Often times we want to capture good memories and moments and majority of that time a professional photographer is not close-by. So that becomes a problem at that time, but then we are in the 21st century and technology has been so kind to the human race and we've got awesome mobile devices that can act as makeshifts..You want to capture maybe a scenery or a person or an object you can easily get your mobile phone and click! click ! its done. Personally I wouldn't compare the picture quality of an actual digital camera to a mobile phone but we can bridge the gap and snap awesome pictures with your mobile phone and that's what you are about to learn..
On an actual professional digital camera there are several settings that can be tweaked to achieve the desired effect you want in the photograph and they are ISO, Shutter speed, Aperture, white balance and etc....Most of these settings are not really seen on our mobile phone cameras but not to worry.
The settings we can commonly find on our mobile phones are ISO, white balance, exposure and if you are lucky you get manual focus and shutter speed too..
Now the ISO is a setting that regulates the ambient light otherwise commonly known as environment light and on most mobile devices that setting is automated..On mobile phones ISO numbers ranges from 100 to 1600 in this manner 100,200,400,800,1600 it could be more of less on your mobile phone. Now a lesser ISO number means a low amount of light and a high number means vice-versa. Now imagine you want to capture and image in an over exposed environment, by over exposed I mean a heavily lit environment for example under a sun, If you don't like the amount of light on the photo or you need a darker effect you can simply reduce the amount of ISO, personally I recommend 200 under such environment.. Below is a picture captured with my mobile device under intense sun light
Naturally before i tweaked my ISO the image was too bright..That goes for exposed environments..What about for dark environments?? If you read this post carefully your first thought would be to hike up your ISO right?? Yes you are absolutely correct. Increasing ISO will allow more light but there is a discrepancy because increasing ISO in poorly lit environment creates noise( tiny dots or details you see on the image) in the image which is not so good for such kind of photographs I'll recommend the use of flash lights with a low ISO number 400 maybe..But using flash lights on same mobile used for snapping is not an ideal idea for me because the flashlight points directly to the subject and can cause excessive highlights on the image so and external flashlight is advisable which can be directed only towards the object or otherwise depending on the type of effect you want to attain..
Now the next major key factor in taking awesome photographs is the angle. Most people just point their cameras straight at the subject and click, sometimes such images are too basic without style..Sometimes It's good to try out different angles while capturing a moment..It is major key in photography generally.
Now there are other factors like the exposure. Exposure works almost same as the ISO but not entirely reducing the exposure gives you a really dark image irrespective of the ambient light except you are pointing the camera towards the sun and increasing the exposure really dials up the light..Now for some persons exposure don't really matter but if you want some kind of effects its really needful...For example shadow effects like this, I call it shadow because details of the person or persons are not clearly visible
The picture above was captured under intense sun light but the end product looks like it was captured at night. For that picture i dialed down my ISO and exposure and voila!!!..
Now the last point I'll talk about is the focus. Sometimes we see a circle on the screen of our mobile cameras, that is the focus anywhere you tap the camera focuses on that point you can try this effect with one eye closed and stare at your finger( just one finger) notice that your finger becomes clearly visible and the surrounding elements are blurry that's similar to how the camera focus works but on mobile phones this technology is really behind because focus works effectively when you are really close to the subject. But still its a good feature because if you can't create a blur or depth of field you can use the focus to determine how much light you want on the focused area.
Lastly even affect all these tricks are applied you might still need to edit the picture to enhance it.. For mobile editing I recommend Google app "SNAPSEED" It's quite easy to use for beginners and pro's and if you are pro enough you could try out "ADOBE LIGHTROOM". Stay tuned as I'll will be posting about how to edit pictures on mobile phones using snapseed. Thanks for reading.
Samples of pictures with my mobile phone
