photography | buzz twang

earthrise

January 6th, 2010 Comments

A great Hi-Def movie of an earth rise. Wonderful. (via Open Culture)

the art of photography with a cell phone camera

September 24th, 2009 Comments

You don’t have to be Ansel Adams to take great photos with your cell phone camera. It’s simply a matter of knowing what your gadget can and can’t do, and applying some basic rules of photography.

The first digital cameras on cell phones were more of a novelty than useful, the photos were blurry and overexposed or underexposed if taken under less than optimum lighting conditions. The results were disappointing to say the least.

But, cell phone cameras have improved immensely over the past few years and most of the new phones on the market come with a camera that boasts at least 2.0 MB resolution, allowing for a bit of versatility. While it’s certainly true that a cell phone camera can’t compare to a nice robust digital camera like the Nikon D90 in terms of resolution, lens or speed, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get some stellar shots with your cell phone camera by following a few rules:

- Great light means great photos. The small lens and aperture in cell cameras means that there is not much room for light reflection, and low light means less detail is captured. While this can be used to your advantage with experimental photos (more on that later) it’s not very conducive to crisp clear photos, so shoot in natural daylight when possible. If you’re shooting at night, look for brightly lit areas. One of the best times to get great results is to shoot at dusk during “magic hour” as the contrast between light and shadow is very dramatic, and colors pop. Finally, turn off the flash. More often than not the low quality flash on cell phone cameras creates unwanted artifacts like hot spots.

- Explore the limitations and the positive advantages of your cell phone camera. Know what it can and can’t do. The best way to do this is to shoot test shots under different lighting conditions: interior and exterior daylight (both sunny and cloudy), night exterior and night interior. The process will help you to know what type of light works best with your cell phone camera – and what light does not work – to obtain the results you’re looking for. If your cell camera has manual exposure settings, give them a try and turn off the auto shutter. You will be surprised at how good a photo will come out with a little tweaking and the proper light.

- Be creative. You have a cell camera with great resolution and not that great of a lens, but that doesn’t mean you can’t push your gadget to the edge with a little experimentation. For two years I used the LG EnV (2.0MB) to take photos and I found that a few fun tricks led to some interesting results. To compensate for the flat lens, play with angle – left and right and forward and back – which gives the photo a bit more depth. And, since cell phone cameras don’t have high speed shutters, movement within a locked frame (such as the taxi cab in this shot) can be used to dramatic effect. Also, moving the camera in circles or spinning on the lens axis while you click the shutter is fun way to create experimental photos. The results can be wonderful. Play with your cell camera, see what it can do.

The great thing about digital technology is it’s affordable. You can take photo after photo at relatively no cost. If your cell phone has a MicroSD slot, I highly recommend purchasing a memory card to increase storage capacity. They are affordable and give you the ability to take literally thousands of photos and transfer them to your computer with ease.

The final rule is the most important: have fun. Photography is simpler than it appears to be, it just takes a little practice and patience. And, with a cell phone camera at your fingertips, you never know when the next great moment of inspiration is going to strike.