How to learn to take professional photographs with a SLR camera or phone? Shooting with a smartphone - how to take good photos.

Do you like to take pictures of yourself and post fresh photos on Instagram? Then I will tell you a few secrets that will allow you to look beautiful and natural when taking selfies.

Light

The most best pictures obtained in natural daylight from a window. To do this, you will need to stand closer to him and turn your face. If direct sunlight hits you, I advise you to cover the window with a translucent white curtain or simply step back a little. This light is very soft and applies beautifully, and also hides imperfections and evens out the skin.

Outdoors, choose shade and light white/gray walls to reflect light without distorting colors.

The best time is from dawn to 9-10 in the morning and a couple of hours before sunset.

To hide a double chin, you can hold a white sheet at chest level. It will also lighten the face a little.

Angle

Want to take a close-up photo of your face? Nai the best option– lift your smartphone and take a photo of yourself a little from above. This will make your face narrower and your eyes more expressive.

Try both left and right, look for your working side. In this case, what can you do with your head: move it a little higher, a little lower, a little to the left, a little to the right, tilt it a little to one side, then to the other. Work with your shoulders, you probably don’t need a face like a passport) The more you bend, the more feminine you become.

Do you want a full-length photo? Then you will have to move away from the mirror, raise your hand with the phone to chest level and move it slightly to the side. Take it higher, so you visually narrow the figure. If you want to lose more weight, turn slightly in profile, focus on one hip, point your front leg (on your toes), bend over to emphasize the curves.

Facial expression

Be interesting, sweet, thoughtful, smile sincerely! You can also make faces) Do you want to make your lips plumper? Open them slightly, but do not duckface.

Try to remember a funny incident and keep your camera ready.

Background

Even the best photo can be ruined by trash in the background or tiles recognizable from a shopping center toilet.

Minimalism - look for light, plain walls, nothing colorful or flashy, preferably in your color scheme.

Nature - sunset sky, meadows, mountains, flowers, beach.

If you find a celebrity, catch him quickly!

Extreme conditions - excellent!

Are there any cute animals nearby? Success guaranteed.

Phone settings

Everyone knows that the main camera has best quality, but it’s more convenient to photograph yourself from the front. Here you either put up with it, or take a selfie stick, or get used to using the buttons on your phone.

Focusing and adjusting exposure (light) based on the face.

Checking white balance - sometimes necessary third party applications like VSCO, where you can correct it - so that the white is white and the gray is gray, and not blue, pink or another color.

If possible, turn off the flash.

Wipe and keep your phone camera clean.

Processing Applications

All that remains is to adjust the photo a little - and you're done! Here is a selection of some of them:

1. Facetune 2
2. YouCam Perfect
3. Makeup Genius
4. Retrica
5. Meitu
6. TouchRetouch

1. BestMe Selfie Camera
2. Bestie
3. Candy Camera
4. Retrica

Now many amateurs are asking a fairly reasonable question: why should I buy a bulky, expensive camera if I have good phone with normal optics?

Better explain how to take pictures with this phone correctly! - customers of many stores and online portals ask.

It is clear that any SLR owner will find 100 or more reasons to buy a SLR camera. But to an ordinary person, who does not plan to develop professionally in the field of photography, this is really not necessary. With basic knowledge, you can get normal pictures that are not inferior to cheap and some point-and-shoot cameras in the mid-price range. If a photographer not only knows how to take photographs, but also understands what composition and harmony are, then real masterpieces are produced on the phone!

I present to your attention 10 tips on how to take beautiful pictures with your phone:

Disable the Zoom function

In any modern phones Any even the most minimal increase immediately leads to a strong decrease in the quality of the photo. Noise appears almost immediately in the image, which in turn reduces the already lousy sharpness. In other words, if you need to get closer to your subject, move closer to him. I repeat once again, in order to take good photographs with your phone, never enlarge the picture! No way to get closer? Take photos as is, and later trim off the excess in the editor. You should also remember - the closer the object is from you, the better quality photos.

Lens Cleanliness

In order to take photographs with your smartphone as correctly as possible, always keep the lens clean and do not scratch it. To wipe the front lens, it is better to purchase a special accessory - microfiber or a pencil. The cleanliness of the front lens is practically unimportant for SLR cameras, but for soap dishes and phones it is a very important nuance!

A few shots!

If you have never shot professionally or have not interacted with serious photographers, then it will be news to you that these people always take takes. IN different conditions The number of shots varies, but copies are always made! This approach is professionalism.

Notice the quality of the cameras and optics is very, very high. Let's draw conclusions. A lot of identical photos– this means taking photos correctly with a smartphone! This approach should become your habit!

