Planning your smartphone photography

When we start to talk about specialised photography, travel, nature and wildlife are good examples, we often think of Mirrorless and DSLR as being the only options. However, most of us carry a very capable camera with us every day on our smartphone.

In this podcast I talk about what I use my smartphone for when I'm travelling, and a few accessories you might want to consider. If your needs are quite general and the results from a smartphone cover most of them, you might be able to use it as your primary camera.

Some additions to consider are:

• A stabiliser
• A clip-on lens
• A tripod

The great advantage of a smartphone is that everything will fit into a small pouch.

I mentioned my smartphone course and that's currently available on a 'pay what you feel' basis. You can find out more about the course by visiting the course tour.

Or you can go straight to the course itself here: Discovering Smartphone Photography

You can see some testimonials on my website: Outlines and testimonials.

It's time for another podcast...

Join me for my live mini-workshop on Tuesday, 26th February to learn more about composition... And, if you can't make the live event, you'll have access to the recording. Find out more here.

Transcript

>> Graham: 0:08

Foreign. I've spoken about smartphone photography before and I thought this time I would talk about it specifically in relation to wildlife photography. But this applies equally to travel photography as well. So, if you are planning a trip soon or this year, and you either don't have, a mirror camera or a DSLR camera or something, a sort of traditional camera to take with you, don't forget that if you've got a phone and most people carry smartphones these days, then you've already got quite a powerful camera. Or at least the chances are that the camera that you have is very good. Now, you might be familiar with it or you might not be. And one of the reasons for doing this as well is that, at least at the time when this, podcast is going out in, March 2024, I am running a pay what you feel promotion on my online smartphone photography course. So there's details about that, in, in the description and also on my website. So if you do want to get into photography or at least be in a position to take some good photographs and you're not familiar with what your smartphone is capable of delivering, then I definitely recommend that before you do anything else, just spend a little bit of time getting familiar with it and looking at the kind of results you can get. And the reason I say that is that even though, sure, if I'm doing wildlife photography, then I like to have a 400 mil lens and all this kind of stuff. And I will definitely get different results from a DSLR or mirrorless camera than I will with my smartphone. But the smartphone will take you quite a long way to getting good photographs. And depending on what exactly you're photographing and what you want to do with those photographs, if you're primarily looking at social media or sharing over email or even photo books, if you are shooting the biggest file you can on your phone, the chances are that it will be perfectly adequate to put together a photo book at the end of the trip. So, as always with these things, this, phrase, begin with the end in mind. So think about what you want to do with those photographs and that will tell you to some extent at least, how appropriate it would be to just rely on your smartphone. So, having said all of that, what do you need to think about if you are planning to take your smartphone? So the first thing is, I mean, obviously the advantage of it, first of all is that it's quite small, certainly compared to, a mirrorless or DSLR camera, you've already got it so you're not looking at spending any more money. And there are certain aspects of it that I find are more convenient generally on a smartphone than on a larger camera. And the two things that I tend to use my smartphone for, first of all, panoramas. So if you're not familiar with the panorama mode on your smartphone, do get familiar with it because it's quite a useful feature. And also I recommend you practice with it because you basically and again this will depend on the phone you actually have. There'll be slight variations in how they operate. But essentially what you do is you pick your spot, you hold your camera up, press the shutter button and then when it's ready to go, it'll let you know and then you simply pivot and get a very wide view. So this can be basically the photograph can be as wide as you like. Now one tip, if you're using panorama mode, people, I've seen people use the, the phone in a kind of landscape mode because they're thinking landscape. Because you're most of the time anyway, you're likely to be pivoting from one side to the other rather than up and down. But you might also want to go up and down. So that's creative option for you. But what I do when I'm going from side to side is I hold the camera up in portrait mode which. So in portrait mode it just means the long edge of the photograph is the vertical edge. In landscape mode it's the horizontal edge. So do it in portrait mode and it just means you get more detail in the final photograph because you're going to do the width anyway. You're going to control that and as you pivot round and you'll decide where you want to start, where you want to finish with your panorama. But just hold the camera up in portrait mode and shoot that way. So that's one of the things I'll use my smartphone for when I'm away. And often I get really good results. To me they're perfectly usable. Not so much for the kind of fine art photography that I'll put on a wall because in my opinion, the smartphone camera doesn't produce the kind of resolution on the image that I want. And also although the lenses are good, I prefer my, my larger lenses. But that's just me. I'm m a bit of a traditionalist. That's what I've been using for decades now. however, once you've shot something like that, if you're