE drawing style – that’s a hand, not a claw)…which means you’re holding the phone in a very unstable way, with no support for most of it, contributing to camerawobble when you press the shutter.
Try instead getting into the habit of holding it more like a game controller, like this:
…which is much more stable, and means your right thumb can comfortably grip the shutter button until release.
- Colour is your friend.
One thing the iPhone camera does do well, despite its shortcomings, is colour. It is absolutely horrible in low light – grainy and dull and pretty underwhelming – but it can rock hard in the right light. If it’s too sunny, colours can bleach out and contrast is lost. If it’s too dull or too late in the afternoon, it gets very grainy. The best conditions seem to be bright, rainy days – and thankfully we get loads of those in the UK.
Finding compositions which make the most of juicy, bright saturated colours and strong contrast, together with interesting patterns or focal points, can make for a really good shot (for an iPhone, anyway).
- Cheat.
There are some great apps for the iPhone which are extremely valuable in helping to turn OK shots into really interesting ones, or helping you to capture images you wouldn’t otherwise be able to manage.My top three are:
- Camerabag. This app enables you to either take or convert photos as if using a range of toy cameras. There are various filters, which do quite a good job of holga-ification and lomofication, among other mimicry (there’s also one which makes your pictures look like they were taken in 1963, and an Ansel Adams BW-ification filter). The results can’t be played around with at all, but they when they work, they can be extremely effective.
- Quadcamera. This app works a bit like a Lomo action sampler, taking a series of shots in quick (user-set) succession, applying a stylistic filter and then stitching them together as a single image. Great for shots which tell a story, or benefit from a sequence to reveal action, or Hockneyesque panoramas.
- Pano. Because sometimes you just want to be able to take panoramic images, don’t you?
Of course, the other way of cheating is to use photo-processing software to tweak your images. Let’s face it: even the most incredible software isn’t going to rescue a dire low resolution camphone shot, but it’s worth trying the following things to see if you can give your image a little boost:
- Increase saturation slightly
- Boost blacks or adjust levels to enhance shadows slightly
- Add a touch of fill-light or brightness to compensate for the overall darkening of the image
- If you can, adjust contrast/clarity to bring out edge detail
- Try making the image black and white – sometimes removing the colour can help an image to feel less cluttered and you can play more with tones and shadows.
- Camerabag. This app enables you to either take or convert photos as if using a range of toy cameras. There are various filters, which do quite a good job of holga-ification and lomofication, among other mimicry (there’s also one which makes your pictures look like they were taken in 1963, and an Ansel Adams BW-ification filter). The results can’t be played around with at all, but they when they work, they can be extremely effective.
Basically, my theory is: if it works for toy cameras, then it probably works for camphones. They are, after all, much the same in many ways: fixed focus, limited functionality, prone to odd quirks and benefit from familiarity and experimentation.
Some more of my favourite iPhone shots, using the techniques described above:
Regarding people knicking your Geisha image, I take it you already know about TinEye? They find 54 matches for it around the web… http://tineye.com/search/44b00ea55ecc6276b4cbdbbe7bd7bb53580db45d#
Ooh, that’s interesting – thanks Graham. I hadn’t heard of tineye.
The big question, of course, is what I can do about it.
(answer: probably nothing)
Awesome post. I am always amazed when I see the iphone tag on your flickr photos because they are so good. I see now that it has more to do with the photographer than the equipment! Great stuff.
Great tips. I don’t have an iPhone, I have the G1 – but the camera is probably not much different from the one in the iPhone. There is an app for G1 (am sure for the iPhone too) that uses the phone’s accelerometer to detect stability, it waits till your phone is steady and then takes the pic. Not suitable for action shots, very handy for shots of static objects. And a bit of post processing always helps a lot.
The shutter triggers when you move your finger off the button…
(Tries it out)
OMG! You just fixed the iPhone camera! All this time I’ve been jabbing at that thing…
What a great post. I’ve been an admirer of your flickr stream for quite a while now, and while I don’t have an iphone, it’s always good to have a few tricks up your sleeve for on-the-spot photography!
[...] How to squeeze decent photos out of an iPhone Meg Pickard gives some excellent advice here on getting good photos out of an iPhone, or any other cameraphone really. Although I carry a simple point and shoot with me pretty much everywhere, it's my iPhone that's always actually *to hand*… (tags: howto blog post iphone photography editing megpickard meish) [...]
I don’t have an iPhone but this is great
[...] How to squeeze decent photos out of an iPhone – meish dot org: life, unfolding (tags: howto photography iphone) [...]
[...] How to squeeze decent photos out of an iPhone. [...]
[...] a comment » Centered on the iPhone, but it’s a helpful guide for anyone with a [...]
Another couple of well used trick that I use for “proper” photos…
1. to avoid camera shake effect switch on burst mode – where your camera takes 2-3-4+ shots as fast as it can. This is useful for all cameras (expensive if you use film) but means you can select the best shot after the event – it’ll NEVER be the first one in the sequence!!!