You should also set aside a few more minutes a day to delete all unnecessary and failed frames.

Lighting during shooting

If you want to take good photographs with your phone, make sure how, what quality and where the existing light source illuminates your subject. This point is probably the most important for all photographers, and when shooting with a phone, light becomes extremely important! Try to shoot with high quality daylight. Don't shoot into the sun, but if you do, turn on HDR and be prepared for a lot of takes.

At the same time, be aware that the phone’s matrix will not be able to convey strong contrasts. So you need compromises: bright good light and reduced contrast.

Quality and resolution

If you want the best your phone can produce, then forget about saving space! Before taking photos with your smartphone, set the highest possible quality and resolution of the pictures! This is the only way you will succeed!

Automatic settings

Unlike expensive cameras high class the phones are quite stripped down various parameters, but instead there is a set automatic settings that can really help. For example, for close-up photography - macro photography. Portrait, panorama and others. Also, almost all phones have settings such as white balance and ISO sensitivity. If you understand these parameters, you will be able to take great photos!

Photo editing

In order to take photographs correctly from your phone, it is worth mastering such an operation as image retouching. In other words, correction. For this purpose, many various programs, including on your phone, but they are often Bad quality and even if they do something “beautiful,” then when viewed on a computer it turns out that it is a defect.

For processing, use more serious programs:

– Photoshop;
– Ligtroom;
– ACDSee et al.

You don't need to fully master these programs. To improve your photos you will need:

– sharpening;
– white balance correction;
– saturation;
– contrast;
– possibly brightness and exposure.

All these settings are very easy and quick to carry out, you only need to watch how it is done a few times. Fortunately, there are a great many similar lessons and articles on the Internet, including on this blog.

Shevelenka

In order to take photographs correctly with your phone, master such a thing as shutter speed. That is, control your hands, or take a more comfortable position in which they shake less. This will allow you to improve the quality of your pictures significantly. This advice is especially relevant in low light conditions.

Additional Applications

Oddly enough, third-party applications, often free ones, greatly help to take photographs from your phone or to obtain a certain effect. For example, panorama, HDR or ready-made color and tone processing.

Theory and practice

It may not be clear to you, but in order to take photographs correctly with a smartphone, you need to understand how photographs are taken and the internal processes of this complex phenomenon. Usually practice is more useful than theory, but in such a serious matter as beautiful photography from a phone, I think theory is even more important!

Good luck with your shots!

Smartphones have firmly entered our everyday life, displacing conventional mobile phones. Almost every smartphone has a camera, sometimes two, and manufacturers have long joined the race of megapixels on these devices, bringing their number to the level of modern cameras. All this leads us to talk about smartphones as devices for taking photos.

Today, more than half of the pictures on the Internet are taken using the built-in camera mobile devices. Modern smartphones have come very far in terms of photo and video quality over the past few years. They acquired more serious matrices and powerful processors to provide higher-quality shooting at the level of a compact digital camera.

Traditional cameras are gradually losing their popularity under the pressure of smartphones. After all, a smartphone, unlike a digital camera, is always at hand, which means shooting with it is much more convenient and interesting. The average user prefers to purchase a smartphone with a good built-in camera rather than a digital camera, since a mobile gadget is more versatile, convenient and cheaper. At the same time, of course, the quality of photographs taken on a smartphone is lower in many respects than photographs from digital cameras, especially SLRs.

Smartphone camera versus digital camera

The most important difference between the built-in camera of a smartphone and a digital camera is the small physical dimensions of the matrix, which is dictated by the compact dimensions of the camera itself. mobile gadget. The small size of the sensor leads to noise in photographic images, especially when shooting in low light conditions. Smartphone manufacturers are trying to combat noise using various software algorithms, but this does not completely solve the problem.

In terms of optical quality, the built-in cameras of smartphones are also somewhat inferior to most digital cameras. At the same time, if we talk about matrix resolution, then top smartphones have already caught up not only with ordinary point-and-shoot cameras, but also with advanced cameras - smartphone cameras have already crossed the ten-megapixel mark. Smartphone cameras are now equipped with a built-in flash, image stabilization system and other delights of their older brothers. As it were, small sizes sensors still have an impact on the quality of photographic images, and also limit the possibilities of shooting with a smartphone in low light conditions. If you want to get really high-quality photos or often shoot in low light, then there is no alternative to advanced compact and SLR cameras yet.

However, the average person does not care about the physical dimensions of the sensor or aperture; what is important to him is the ease of use of the device. This is where smartphones have a huge advantage over digital cameras. After all, you can always carry a smartphone with you in your pocket, it is always at hand. What could be better for a person who is interested in photography? This leads to another advantage of a smartphone regarding photo and video shooting - you can shoot inconspicuously, photographing unnoticed by others.

