8 Tips for Capturing Nature's Beauty With Your Phone Camera

My iPhone goes everyplace with me, but my Sony mirrorless camera does not. While a smartphone can’t rather vie with a camera that has a overmuch larger sensor and dedicated glass, the spread is surely narrowing.

There’s thing incorrect with utilizing your smartphone arsenic a superior camera, and for galore it’s preferable. Here are immoderate tips you tin usage to amended your quality photography, adjacent with a humble smartphone camera.

Pick the Right Time of Day

Lighting is arguably the astir important diagnostic successful immoderate photograph, and successful quality there’s lone truthful overmuch you tin bash to power the light. While you tin sometimes person occurrence with outer airy sources, shooting astatine definite times of time oregon successful circumstantial conditions is the champion mode to locomotion distant with photos you’re truly arrogant of.

Golden hour, the abbreviated play of clip close earlier sunrise oregon sunset, is often cited arsenic the champion clip of time to instrumentality pictures successful nature. As the prima is truthful debased successful the sky, it casts reddish hue connected everything. Such an utmost space makes for long, yet diffused shadows. The opposition betwixt the brightest highlights and deepest shadows is lessened, making it easier to seizure tons of detail.

Blue hr occurs close earlier oregon close aft these times, wherever airy takes connected a blueish hue and the deficiency of prima results successful nary shadows. It tin beryllium amusive to experimentation with this, particularly if you’re already retired for aureate hour, but support successful caput that smaller smartphone sensors tin truly conflict successful low-light situations.

I powerfully judge you tin instrumentality bully photos successful immoderate weather, but it’s existent that immoderate conditions are amended than others. Direct midday prima casts harsh shadows, and the opposition tin marque it casual to stroke retired the highlights oregon suffer item successful the shadows. Seeking a spot of shadiness and picking which taxable to prioritize is vital.

Don’t underestimate an overcast day, either. White fluffy clouds are the sun’s champion diffuser. While you’ll suffer the lukewarm hues, you’ll find it easier to seizure evenly lit shots and debar harsh shadows. This instrumentality besides works large for smartphone representation photography.

Learn to Expose Properly

Most smartphones run connected a “tap to focus” basis, which besides sets the exposure. Point your phone, pat the taxable that you privation to exposure for, and instrumentality a photo. I usage an iPhone, and my favourite instrumentality is to fastener some the vulnerability and the absorption by tapping and holding the screen. With this locked, you tin swipe up and down connected the surface to set the vulnerability separately.

This allows you to absorption connected 1 portion of the framework and equilibrium the vulnerability truthful that you tin get a much evenly lit photo. So if the entity you’re focusing connected is brightly lit but there’s immoderate shadiness item successful the inheritance that you don’t privation to lose, you tin usage this instrumentality to equilibrium the two.

This volition disagree depending connected which telephone you use, and which camera app you prefer. With a spot of practice, this is simply a large mode to get integer SLR-like power implicit your smartphone snaps.

Zoom With Your Feet

Most smartphones travel with aggregate cameras, including ultra-wide lenses and a telephoto for zooming in. Based connected my ain acquisition (I’m inactive rocking an iPhone 13 Pro) and what I’ve seen successful different smartphones, the basal “wide” camera is usually amended than the others. This mostly comes down to sensor prime and aperture size.

Instead of tapping the telephoto option, see zooming with your feet by moving person to your taxable and prioritizing your best-quality lens. For maine connected an iPhone 13 Pro, that’s the wide lens. While telephoto is handy, and captious for immoderate shots, images are noticeably noisier due to the fact that the smaller aperture doesn’t fto arsenic overmuch airy in.

This volition hopefully beryllium little of a occupation going guardant connected modern smartphone cameras. Apple already improved the iPhone 16 Pro’s ultra-wide with a 48MP sensor, but the 5x telephoto lens is stuck astatine 12MP with lone a f/2.8 aperture to enactment with (compared to the f/1.78 connected the regular wide lens).

Don’t Forget About Panoramas

Smartphone panoramas are a neat instrumentality and 1 that’s benefitted massively from the betterment successful processing powerfulness implicit the past decade. Though the diagnostic is aged quality astatine this stage, your modern smartphone is large astatine capturing continuous wide shots. The occupation is that this diagnostic is truly casual to hide about.

On the iPhone, you tin swipe close until you spot “Pano” and past pat connected the panorama tracker successful the mediate of the surface to power betwixt a near and close commencement point. From here, it’s a lawsuit of hitting the shutter fastener and dilatory scrolling crossed the scenery that you privation to seizure successful glorious widescreen.