thinking of a photo book or it might be on social media, one of those banner pictures that you have on a Facebook profile or LinkedIn or somewhere else. so a panorama can be very useful, as a format in terms of the aspect ratio of the image, for those kind of either banner pictures or to have an unusual, something a bit more unusual in a photo book if you're going to go that way. So do look into that if you're not familiar with it. It's quite a powerful feature I think. Now the other thing I like to use my smartphone for is just shooting video. And the reason is, again it's very simple to do on the smartphone, plus it's very easy to hold the smartphone steady. And you can also get these little holders that have a gimbal in them. So as you just move your hand, you change direction, as you're moving shooting video, it'll actually keep the smartphone stable so you're not having to basically deal with a video picture where the picture is bouncing up and down all the time. So if you like to shoot a lot of video but you only want to take your smartphone, then that's something I would recommend you look into. Now I don't have any recommendations for you on that, so there'll be one or two other things I mentioned that you might want to look into. So again I always, what I do if I'm looking at something like this that I'm not familiar with, first of all, I'll ask someone who I know is doing that kind of work and just get their opinion and find out what they're using. I also like to just Google reviews for different bits of kit. So I'll have a look, see what's available, how much different things cost, because usually there's a budget involved somewhere. And then just look for user reviews online and see which kind of gets the best reviews for the budget that I'm working with. So if you're planning to shoot a lot of video or you want to experiment more with video, then I do recommend you look into getting one of those kind of gimbal, stabilized holders for your, for your smartphone. And obviously you need to make sure it's it will work with the smartphone model that you have. The other thing I like about shooting video with the smartphone is the difficulty I have with dslr and I have shot things handheld. Like there was a tiger in India on one occasion and it was just in the bush and I really wanted to get a bit of movie of of this tiger. But the problem is I'm shooting it with a 400 mil lens on it and that means that it's quite heavy. The center of gravity is away from me and it is really easy to wobble. Even I was in a little car, little four wheel drive and anybody moving in that vehicle means that that movement results in me moving very slightly with the camera. But because it's a longer lens that movement is amplified so you get a lot more wobble in those images. It's very hard to keep them stable. Obviously the ideal is to have that kind of camera on a tripod but that's again not always practical. So if you're planning to shoot video have a think about what you're going to be using, when you're going to be where you're going to be rather than what you're going to be photographing. And just hand holding might be perfectly adequate for what you want to do. Or if you want to experiment and get a bit more, just get one of these stabilized mounts that I was talking about. Okay, so let's talk about lenses because often you'll find on your certainly the newer and the current smartphones now have several lenses on them. So the lenses are ah, basically if you hold it, hold the smartphone in front of you so that you're looking at the display, the screen, the lenses are on the other side and they are what's being used to take a photograph. And what happens with if you're shooting a picture of yourself so you're doing a selfie whether it's still or video is that that's achieved in most smartphones by flipping a mirror. And that's the reason why if you've taken a selfie of yourself and you've got let's say a T shirt with a brand name on or a slogan or something, you'll see that the characters are all reversed. That's because there's a mirror or at least a lot of smartphones use a mirror to get that selfie shot. So the lenses I'm more interested in are what's on the back of the camera. And you're going to have the kind of normal view which, the times one which is the default. But you may have a wide angle, it might be a multiplied by 0.5 that would be your wide angle lens and you may even have a telephoto which might be a times two. So first Thing to do if you don't know is to find out what lenses you've got and what that gives you. And perhaps the easiest way of doing that is to just do some test photographs, go into the camera and somewhere again it will depend on the model you're using. You'll be able to select the magnification whether it's normal, whether it's a telephoto zoomed in a little bit or a wide angle and just see what results you get. And importantly try blowing them up. Put them onto your laptop or whatever kind of computer you're using and try and get them up to a size that you're likely to be looking at them. so if it's social media, you know you want them, maybe a full screen, if you. Again full screen is helpful if you're thinking of printing them in a, in a book. But just see what the quality of the image is like with the standard lenses in the camera before you do anything else. The thing you can do is to buy clip on lenses. So you may have seen these around and someone, I was a colleague with me when I was in Australia doing photography, he specialized in smartphone photography and had a whole set of clip on lenses for his camera. And these will give you wide angle, they'll give you telephoto, they'll give you a lot more range and variation than you get on the standard smartphone. And where this is useful is ah, particularly one of getting closer to your subject. So it's almost mimicking what you'll get with a mirrorless or DSLR camera. Now I'm not going to say the quality is the same but you'll be able to get a similar kind of result for a much smaller