Camera Phones II

Camera Phones II

by William Lulow

Everyone is using their iPhone or other camera phone these days for snapshots and other documentary purposes, but because of the ease of using these cameras, many people just raise them to their eyes so that they can see the screen better and snap away. They often don’t realize that when they do use them, these cameras make all the decisions about exposure, cropping, highlights and shadow detail for you! Most people don’t know that camera phones can be made to act more like traditional cameras. You can vary most of the same settings on them. And, with the advent of the more recent ones, you actually have three or more lenses built into them.

In this shot, made at night, I was able to hold the camera quite still so as not to have much, if any, blur:

There was more light here than it appeared. When I tried to make an 11×14 print though, that’s when the quality began to break down a bit.

There are other commercial uses for iPhone and other brand cameras. This shot was made on a location when it would have taken too long to set up a tripod for a regular camera:

As long as you can be careful setting up your camera phone and you know how to use it, it will be useful to do so. One other way I use it is to document lighting setups that I use for teaching purposes. Here, a simple location shot showing an off-camera light setup:

Here is another one showing exact location of lights:

The iPhone really excels at this kind of image. The coating of the lenses is far superior to what it used to be so I can often include the lights in the shot itself with very little, if any image degradation or lens flare.

The iPhone camera has three lenses (as of the 13pro version) and by tapping and holding the “3X” setting, you can pull up the zoom-lens feature and basically set it for any focal length you might need. Also, by holding your finger touching the image, you can call up an exposure dial in which you can vary the lightness of the image. These are just two basic ways you can be a bit more creative with your camera phone.

The thing to remember is that any image looks better when you study the making of it a bit. If you put your camera phone on a tripod, you will automatically get better pictures. This is the tool you need to attach your camera phone to your tripod:

You have to make sure you have the correct quick release plate that attaches your camera to the tripod. This will steady your iPhone so that your images will be sharper. Remember, even the best iPhone only produces images with 12 Megapixels of information. It’s really a far cry from my Canon 90D that has a sensor with 32 Megapixels of resolution. 

One reason is that instead of just taking a snapshot, you will be slowing down the process a bit because you’re taking more time.