How To Make Decent Photographs With Your iPhone

How to Make Decent Photographs with Your iPhone

by William Lulow

Since camera phones and small, light-weight point-and-shoot cameras seem to be proliferating these days, I thought I’d write a small piece about how to use them properly.

Most people will simply use their camera-phones like they were real cameras. I often get people who come to me and ask if I could make a couple of prints from images they’ve shot on their phones. My usual response is: How good is the original image?

One has to realize that in the photographic process, if you start with a bad image, you’ll end up with a bad image. And, camera phones and point-and-shoots are just not as good as the real thing. First of all, camera phones are very light weight. This makes it very difficult to hold it steady enough to get a high enough quality shot. Some people actually do try to steady their camera phones by resting their arms on a wall or other steady object, but you still have to hand-hold everything. There are stands for the iPhone and others, but because most people just carry their phones with them, they are not really thinking about making photographs. In addition, when you take a picture with an iPhone, you have to tap the round button. How many of you can do this without actually moving the camera?

Second, it often takes a camera phone a second or two actually to take the photograph. This is because the autofocus mechanism is trying to acquire focus on what you are aiming at and it often takes some time. Some have a double flash which is really designed to eliminate red eye, but often results in blurred images if you are photographing even the smallest action. Plus, you never quite know when the shutter will fire.

Third, camera phones are not really high quality. Yes, some of the lenses are very good, but most camera phones are of the 12 megapixel variety or less. And the newer iPhone X sports an 18MP camera. But, there’s still no way they can compete with even the basic DSLR.

The solution: don’t expect too much from your camera phone. Try to get images of still subjects and/or try to go for “creative” type shots. One thing that I have done is to make “stylized” shots with my iPhone. Below is an example:

This image was taken at a relative’s wedding. I brought the image in to Photoshop and then applied some filters, did some cloning and ended up with a very “creative”-looking shot.

The other thing you can do is to use your iPhone more carefully. Look for different angles. Learn how to tap the screen to lock focus and exposure. Don’t shoot in difficult lighting situations. By taking more care with making your iPhone images, they will turn out much better.