investment in terms of money. And also the lenses themselves are very small. So one of the things I quite like when you start putting together a smartphone photography kit if you like, is that you might have a stabilized holder, you might have some clip on lenses but all of that stuff is quite small. And I'll talk about tripods in a moment too. But even a little tripod for a smartphone can be very small. So all of this stuff can go in a bum bag. whereas for me with what I do I've normally got a backpack full of gear. So that's another advantage of the smartphone. Not only have you got it but also it's much smaller. And the chances are to buy just one or two additional accessories is certainly going to cost you less than Getting a mirrorless or DSLR kit. And also physically it's likely to be much smaller so it's easier to carry around. You can maybe have it in your hand luggage if you're traveling by air. So definitely some advantages there. Now the reason that I want to talk about clip on lenses, although I have spoken about clip on lenses with telephoto, is the one thing to avoid on in fact any digital camera and that is to zoom in by basically doing what we call a digital zoom. And that you can, can do that. If you're setting up for a photograph on a smartphone camera, usually what you'll do is tap the image on the display and that will allow you to set your focal point, make it darker or lighter the image. But also if you use two fingers like you do with maps or anything else on most of the technology we use these days, if you use two fingers and just spread your fingers apart, that will zoom in. But what that is is basically what we call a digital zoom. So all it's doing is spreading the pixels out. So hopefully you're aware that the image that you're looking at is made up of what we call pixels with little squares. And that's determined by the sensitivity of the gear you have, how many pixels are physically there. When you do a digital zoom you kind of zoom in so you make the image appear larger by spreading those pixels apart. So you're not actually adding any more detail, you're simply spreading apart what you already have. And what that will do is immediately lower the quality of the image. So I recommend against it. The reason for using clip on lenses is that you have what we call an optical zoom. And that means that the zooming part of it is achieved by just using a digital, a different lens. So it's done through the optics and that means that the resolution pixels you're using remain the same. So you get a much better quality image. Obviously you need to make sure that the clip on lens quality is good. So as I said before, ask around, look for reviews, all that kind of stuff. But if you get a decent quality clip on lens, there's no reason why you shouldn't be producing some very good results. Again, in my opinion, they don't match what you would get with mirrorless, ah, camera or dslr, one of the bigger cameras. But nonetheless you'll get a decent picture and hopefully do a little bit better than a lot of photos I have seen, either on land and I certainly used to see it a lot, When I was going out photographing humpback whales, people would hold up an iPad or an iPhone and you've got a lot of ocean, a lot of sky and the tiniest whale in the middle of the the picture. And that's not terribly exciting to be honest. I mean it's very exciting if it's your first time seeing a whale, but looking at it objectively and photographically and if you're listening to this, assuming you want to get some pretty m decent results. So that's not going to cut it. So look at optical lenses. Definitely have a look at that. The clip on lenses. Look at what options you have for your phone, what the price is and just think about what it will give you, in terms of better results than the person next to you with the same phone taking the same shot. You'll be able to do a lot more. And some of the clip ons I've seen include several lenses. So just having the one clip, it doesn't mean you're constantly taking the lens off and putting a different one on the smartphone. You might be able to get away with a clip on that has several focal lengths on it. Anyway, that's, that's something, as I say, it's not something I have a great deal of experience with personally, but it's definitely worth considering if you want to go down that path. I spoke about tripods. obviously when we think of tripods, you're probably going to be thinking of the big tripods that you would use with a traditional camera. And I use a travel tripod which is a lot smaller, it weighs a kilo and it will go into a backpack very easily. But even so, if you're thinking in terms of smartphones and putting things in a bum bag, or you know, just a little pouch, that's, that kind of tripod is still going to be very, very bulky. So there are some very small tripods that you can buy and they will support your smartphone because again the smartphone is quite light compared to a larger camera. So you can get away with something that's very small that can fold up and go into your pocket or again somewhere just convenience, you can carry it and that gives you that extra flexibility. So if you're shooting at night or you just want to get a really stable shot, then you've got that option to have the tripod with you. So once again have a look at what's available. Obviously you'll have a budget and just see what kind of reviews you can get. Again, I would say the tripod's less critical, because tripod's a fairly simple piece of kit and doesn't particularly impact the image quality. But it's worth. Again, I always believe in getting the best I can afford and I like to shop around. And when I do make a decision, I'm reasonably confident that's the right one. Okay. So I was also having to think about, you know, what are the advantages of smartphone cameras. Now there are some features that you may find, that you may or may not find on a DSLR or a mirrorless camera. And a couple of things that are on your smartphone are going to be