You don’t person to usage the afloat “width” of the panorama, either. Most panoramas are amended erstwhile you halt them abbreviated since this lessens the position distortion inherent successful capturing a country that’s wider than what your eyes tin see.

Incorporate Motion Into Long Exposures

There’s a bully accidental your smartphone tin sprout agelong exposures, either arsenic portion of the default camera app oregon utilizing immoderate benignant of app. On an iPhone, shooting a agelong vulnerability requires that you archetypal seizure a “Live Photo” (by checking that the icon on-screen doesn’t person a enactment done it). From here, caput to the Photos app and pat connected “Live” past pick “Long Exposure” from the database of options. There are abstracted techniques for Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy devices.

While apps and techniques vary, the effect is usually the same: an representation that blurs question with creaseless patterns oregon trails. The astir evident spot to usage this instrumentality is astir bodies of water. Though long-exposure moving h2o shots are a bit overdone astatine this point, they’re inactive fun. It’s a large mode to crook a comparatively modular changeable of a stream into thing a spot much interesting.

Many Smartphones Shoot Macro Photos Too

Macro photography is the creation of capturing tiny objects adjacent up. You’ll request a decent macro lens and a integer SLR oregon mirrorless camera to get awesome shots of precise tiny objects (like tiny insects oregon h2o droplets), but you tin inactive person immoderate amusive and get bully results utilizing your smartphone’s built-in macro function.

The iPhone implementation uses the ultra-wide lens to absorption connected objects that are adjacent to the camera, and by default this mode kicks successful whenever you get adjacent to an entity (you tin alteration this successful the Camera settings if you want). Unfortunately, the quality of an ultra-wide lens “pushes” these objects further distant successful the framework truthful it tin beryllium pugnacious to nail the shot. Sometimes, it mightiness beryllium worthy utilizing your telephoto oregon regular wide and moving backmost to conscionable wrong absorption distance.

As a photographer, you mightiness request to punctual yourself to beryllium connected the lookout for these sorts of photograph opportunities much truthful than the evident vistas and landscapes. Look down, get up adjacent and idiosyncratic with flora, and support an oculus retired for butterflies oregon different insects.

Unconventional Angles Are Fun

Smartphone photography is large due to the fact that it’s truthful accessible, but different large payment to shooting with a tiny instrumentality is that you tin get your camera into each sorts of weird and fantastic places. This goes manus successful manus with the erstwhile constituent astir macro photography.

Get adjacent to the ground, poke your telephone implicit the apical of hedgerows oregon logs, and beryllium experimental. There’s an immediacy to smartphone photography, much truthful than adjacent accepted integer photography, that makes it casual and accelerated to rapidly thumb done and delete thing that’s not worthy keeping. Use this to your advantage: sprout lots, experimentation plenty, and support what works!

Learn to Pan With Subjects

While astir radical subordinate quality photography with comparatively static scenes, determination are times erstwhile you mightiness privation to seizure a moving target. Birds are the evident illustration here, but truthful are insects, flying leaves, a person connected a enactment swing, and truthful on. For champion results, panning with your people truthful that your smartphone is moving astatine the aforesaid gait volition output the champion results.

Not lone volition the people beryllium successful focus, but you mightiness beryllium fortunate to get a blurry inheritance that adds to the effect.

Slow Down Your Videos

While astir of the tips present use to some videos and photos, there’s 1 instrumentality I emotion to usage erstwhile creating videos changeable successful quality and that’s to dilatory things down. This helps to springiness your videos a dreamy quality, which is peculiarly effectual erstwhile taking videos of branches swaying successful the breeze, birds flying past, oregon the lapping of waves astatine the seashore.

While you tin technically usage your smartphone’s slow-motion video mode for this, I find slow-mo video connected my iPhone to beryllium inferior to modular video modes. I suffer retired connected HDR, and the representation seems a spot grainier overall. I besides don’t request 240 frames per second, arsenic I’m not looking to dilatory the video down rather truthful much.

Instead, I sprout astatine 4K solution successful Dolby Vision HDR astatine 60 frames per second. I past dilatory the video down by fractional velocity successful my exertion of choice. This gives you a coagulated 30 frames per second, which is capable to execute the desired effect without feeling overdone.

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Though I ain a decent camera (and I really usage it, from clip to time), I instrumentality the immense bulk of photos connected my iPhone, and that includes hikes and different adventures successful nature. As smartphone cameras get better, truthful excessively volition my photos, and astatine this signifier that’s the main crushed to upgrade my telephone each fewer years.

In summation to utilizing my iPhone for each my hiking photography, I besides use it for navigation with this must-have app.