Phone photography tips: how to take better photos with your smartphone

TUREFF• •0

The camera in your pocket is good enough for photos you will want to print and keep. What makes the difference is not usually the phone but a handful of habits: a clean lens, better light, a moment's thought about composition, and knowing which camera features actually help.

Clean the lens

It sounds obvious, but a phone lens lives in pockets and bags and picks up fingerprints constantly. A smudge gives hazy, low-contrast photos and glowing halos round lights at night. Wipe it with a soft, clean microfibre cloth or a soft cotton T-shirt before you shoot. Avoid paper tissues and rough fabrics.

Composition basics

Rule of thirds: turn on the grid in your camera settings. It divides the screen into nine squares. Put your subject on one of the lines or where two lines cross, rather than dead centre, and keep the horizon on the top or bottom line rather than through the middle.
Leading lines: roads, paths, fences, rivers and railings draw the eye into the picture. Stand so they lead toward your subject.
Fill the frame: walk closer. Most weak phone photos have too much empty space around a small subject.
Watch the background: a lamppost growing out of someone's head ruins a portrait. Take a step to the side.
Change your height: crouch for children and pets, shoot food from directly above, hold the phone low for dramatic architecture.
Keep it level: the grid also helps keep horizons and buildings straight.

Light

Light matters more than the phone.

Soft light flatters people: open shade, cloudy days, or the hour after sunrise and before sunset.
Harsh midday sun gives squinting faces and hard shadows; move into shade or turn your subject so the sun is behind or to the side.
Indoors, put people facing a window rather than with their back to it.
Avoid the built-in flash for most photos; it flattens faces and makes red eye. Look for more light first.

Focus and exposure lock

Phones choose where to focus and how bright to make the picture, and sometimes guess wrong.

Tap the screen on your subject to focus and set exposure for that point.
Drag the brightness control that appears (the sun icon on iPhone) up or down to brighten or darken the shot.
On iPhone, touch and hold on the subject until AE/AF Lock appears to lock focus and exposure, so they do not shift as you recompose. Most Android camera apps have a similar long-press lock; the details vary by maker.
Exposing for the brightest part of the scene stops skies and white clothes blowing out to pure white.

Avoid digital zoom

Pinching to zoom beyond your phone's lenses simply crops and enlarges the image, losing detail. Use the lens buttons in the camera app (such as 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 3x or 5x, depending on the phone), which switch between the actual cameras. Better still, walk closer. If you must go further, take the photo at the longest real lens and crop afterwards.

Portrait and night modes

Portrait mode blurs the background to imitate a larger camera. It works best with a subject a short distance away and a background well behind them. Look closely at hair and glasses edges, where the effect can go wrong; many phones let you adjust or remove the blur afterwards.
Night mode takes several exposures over a second or more and combines them. Keep the phone as still as you can, brace it against something or use a small tripod, and ask people to hold still.

Editing basics

A few minutes of editing in the built-in photo app goes a long way.

Straighten and crop first.
Exposure or brightness, then highlights and shadows to recover sky detail and open up dark areas.
Contrast and a touch of warmth if the picture looks cold.
Go easy on saturation and sharpening; heavy editing is easy to spot.
Edits in the built-in apps can usually be reverted, so experiment.

Small habits that help

Take several shots, especially of people; someone always blinks.
Hold the phone with both hands and tuck your elbows in.
Back up your photos regularly to the cloud or a computer.

Share a photo tip that changed how you shoot, or ask about a picture that did not come out how you hoped, in the comments.