By Peter Aitken
About this article
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Here at ZATZ Publishing, we've had the opportunity to publish articles by some well known authors and true experts in the field. We have that opportunity once again with Peter Aitken, author of Camera Phone Obsession.
Published by O'Reilly Digital Media, Camera Phone Obsession, http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1932111964/, shows you how to purchase the best camera phones, how to best shoot and print photos, what the best services are for sharing photos, and how to use your camera phones with your PCs.
Now on to Peter's tips...
Digital cameras have come a long way in the past few years. More megapixels (do we ever have enough?) is the most obvious improvement but not the only one -- better lenses, better sensors, and improved controls are part of the picture, too.
But in one hot area of digital imaging, technical specs have taken a huge step backwards. I'm talking of course about camera phones, those ever-more-popular combinations of a cell phone with a digital camera that you'll find in more and more people's pockets, purses, and belt clips these days.
Megapixels? Forget about it -- you'll be lucky to get one megapixel and something on the order of 300-600,000 pixels is a lot more common. Zoom lens? In your dreams, baby. Some camera phones offer an essentially worthless digital zoom, but a true optical zoom is a thing of the future.
Exposure control? Don't make me laugh. Camera phones are all in the "set it and forget it" category, except that you don't even get to set it first! Despite these limitations, camera phones have become very popular because of their wireless abilities. But what's a tech-savvy photographer to do to get the best possible picture quality?
The first thing I suggest is to accept the limitations and special qualities of camera phones. There's just no way you are going to get tack-sharp 11x14 prints, or even 5x7 prints in most cases.
A camera phone frees you from worrying about camera settings because it doesn't have any, or at most a very few. You can concentrate on the photo, and you can be more spontaneous and creative, at least that's what lots of users find.
I think the quest for technical perfection is way overdone by many photographers, at the expense of the more creative aspects of photography. A camera phone is a great way to let your right brain take charge for a while!
Given that camera phones are limited, people still want to get the most out of them. Here are some tips that I've gathered from long experience taking many successful, and many more unsuccessful, camera phone photos.
- Use the handset's highest quality setting. Some camera phones let you choose a lower resolution mode that results in photos with fewer pixels. The advantages are that these smaller images take up less space in the handset's memory and are faster to send over the network. But the picture quality really suffers, so you should avoid using the low resolution setting.
- Move in close. When you are using your 8 megapixel stand-alone camera, you always have the option of later cropping the image to zero in on the subject while still maintaining excellent image quality. This option just isn't there with a camera phone -- there are no pixels to spare for cropping!
You'll have to "crop" in the camera by moving in close to focus on the subject and exclude extraneous distractions. Given that camera phones all have fixed wide-angle lenses, this often means "really close!"
- Avoid backlighting. A backlit subject can be challenging for any photographer but there are tools and techniques, such as spot-metering and fill-flash, that you can use to prevent your subject from being under exposed.
Camera phone users don't have these techniques at their disposal, so unless you are intentionally seeking a silhouette effect it is best to avoid backlighting when possible. You may think you can use software to adjust the photo later, but this too is a limited option.
The fact is, the sensors used in most camera phones are not of the highest quality and do a pretty poor job of capturing shadow detail. There's no harm in trying but don't expect great results.
- Avoid dim light. With small aperture lenses and low-sensitivity sensors, camera phones are not well suited for low light photography. Sometimes you have to deal with whatever illumination is available, and you'll have to make the best of it. But for best results, stay away from low light situations when you can. You can experiment with your handset to see what its capabilities are in low light situations.
- Hold the camera steady. I know this is good advice for photography with any kind of camera, but it is particularly relevant to camera phones. Their small aperture lenses and low sensitivity sensors mean that exposure time is often longer than you might expect, with the attendant possibility of motion blur.
Blur in a photo is almost sure to be due to camera movement. Focus won't be the culprit because of the fixed focus lenses and large depth of field in camera phones.
From a technical perspective, camera phones are almost a bad joke compared with today's stand-alone digital cameras. Their wireless capability and the fact that you almost always have it with you are the driving forces behind their popularity. You shouldn't let their technical limitations get in the way of creative fun.
Peter Aitken has been writing about technology for over 15 years. He has 40+ books to his credit including Digital Camera Design Guide, XML the Microsoft Way, and Excel Programming Weekend Crash Course. He is proprietor of PGA Consulting, providing application development, web design, and technical writing services. http://www.pgacon.com/pga_consulting.htm.