4 Tips for improving your iPhone Photography

Mobile phone cameras these days are getting better and better but, having a better camera, won't neccesarily translate into better photos. Here are 4 tips in taking better photos with your phone.

1. Clean your lens

The first thing I do when I take out my phone to take a photo, is wipe the lens with my t-shirt. There is often dirt or smudges that have collected on the lens from holding my phone or putting it in my pocket. 

2. Control your exposure

Sometimes you want to make a photo darker or brighter than what your iPhones default settings want to do. Tap your finger on the screen, a little sun icon will appear on the right hand side. If you slide up and down with your finger, it will adjust the brightness of your photo. 

3. Straighten your horizon

This is a mistake I see people making all the time. It's something that once you know about, you can't not notice anymore! Make sure horizons are level. Use the Grid feature on your iPhone and use those lines to check the horizon is level.  If you have already taken a photo with the horizon un level, you can also straighten it using iPhones built in photo editor.

4. Don't use the zoom*

When you zoom with an iPhones camera, it is not using digital zoom and not optical zoom. What this basically means, it's it's zooming in on the actual photograph and cropping it. The more you zoom in, the worse the resolution of the image is becoming. Rather "zoom with your feet" when you using a phone. This means, when you want to zoom in, walk closer to your subject, and to zoom out you walk further away. You will then be using the full resolution of your phones camera and get the best possible quality image out of it. 

*Newer iPhones like the 7Plus, 8Plus and iPhoneX, have two lenses - a wide angle and telelphoto lens. If you have one of those phones, switching between the two lenses is perfect - but don't zoom in any further than 2x on the camera as it will then also switch to digital zoom.

I am currently running a 5 day mobile phone photography challenge. If that sounds like fun, sign up here.

That's it for today, hope it is helpful to someone!

Later, 

Dylan