hdr, which stands for high dynamic range. And also then you may have a night mode. This will depend on the camera that you have. One thing I will say, the cameras like you have the flash built in. Certainly when you're doing wildlife, never ever use flash photography. So that's just a rule. So do go in there and make sure you turn the flash off so that it's not an option for the camera. So do remember to do that. Now. so with night mode, obviously if you have that, it gives you better performance in low light, which can be a real boon. And I've even found with an older digital camera I had, it's going back a few years now, but the camera in my iPhone at the time, was performing much better in low light than my top old, what was a top of the range DSLR camera. So don't underestimate it and again, just practice with it at home before you go away. Get familiar with it and get familiar with the results. And you need to make a call on whether or not you feel those results are going to be good enough for what you want to use those photographs for. but do check it out first. Now high dynamic range might sound complicated. Basically what it is, the camera will take several, when you, when you press the shutter button, it will actually take several images. Usually it's three, might be five. But basically you get this multiple exposure going on and what they are, let's say the case of three, you'll have obviously your normal exposure. But having the camera having decided what the right exposure is now you can override that exposure by using the touchscreen. if you don't know how to do that, you'll need to check on your phone or you can take my course. That's up to you. So I'll get that pitch in There. but once you've set the exposure on the screen, what the, what HDR will give you is that the camera will take one photograph at that exposure. It will then take another one overexposed and another one underexposed. So overexposed is where you just make the image much brighter than it was. So you, might overexpose, as in start to have a lot more light, maybe begin to burn out your subject. And underexpose is going the other way where you have, a much darker image. Now, what the camera then does is it sort of stitches those three images together. And the benefit of it is that the image that you'll get, so you'll get still got one image, but it'll be an HDR image, is generally, if you've got, let's say a bright area and a dark area, both of those areas are likely to be. It's easier to see what's actually in them. So if you're taking a photograph on a bright day, but you've got something in shadow in part of the image, if you just take one normal photograph without using hdr, you're likely to find that some of that shot is overexposed, it's too bright, you can't make out the detail, and, some of it's too dark. So you, again, can't make out the detail. And you may have exposed to one thing or the other. With hdr, the idea is that the dynamic range, which is basically the difference between the brightest part of the image and the darkest part, that that's your dynamic range. And HDR basically, means that with those two extremes, you can still see what's there. So it means that, if you're taking a photograph on a bright sunny day, you can still see what's in the brighter area and still see what's in shadow. now, usually. Now I'm, saying this because I think this is true, but you're very welcome to, correct me. I believe HDR is on most cameras is on as a default, but it's worth checking on your own camera and also just have a look and see on in the menus if there's a way of changing, how the HDR is operating and then experiment with that a little bit so that you're familiar with it and you know what kind of results you're going to get. So as with all of these things, as with all of the planning for wildlife, for travel, whatever, do practice as much as you can before you go. And if it's Wildlife. I always recommend photographing birds whether they're in a tree or flying around because that will it's a much tougher subject. But again think of what you're likely to be photographing when you go away and then just practice, see what you've got near your home and, and get some shots in, experiment with different settings on the camera, maybe different clip on lenses. Just get really familiar with the kit so that you know what does what and you can, it's very sort of almost instinctive to pick the right thing when you're there on your holiday, during your travel, whatever it is you're doing. Another thing that is a real benefit and a real bonus I think on smartphone is, is that first of all you can usually edit the photograph on the phone. Whether that's just cropping it, getting the horizon straight. If you didn't manage to not do that it might be changing the colors, making it monochrome, re cropping the photograph so that your subject's in a different part of the frame. All these sort of things that would be quite normal for and I called this the sort of post processing part of the photograph. But that editing capability, most M cameras and I hesitate to say all because I don't know but I definitely say that most cameras give you some sort of editing capability on the phone or if you are familiar with things like Photoshop or Lightroom, you can also get versions of those to run on, on the phone. Again you'll need to just check software because you need to check just make sure that your, your phone, not only the hardware in the phone but the, the software version, the, that you're running on the phone is compatible with any addition, any external package that you want to, or app that you want to put onto the phone. So that's a real bonus because it does mean that you don't need to take a laptop with you particularly if you've got you can just do it on the phone. Obviously you need to keep your phone charged but do everything you need to do on the phone and then of course if you've got access to the Internet which might be through WI Fi or through the cellular network, you can then post