Hi! I'm Adam
and welcome to beautiful South Bank here in Brisbane.
I run photography workshops here in Brisbane for BNE Lens
and by far the most popular workshop
is the one on mobile phone photography.
So I figured today I'd give you a few tips
on taking better photos with your mobile phone.
Because after all
the mobile phone is the camera that we usually have with us
no matter what.
OK, so let's start by looking at
how to get the best possible image quality
from your mobile phone.
Step one is a really simple one
but it's one we never think of
and that is
clean your lens.
Well duh!
Give it a bit of a wipe before you start taking photos
preferably with one of those microfibre cloths
that you get with glasses
so that it doesn't scratch the lens.
Because often you'll have fingerprints or dust
or little things that are going to
take away from the quality of your images.
from being in your pocket.
So that's step one.
Also, when I see people taking photos
with their mobile phones
I usually see them doing this.
Or this.
That's problematic
because in order to get really clear shots,
you want your phone to be as stable as possible.
So when you're holding it with one hand
It's gonna kinda be moving around a lot like that.
So it's best to hold it with two hands
and then brace your arms
so that it's not moving around
and you won't get motion blur.
You'll have really sharp images.
But then comes the question "Well..."
"How do I actually press the shutter button?
Am I gonna use my thumb here?"
Well,
There's a better way.
What a lot of people don't realise is that
your volume keys on the side of your phone
are actually going to act as the shutter.
Oh my god!
So instead of pressing the shutter button on the screen
you should be using the volume button
So you're holding it with two hands
using the volume button to actually take the photo.
But at the end of the day
this is a game of focus.
The next one's a really important one.
And that is that you need to focus.
A lot of people just point the camera and press the shutter,
and that's it.
But what you need to do is actually select your subject.
because the camera's not actually necessarily
going to focus in the right place.
So why is focussing so important?
Aaaahhh......
I don't know.
Well, there's actually two reasons.
The first is obviously
to have your subject clear and in focus.
But the other is that mobile phone cameras
actually use the focal point
to determine the metering.
That is how bright or dark it's actually going to make the image
So,
Let's just say I wanna take a picture of this leaf
for example.
So if I just point the camera at it
and press the shutter
You'll notice when you look at the picture
two things:
The first is that
the leaf actually isn't in focus.
So without actually selecting the focal point,
it's just not gonna be sharp.
But the other problem you can see here
is that
there's parts on the leaf that are way too bright.
and that's because the phone didn't know that it needed to
make that area of the photo well-exposed.
It tried to just take the whole average of the photo.
So let's try that again,
but this time
Let's focus on the leaf.
But how do I do that?
How do I focus on the leaf anyway?
Well it's really really easy
all you've gotta do is just touch the screen
where you want it to focus.
and you'll see right away
that that darkens down the image.
Now,
the camera that I'm filming this with in the background
is obviously now in complete darkness.
But the fact is that's not my subject
My subject is the leaf.
I need to decide what I want to be well-exposed
in the photo.
So when I focus on the leaf
and take the photo,
now looking at it,
you'll see the leaf is beautifully crisp,
and in focus.
And it's well-exposed.
Not too bright.
So taking a look at that and looking at that
and then looking at
the other one
Wow! What a difference!
So that's a really important tip.
Make sure you select your focusing point.
Especially in scenes like this
where you've got some really bright and dark
parts of the photo.
And just to make it extra clear,
Here's the two photos side by side.
OK, so you can see how selecting that focus point
doesn't just make the picture sharp
in the right places,
but it also helps with the exposure.
But the question is what if I wanna change the exposure
of the whole picture?
Because often you're going to want to do that
because when a mobile phone sees the scene,
it doesn't know what you're photographing.
It doesn't know what the scene is.
It just measures different levels of brightness
and just tries to work it out based on that.
So if it sees a scene like this,
this wood is really dark
and there's not really a lot of bright colours in the scene
so the camera's going to actually think
"Hey, that's too dark!"
and it needs to brighten it up a little bit.
So what you need to do is actually tell the camera
"No no no no no"
I wanna make that a little bit darker
because
that's actually what the scene looks like.
And sometimes you might just want to make it darker
to make it look better
You might think that darker looks better
or brighter looks better.
It's all about the creative decisions that you're making
because after all,
you're the photographer.
So,
if I'm going to take a picture of this,
I actually probably want it to be darker
than what the camera's gonna give me.
So how do I do that?
Well, let's first see
what the camera's gonna give us
if we don't adjust the exposure at all.
So
I just
compose my scene
focus
I'm using two hands of course for stability
focus
use the volume key to take the picture
and there we have it.
So what does that look like?
Let's have a look.
Eeh
It's OK. It's not a horrible picture,
but I know that it could be better.
So I'm going to actually bring the exposure down.
'Cause if you have a look at the trees
Where the trees are in the reflection in that window,
they're a little bit washed out looking.
and the wood is brighter than it really looks here.
So,
I'm gonna go back to the camera
and this time I'm going to
adjust the exposure.
So how do I do that?
Well...
compose the scene like I did before...
focus...
Now you'll see when I focus
there's this
little light globe with plus and minus next to it.
That's where we can adjust the exposure.
On an iPhone it's going to be a little sun,
so on different phones the icon will be different.
Could be a light globe, could be a sun.
But the principle is the same and it works the same way.
What you can do is simply
drag up or down on that sun or light globe,
and it's going to make the image brighter or darker.
So
I compose
press
and then I drag
I wanna make it darker so I drag down.
I could drag up,
and make it brighter
but I'm going to bring it down a little bit.
So probably about there,
shutter,
and let's see what the result is.
