PHOTOS "How to Shoot Quality Photos" from FCP Live-In

“How to Shoot Quality Photos on Android + iPhone” from FCP Live-In

You do not need to use professional equipment to create a great Photo. Just adhering to the steps listed below will create Photos that will tell a good story and be enjoyable to look at. We have listed the most important tips that will help you improve the quality of your Photos right away.

In this tutorial, we address the main priorities on how to take the best Photo possible.

Learn how to take awesome pictures with your phone camera

Want to get better photos from your camera phone? No matter the quality of your Android or iPhone’s camera, you can take great pictures if you know how to set up your photos. Before you start snapping pictures, we’ll show you some expert tips and tricks for getting the most out of your phone’s built-in camera. Often, the most inspiring pictures occur in everyday life when you do not have a standard camera with you. This wikiHow article will teach you how to use your phone to capture good photos.

Things You Should Know

Set your Android or iPhone’s photo quality to the highest resolution and disable all built-in effects.
Experiment with the white balance feature to find the best settings for your scene if your phone has this setting.
Shoot your photo in good light, no movement and focused on the subject..

Camera Setup

1. Clean the lens. Over time the camera lens can collect lint and create a blurred image. Just give it a good wipe with a clean cloth.

2. Set your phone to its highest picture quality and resolution. You might end up taking a good enough shot that you want to print it out; you won’t be able to do this if you only have a low-resolution version of the photo.

3. Turn off picture frames. A normally great shot may be ruined by a cheesy frame or background.

4. Turn off all effects. These include black-and-white, sepia tones, inverted colors, and so on. These aren’t as necessarily as cheesy-looking as frames and have their place; nonetheless, these things are much better done in photo editing software later on than on board the phone. You may find, for example, that when you view your photo on a large screen that the colors in your scene are far too good to lose to black-and-white.

5. Set the white balance if available on your phone. The human eye usually adjusts for lighting, and so white appears white in any kind of lighting. A camera, however, will see that a given subject is redder than normal under normal incandescent household lighting. Better camera phones, including most Androids and iPhones, will give you the option to adjust the camera for this. If you have such an option, use it. If you’re not sure what setting to use, experiment.

Setting Up Your Shot

1. Keep your subject big and prominent. Capture your subject by making the largest focal point of your photo.

It is best to shoot things as close to the subject as possible. If you can get up close to your subject and frame it tightly, you will get the best results.
Most smartphone cameras have a digital zoom, but using this won’t help you get detailed pictures from far away. Using this is just essentially cropping your picture on the screen rather than during editing.

2. Keep your background clutter free.Cluttered backgrounds create a cluttered image. Keep your background as simple as possible

3. Don’t use your flash. If you find yourself using a flash because your whole scene is insufficiently lit, you’re probably taking photographs indoors in poor light. Don’t do this, and go back to the first step; a scene lit entirely by your flash will look un-natural.

4. Frame your shot. Make sure that everything you want in the shot is in the picture, and ready to be captured. Some phones show the entire viewfinder, meaning that what is on the screen is exactly what will be captured in the image. Other phones, however, only show what is in the middle of the image, but will capture more than the viewfinder shows. Err on the side of caution by having a little empty space in your picture; it can always crop it later.

5. Use simple backgrounds when taking a photo. A simple background is a good start, as it can make objects and colors of your main target in the photo pop. Busy backgrounds create clutter with the photos subject. Also do not use a a window behind your subject. The light from the window will make your subject dark as the camera tries to compensate for the bright light.

6. Finally, take the picture. Keep your hand steady as you press the shutter button. After you take the picture, keep the phone in position to allow the picture to be recorded. If you move immediately after pressing the shutter button, often times you will just get a blur!

What to avoid

1. Avoid subjects in low light, at least if you want them to be consistently lit. The small sensors in camera phones cannot run at high ISO speeds (i.e., high sensitivity to light, permitting indoor photos without a flash) without introducing large amounts of noise.

If you have to shoot indoors, consider what artificial lighting sources you have. Turn lights on to help light the subject. Avoid using a light source behind the subject. Avoid fluorescent light, as it can cast a green tint on your subjects.
Make sure you camera is stable in low light. Camera phones slow the shutter speed in low light, and this can capture any movement you make and blur your photo.

2. Avoid bright reflections, and other “hot-spots”. This will either force the camera to under-expose the rest of the shot, or cause the camera to blow out the highlights on the brightest parts of the shot. The latter is worse, since it is sometimes possible to extract details from parts of the image that are too dark, but impossible to recover blown highlights (since there is no detail therein to extract). On the other hand, this can be used to artistic ends, such as with bright light streaming through a window. People pictures will look best in diffuse lighting such as open shade, under a cloudy sky, or in bright artificial light. Try to include bright colors, which will show up well, rather than a range of light and dark areas (which will both lose detail).

3. Avoid tight focusing. Do not zoom in. Camera phones excel at shots where nearly all of a scene is in focus.

Do the best you can!

In the end do the best you can with what you have. We do have the ability to correct photos taken in un-optimal conditions, but very poor photos are a lot harder to correct than photos with adjustments to get the best photo possible.