straight away you can share images, you can put them on a drive on the cloud and share images that way. some phones have their own built in sharing capabilities. You can make use of that, share albums, you can put them on Facebook, Instagram, anywhere else you want to share your photographs. So if you want to, if you are traveling somewhere and you really just want to keep sharing, particularly if you're traveling, traveling for an extended period, I find it much easier to just do things as I go. Because if it's a month or two, let's say, for whatever reason, if I'm going back at the end of it, at the original photographs, I maybe can't remember exactly where I was or what inspired me or whatever it was, what the story was. Whereas while it's still fresh, you can share the story of why you took that photograph. again, coming back to the visual storyteller idea that I like to talk about when it comes to, comes to, composition and why you take what you take. So if you are shooting a place, you might want to do a wide angle or a panoramic shot and then do some telephotos. You know, zoom into different parts of that scene and tell the story that way. That would look pretty cool, I think, if you're putting together a photo book, because you can have that kind of establishing shot that shows people where you are, then dive into the detail and talk about little bits of detail that particularly caught, your eye when you were there. So there's lots of things you can do. And this. One of the things I like about smartphone is it does give you a lot of flexibility and a lot of options. Now when you are using, the phone, you do remember, I think the biggest mistake people make is they forget to clean their lens. So do give it a wipe if you, The best thing to use, I think, is a microfiber cloth and some cleaning fluid. And it's the kind of stuff I use, the stuff I get from the opticians and certainly, where I am, they'll just top it up again whenever I need more. So it doesn't cost me anything. And, it's useful service, so you can use that stuff. And if you do wear glasses or you've got sunglasses, then you may well have something like that with you. Anyway, so, again, no, additional gear to carry to, to keep your lens clean. just one other thing. Now obviously in the course that I do that, I give you a lot more information. But one other thing that a lot of people aren't aware of is that in addition to the button that comes up on the screen, when you're in photography, camera mode. So usually there's a button of some sort. in the case of the smartphone I'm using, it's, just A round, it's a white round dot, quite a big one. But if you, you might want to shoot from low down so at ground level, or hold the cat, hold the smartphone up and take your photograph or even have it off to the side or do something peculiar. So again with, I'm going to say most phones because I don't know for sure, but most of them, when you're in camera mode, you can also release the shutter by pressing one of the volume buttons. So they're usually side of the, of the phone. And that mean that may well be a more convenient, place to release the shutter than trying to get your finger onto, this dot on the, on the screen. So, again check that out, make sure that that is the case with your phone. And then that can certainly make life a lot easier. You don't need to contort so much, to to get a good photograph. And that's pretty much it. That's what I wanted to cover on this podcast. So I hope there are some ideas there for you. if you're going off and you're doing travel, you normally have a DSLR or mirrorless with you, then by all means, that's great. That's certainly, what I do. But it is nice to know that you have quite a capable sort of general camera with you in your smartphone and most of us will have the smartphone with us anyway. And with a little bit of thought and just thinking things through a little bit, maybe by buying one or two accessories, you can sort of expand your photographic, capabilities if you like, by just having the smartphone do a little bit more for you photographically. And of course if you take a laptop with you, anything like that, you can always dump everything onto a laptop. If you don't have Internet access and you're worried about losing, your shot. we did have a little bit of a joke going around that if you're using a camera made in China, they probably backed everything up for you anyway, but we won't go there. So, anyway, yeah, so hopefully that's given you some ideas. hopefully it's made you think twice about what your smartphone camera is capable of. And it may, even if you're just doing general purpose photography, you may not even have to invest in a, more traditional camera at all. If the phone turns out to do everything you need, gives you the resolution you need, the lens quality is good enough, and these days that may well be the case for many, many people, then there's absolutely no need to have the extra expense of, ah, a bit of kit that quite honestly a lot of people leave in the cupboard and bring out once a year when they go on holiday and then they're trying to remember how to use it again. So, to my mind, as much as I love cameras and photography, that is really a waste of time, a waste of money to invest in something that you're not going to make good use of. So the camera's there. As I say, it's already. You already have one, so why not get the most from it? Hope it's been useful. I'll speak to you again in the next podcast. Bye for now. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Now, I just want to say thank you for tuning in and joining me in the, Wildlife and Adventure Photography podcast. If you have enjoyed today's episode, please give me a like a subscribe, maybe tell your friends, and by all means leave a comment. And if there is a subject you would like me to cover in the future, please let me know and I'll, be very happy to do my best. So thanks again for, joining me and I look forward to seeing you again. Next podcast. Bye for now.