This is difficult to achieve with a camera because the body and large lens immediately attract people's attention, making them nervous. Having a camera pointed at them often causes people to behave in ways they would never behave in real life. real life. The situation with a smartphone is completely different - people will think that the person is not filming them, but is simply sending an SMS message or studying a map. The smartphone camera allows you to take portraits of people without drawing close attention to yourself.

Processing photos on a smartphone is easily accessible and does not require special training. With a smartphone everything is simple - using various applications You can immediately edit your photos on your phone and instantly send them online. Moreover, you don’t have to be an expert in Photoshop to edit pictures - most installed applications for working with photo images are designed for ordinary people. True, the quality of the pictures will not be good, this becomes especially obvious when printing photographs.

How to shoot with a smartphone

Now let's move on to how to get the highest quality photographs by shooting with your camera. mobile phone. Here you need to pay attention to the following main points:

— Lens Cleanliness

Don't forget to keep the built-in optics clean. While the lenses of conventional cameras are protected by special covers from external influences, the camera lens of a smartphone has the unpleasant property of collecting fingerprints and becoming dirty over time. Before shooting, wipe the lens with a cloth to prevent dirt from being captured on your photos.

— Catch the light

As we have already mentioned, the matrices of built-in cameras in smartphones are inferior in physical size to those used in digital cameras. In this regard, one of the main problems with the camera of any smartphone is the poor quality of pictures in low light. Try to take photos when your subject is well lit. The quality and color rendition of the future photo directly depends on the characteristics of the lighting - if the light is dim, the photographs will turn out faded and inconspicuous in appearance. Therefore, it is best to shoot outdoors during the day.

At the same time, you should avoid taking photographs against the sun or in deep shadow - you may simply ruin the photos. It is recommended that the sun be opposite or to the side of the subject being photographed. Contrasting light transitions should also be avoided. When shooting in cloudy weather, you need to find any additional sources Sveta.

- Do not use digital zoom

If optical zoom allows you to enlarge objects in a photograph in detail, then digital zoom for the most part only spoils the overall quality of the image. Even the most minimal zoom can lead to a sharp deterioration in image quality - the sharpness of the image decreases and the notorious noise comes out. So instead of using digital zoom, just get closer to your subject. In the end, the required fragment can subsequently be simply cut out from a large photograph.

— Maximum image quality

In your smartphone settings, select the highest image quality settings, in particular, the highest a high resolution photos. You shouldn't skimp on photo size if your goal is to get the best possible photos. In addition to resolution, the camera settings of modern smartphones offer the user other options that allow you to use the camera's capabilities to the maximum.

For example, in some cases, to improve the quality of a photo, it may be useful to manually set the white balance. Sometimes you can use one of the story programs offered by the built-in software smartphone. Particularly when shooting in dark time days can be used " night mode", in which the ISO sensitivity value is automatically increased to maximum value. Helps and fine tuning color saturation, contrast and sharpness of the photograph.

- Avoid moving

When photographing handheld with a mobile phone, of course, it is very difficult to avoid blurry images. To reduce the likelihood of movement, you need to hold the smartphone as steadily as possible in your hands. To do this, you need to hold the gadget with both hands and use different surfaces or stable objects to lean on. Some applications use the accelerometer built into the smartphone to ensure that the camera takes the desired photo at the exact moment when it is in a stable, level position. You should definitely use this option if possible.

— Use the built-in flash with caution

The built-in flash can help solve low-light problems in some cases, but should still be used with caution. After all, the built-in flash, unfortunately, often provides too much high brightness, causing the people in the photographs to turn into real ghosts. It is recommended to take a photo with and without flash to then select the best option. Instead of using the flash, sometimes it's better to simply increase the exposure time through a variety of apps and settings. This will allow you to get better photo images when the surrounding environment is not well lit.

— Film episodes

Take several photos of the same scene. Due to movement or focusing errors, the camera may produce blurry photos. Shooting in bursts allows you to take multiple photos from which you can later choose. optimal frame. In many modern models On smartphones, serial shooting has already been implemented at a good level.

— Don’t forget about the composition of the photo

Mobile photography, like photographing on regular camera, requires choosing the right shooting angle and building a composition. Don't forget about the horizon line and, in general, about the lines in the frame. To build a good composition, you can use the well-known “rule of thirds”, mentally imagining horizontal and vertical lines for proper placement of the object in the frame.