For me,
that is much much better.
If we compare it with the other,
This is the before,
this is with the camera making the decisions,
and this is with us making the decisions.
Camera.
Us
Now, you might like this one more.
You might say "Well I can see more details of the wood"
because it's brighter.
But,
You know, that's OK
you're allowed to have bad taste,
but,
this is actually for me
a stronger image because
the reflection is a little bit punchier,
and
the wood is still looking more authentic
to what it actually looks like here.
Now sometimes you're actually going to want to take
a moving subject.
You know, maybe like some of those jump photos
where people are jumping into the air,
or maybe you're taking sports photos with your phone.
Things like that.
It's really hard to actually capture the perfect moment
that decisive moment
that captures exactly the moment that you want.
I said "moment" a lot!
Anyway...
So
How do you do that?
Actually one really great thing about mobile phones
is that when you press the shutter,
if you hold it down,
it's actually going to take a bunch of photos in rapid fire.
So that's what we call Burst Mode.
So,
there's a guy back here who's doing stuff with his skateboard
so I'm gonna ask if I can
actually take some photos of him
with my mobile phone
and I'm gonna use burst mode to show you how you can capture
that perfect moment mid-action.
Alright, so...
How're you going?
Yeah, not too bad, bro.
What's your name, by the way?
Oh, Jack.
OK, cool. You have Instagram or anything?
Yeah, I do, yeah.
OK, I'll get that off you in a sec.
Alright.
So, yeah,
I just wanna, you know,
take a few shots of you jumping that thing on your board,
Um...
So, I'll just go to set up over here,
OK
And if you can sorta do your thing
And I'll just take some photos. Cool.
Cool. Thanks!
Alright, so I just took those photos on Burst Mode
and what it did was it took
probably about twenty photos
as he went by and did that little jump.
So
I'm just gonna take a look in the gallery here,
and you'll see...
that there are...
here we go...
So 44 photos
for that jump.
But if I open that up,
It's chosen what it thinks is the best one,
but I can actually scroll through those photos
and pick
one that I think captures the ultimate moment.
Like this one here.
This one here is pretty good.
So
I would actually go with that one.
Now, for me to actually capture this moment
by just pressing the shutter once
at that exact precise moment
Well, you can do it,
but
you don't need to.
You can just
put it on burst mode
and you'll actually be able to capture the perfect moment
no matter what.
You don't have to actually just get that precise moment.
So it's a really handy thing to know that you can do.
So I'm actually back home now.
I had to come back early.
But there's still one thing that I wanted to mention.
And that is about zooming.
When you're using your mobile phone to take photos,
whatever you do, don't zoom!
Do. Not. Zoom.
Why?
Because actually, the camera isn't doing anything except
selecting a smaller part of the photo
and making that the whole thing.
So what you end up with
is a reduction in image quality.
Because it's essentially just cropping the full-sized image
It's using a smaller part of the sensor.
That is,
you actually have the same sized photo,
but you're using less mega- pixels of the sensor
to create that photo.
So if you want to take a photo of something
say I wanna take these flowers here.
I wanna photograph these flowers
There's two ways that I could get closer.
I can zoom,
or I can actually just literally
get closer.
So
the lesson here is
zoom with your feet
not with your fingers.
So let me just
show you the difference in the quality
of two photos:
one of them zoomed in using the camera zoom,
and one of them zoomed by just getting closer to the subject.
Alright. So first up,
I'm going to take a picture of
maybe just this white flower here as my subject
I might get a few of the other ones in the photo
but
this is the one I'm really
interested in getting in the photo.
So,
let me firstly
zoom
using the phone's zoom.
I'm gonna zoom right in.
There we go.
Focus
and
take the shot.
Now I'm going to make the camera close.
rather than using the optical zoom.
Sorry. Than using the DIGITAL zoom
in the camera.
So
get close to
OK.
So
let's compare these two images.
Here is the one that we took getting close,
If I
pinch it out
you'll see there's still a lot of detail in there.
It's looking alright.
Now let's go to the one
that we did using the op... the digital zoom.
Look at that!
Look at the difference in quality there.
And you can see also that it affects the depth of field.
Because when you get closer to the subject,
your depth of field actually becomes shallower.
So those out of focus parts in the background
become more blurry
which makes your subject stand out even more.
So
there's more than one reason why it's good to zoom
physically,
zoom with your feet rather than with
Your fingers.
Because
not only does it give you better image quality
in terms of the megapixels,
but
it's also going to have a nicer effect
in terms of the depth of field.
So once again,
here's the image taken with the
digital zoom
that is, pinching out on your camera,
and here's the one
that's taken by just getting closer.
So there you have the basics of mobile photography.
But we've only just scratched the surface
of how you can use your phone to take amazing photos.
So I'm gonna keep uploading videos here
relating to different aspects of mobile photography.
Perhaps some apps that you can use
to edit your photos in-phone
with really amazing results.
Camera apps that give you more control,
more creative control over how your pictures end up.
Also some composition techniques,
using the light,
ways to create creative images as well.
All of that is in upcoming videos that I've got planned.
So be sure to subscribe,
and like this video if you did get something out of it,
Also, if you're in Brisbane,
you can always join one of our workshops and learn face to face
by checking out the BNE Lens website
where you can book mobile photography workshops,
you can book photography workshops with your DSLR
or even with a point and shoot.
Whatever it is you've got
and whatever it is you want to learn,
we can tailor-make a package
to suit what you wanna get out of it.
So it'd be great to see you at one of those as well.
Apart from that,
I've got nothing more to say so I'll see you in the next video,
and thanks for watching!