2. switch off all in-camera/phone processing, especially white balance and “scenes” and fix it to daylight – then the camera/phone it not going to work out how IT thinks the image should look.
3. Use Night mode whenever possible – the shutter speed is lower but the colour balance is still fixed. You need to hold the camera/phone steady though and this takes a bit of practice (see ’1′ above)
4. Ditch all ‘effects’ like B&W, Sepia etc, you can do this far better on your computer afterwards – there’s only a widdy-diddy processor in your camera, let alone in your phone !!
Remeber, memory is cheap, memories are not !!
Have fun
Andrew
[...] How to squeeze decent photos out of an iPhone – Meg writes the most essential and excellent guide for those people who have an Apple mobile computing device and who like taking photographs. (The rest of you, as you were.) Best tip here is to hold the shutter button and gently release it when you want to take the shot, rather than jabbing at the bloody thing as I’ve been doing. That and holding it sideways. There’s also some great stuff on what conditions are optimal for the relatively shitty sensor on the iPhone. [...]
These were great! i’m going to post a link to this article on my own blog…
[...] Good photos on a cameraphone? You may scoff in disbelief, but here’s a spectacular guide on how to take great photos on your iPhone (and they work with most cameraphones, too). [meish dot org: life, unfolding] [...]
These panoramas were done with pictutres from my iPhone and PT GUI Pro (demo):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yandle/tags/panorama/
[...] How to squeeze decent photos out of an iPhone – meish dot org: life, unfolding (tags: photos mobile iphone) [...]
great tips! thanks!
Wow- those were some incredible photos! Thanks for the great tips!
Ah, the “without attribution” thing. I’ve run across that before, and have found that generally it’s because people just don’t care. The mentality of “if it’s on the internet, then it’s free and I can do what I want with it” is deeply engrained in society. Goes with the ‘internet piracy’ argument. It’s ok to infringe on copyrights by downloading tv show torrents, so it’s ok to take images and make my own ‘cool pics’ website, right? That’s how ebaumsworld got started.
Another thing I found is that sometimes the people thieving the images simply don’t speak English and have no idea what the usage agreement they just scrolled past even said.
[...] How to squeeze decent photos out of an iPhone – meish dot org: life, unfolding- Tips för att fota med mobilen. [...]
Stumbled on this post yesterday and so glad I did. I love my iPhone and have been taking pics with it everyday, even tho I have a terrific digital SLR, I am just trying to eek all I can out of the little mite.
I love taking pics with it, granted, alot come out pretty grim, but I have some pretty darn good ones too. I even set up a Posterous Blog just for uploading iPhone images, to which I linked to this post, which got a lot of Retweets on Twitter last night.
Love the pics you have taken and does go to show what is capable with the iPhone if you use some common sense with the environment.
I don’t want to add my URL’s here, but I also posted 10 iPhone Textures on my on site, of rusted Iron which have come out amazing, took the iPhone to its macro limit so to speak. If your interested, I’ll send you the links.
Keep it up
Graham
[...] Use you iPhone to take better photos. [...]
I love the Geisha photo, and you are right! I have seen it before on some other trick photo blog etc.
Hey thanks for that. I love my iphone and for exactly the reasons you describe, because it is there when things are happening whereas the real camera is sitting in it’s tripod at home. I have been working at a lego mosaic-fundraiser on the weekends and encouraging people to take photos on their phones where the image (a Starwars Y-fighter) is clearly recognisable. I have taken a few photos for people and find the iphone comes out best, is this because of the relatively low megapixels – compared to the youbeaut sony and newer nokia phones. oh and thanks for the hold and release tip, my kids are often on their way out of the frame when I photograph them, now I know why!
- came here via Damien BTW
xx
[...] How to squeeze decent photos out of an iPhone [...]
Really useful stuff, Meg. I’ve recently got an iPhone so this is really timely. That’s for the Camerabag tip!
[...] across some references to a great piece written about getting Better Photos from your iPhone which has some cool stuff in it. Like the article says, a good bit of it could be applied to other [...]
Take finger OFF to get the pic right…ohhhh
damn I’m slow!
[...] -> useful tutorial on how to get good pictures out of the built-in camera on the iphone [meish.org] [...]
Thanks for the tips, which I’ve noted for future reference.
I almost jumped, as with the geisha image fresh in my mind from your post, I saw it again here:
http://annaaspnes.typepad.com/anna/2009/03/photoshopped-or-just-plain-clever.html
With a copyright notice, no less, from this site:
http://www.widelec.org/
Which I’d certainly send an annoyed email or two about, though it’s hard to know just what to do about such things.
[...] Para ver en detalle estos dos tips y los tres restantes, les recomiendo visitar el sitio de Meg: How to squeeze decent photos out of an iPhone. [...]
[...] Pickard shares some helpful tips on getting the best quality iPhone [...]
Excellent article and tips. So glad you explained about when the pic is actually taken. I love the iphone camera because it’s always with me. Sure wish I had zoom though.