PHOTOGRAPHY, SMARTPHONE MODES AND TIPS (PART 3)

In the era of exotic smartphones, smartphone photography has been an indispensable part of the photography community. With giants like Google and Apple pulling out all the odds, the privilege of professional photography in smartphones has been established to a whole new level. With the Dual Camera trend in smartphones, initiated by LG, the magical portrait mode effect is also bundled in smartphones. With the implementation of dual camera in budget mid-range phones like the Mi A1 and the Moto G5S Plus the smartphone photography is easily accessible by a wide variety of users. Don’t get me wrong, it is not that single camera photography is great, but dual camera set-up has a lot of good effects. Let us discuss smartphone Photography in detail.

First comes the three basic pillars of photography

• Aperture

• ISO

• Shutter Speed

The main con of smartphone photography is that you can’t vary the aperture in a mobile camera sensor. This is mainly due to the lack of space in a smartphone. With the latest smartphones being just about 6-7 mm thick, the privilege of variable aperture is close to impossible. In smartphones the shutter speed is variable and thus the ISO exposure setting is quite variable. In smartphones ISO ranges from about 200 to1600 in general. With the variable shutter speed and ISO, various other effects can be seen in the present era of smartphones.

• BEAUTIFICATION MODE

In the present selfie driven world, manufacturers like Oppo and Vivo are ruling this segment in the Indian market. Beautification is the improvement of the facial design of a person by smoothening, whitening, flattening the face and enlarging the eyes. These are the basics of beautification and is completely software oriented. The smoothening of the face is done by lavishing the detailing captured by the camera sensor. Whitening is done by increasing the skin exposure. Flattening is done by scaling the face. This mode is generally present in all smartphones and requires the phone to be held steadily.

• HDR MODE

The short for High Dynamic Range Mode. As the name of the mode suggests, this mode adds more dynamic range to the photos. It’s actually supposed to make pictures look better but on the verge of doing that too much, one may lose a lot of detail and the image would come up to be blurry. This is an old photography technique introduced recently on camera smartphones. “Dynamic Range” is the ratio of light to dark in an image. HDR works on the simple principle of taking three pictures at different levels of exposure and then combining their best parts into a single picture. This is also a software oriented mode and we would be doing a detailed article on how to use HDR mode very soon.

• TIME LAPSE

This is another useful mode in the present day smartphones.This mode captures frames at an interval thereby fast forwarding a video played at regular intervals. For instance, videos are captured generally on 60 or 30 fps (frames per second. For beginners, fps is the number of still photos captured by a camera in a second of a scene in motion). With the time-lapse mode on, a single frame is captured at an interval of 1 second or mode. When this recording is played at 30 fps, the recording is fast forwarded 30 times. Time-lapse is used to record very slow motions like the blooming of a petunia flower which when played at a higher fps demonstrates the whole process as a matter of seconds.

• LOW LIGHT

Low-light photography is the biggest challenge in smartphones. Though present day flagships like the Pixel 2 XL or the Galaxy Note 8 have excellent low light performance still there’s a long way to go. The Low-light mode combines pixels in order to capture more light producing a brighter image. This is also software processed and the photos are clicked at a lower megapixel count. Poor camera sensor produce a noisy image and flagship camera sensors produce quality images even in very low lit conditions.

• EXPOSURE BRACKETING

This not specifically a mode. This is camera setting which when enabled, takes every photo at three different exposure levels, one at a higher count then the auto-exposure level and the other at a lower count then the auto-exposure level to suit one’s best shooting requirement. It is with the help of this setting that the HDR mode takes place. The exposure bracketing is useful when the auto-exposure setting in some phones feels fussy.

• PORTRAIT MODE

This is the most sought-after mode in the present smartphone trend. This is basically a dual camera based mode. This mode requires a secondary camera sensor to sense the depth. The cameras need to be of different apertures to create the best portrait mode effect. This effect is generally hardware oriented and has various software tweaks.The software oriented portrait mode effects generally look too much artificial and cartoony. Its hit or a miss situation with the software sensed portraits. But the Google Pixel 2 XL is definitely an exception and it produces even better portraits then the iPhone 8 plus. In the mid-range segment Xiaomi Mi A1 produces the best portrait shots. This is the effect of blurring the background with the subject in perfect focus. This mode is very useful for taking photos when the subject is a human object.

TIPS AND TRICKS FOR SMARTPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY

• Always try opting for the auto-mode. It may not be the best choice for professional photography but trust me, it will definitely be the best shot for casual and intermediate photography because the ISP (Image Signalling Processor) of the present day smartphones are too advanced and thus are finely capable of selecting the best shot for the environment.

• Use the HDR mode cleverly. Over-exposing every shot with the HDR will drastically reduce details of the image thus producing poor shots. Using it ideally will produce properly exposed good-looking shots and thus improving overall image quality with little compromise on detail.

• Depth of field is one of the biggest challenges in smartphones. Though one can achieve it with the help of software tweaks but the effects look too much unrealistic. To achieve hardware oriented depth effect on smartphones, we would recommend opting for smartphones with larger apertures when it comes to camera sensor (lower f-number). This will tend to decrease the area under focus and will thus provide a good bokeh shot.

• It’s always better to crop an image rather than zooming it while shooting. You will notice relative and significant difference while shooting with both the effects. While zooming brushes off details from the picture, excessive cropping may also pixelate. Be clever and ideal while capturing an object at a faraway distance by remembering that you are not shooting with a DSLR. Here we also want to clear a myth that good photography is only possible with a DSLR. This is completely bizarre. One’s talent is very nicely highlighted even in a 5 MP camera because a good photo is after all a good photo.

• It’s always better to edit photos in apps like Snapseed, Photoshop Express or iPhoto rather than simply dumping it into Lightroom or applying filters to cover up the flaws.

• Try not to use your flash much. This will render yellowish skin colour or simply wheat white. They may also give rise to those demonly eyes and thus the shots tend to look very unnatural

Last but the most important part, never forget the rules of photography, even with the smartphones, their utility never fades. Every sensor is capable of capturing great shots if the user is having the potential. It all depends on the amount of practice and time we spend with a gadget that how better we can use it to the best of its ability. Nobody changes into a pro overnight. Give yourself a shot of 3-4 months and you’ll notice the difference yourself and don’t forget, You……….. Are the best!!!