But perhaps the most important thing for mobile photographer– this is the ability to find interesting stories around you. Learn to photograph what surrounds you without wasting a huge amount of time searching for your subject. Often, quite ordinary and simple things that surround us can become part of an original and interesting photo. Always keep a smartphone with a built-in camera with you and be ready to take pictures, because it is fleeting moments that give truly unique shots.

P.s. All photos in the article were taken with a 5MP camera Motorola smartphone Defy 2010 release.

You can have a phone with a camera and amaze the world with beautiful pictures.

Professionals have long noted the convenience of taking photographs with a smartphone - pictures can be edited right on the spot and immediately sent to their destination - by mail, using social services, photo hosting sites or through cloud storage. At the same time, the quality of images the right approach is not inferior to the results of working with professional equipment. Thus, pictures taken with a smartphone even ended up on the covers of glossy magazines.

So, let's begin.

The phone camera needs to be cleaned

While the camera capabilities do not allow you to take a macro photograph of dirt accumulated on the optics, bacteria can add blurriness and spots.

Set quality settings to maximum

Set it in the camera settings maximum resolution image, as well as the best quality value. Choose 4:3.

Turn off effects

Black and white mode, sepia, inverted colors and the like have a right to exist, but all these settings are best used when editing photos on a computer.

Set white balance

The human eye adjusts to lighting, and white is perceived as white in any light. However, the camera “sees” an object illuminated by conventional incandescent lamps as redder than the eye sees it.

Don't use ZOOM

IN modern smartphones Using even the most minimal zoom results in a sharp deterioration in picture quality. Noise appears on it and sharpness is lost. If you want to photograph an object closer, approach it.

Don't forget about the universal pillars of photography - composition, subject and focus.

Focus

All smartphones have autofocus skills, but in order to show your device who’s boss, you can specify the point yourself, and some devices have full-fledged manual focus.

Avoid photos in front of a mirror and selfies taken at arm's length. Mirrors often “fool” the autofocus mechanism. It's better to ask someone to take your photo. If you'd rather take the photo yourself, use a timer, lean your phone against something, and stand in the frame.

Light

Try not to take photos when poor lighting, By at least, if you want the subject to be illuminated evenly. The phone's built-in camera sensor is quite weak, and at a high ISO (light sensitivity), which allows you to shoot indoors without a flash, the noise level will also be very high. Therefore, successful indoor photographs will only be taken in bright light.

If you need to take photos indoors, pay attention to the sources artificial light in him. Avoid fluorescent lights, as their light gives objects a green tint.

When shooting in low light, make sure to keep the camera steady. With built-in cameras, when there is a lack of light, the exposure time increases greatly, and any movement will result in a blurred frame.

Use the rule of thirds

When composing a frame, imagine that it is divided into equal parts by two horizontal and two vertical lines. Let significant lines or borders coincide with them (for example, the horizon line runs at a distance of 1/3 from the upper or lower border), and compositionally important elements fall at the points of their intersection.

Use flash

Using the flash built into your mobile phone isn't the best option, but it's still better than nothing.

Do not take photographs with a mobile phone flash at a distance of more than 3 meters, but not closer than 1.5, to prevent overexposure and underlighting.

Finally, take a photo

Hold your phone steady when you press the button. After taking a photo, continue to hold it in place until the image is recorded. If you move your phone immediately after pressing the button, you may end up with a blur instead of a photo!

Take several photos or use a series. Don't count on one shot, it won't always be successful.

Take photographs with the camera positioned at eye level of the people being photographed to avoid distortion caused by the wide-angle lens on your mobile phone.

When photographing on the move, turn off autofocus. The mobile phone camera will begin to respond to the press of the photo button much faster. In this case, everything in the frame will be sharp, starting from 1.5 meters.

Use third party camera apps

Typically, third party apps like Camera 360 for example have a large number of options that are hidden in standard application. This is especially true for Nexus smartphones, where camera settings are always very limited.

Practice

Read literature on photography, practice it yourself. Understand how optics work, what exposure, ISO, aperture, shutter speed are. After all, even the most expensive DSLR will not turn you into a pro, and on the contrary, a real photographer will get good pictures from a smartphone.

Guys, we put our soul into the site. Thank you for that
that you are discovering this beauty. Thanks for the inspiration and goosebumps.
Join us on Facebook And In contact with

The main commandment of smartphone photography: it doesn’t matter how cool the camera is, what matters is who’s holding it. And with the most luxurious DSLR you can take clear, but boring photographs. The kind that lie on disk and no one opens them for years.

And you can take interesting photos with your smartphone, especially since this equipment is always with you, you don’t have to uncover it for a long time and you won’t forget to remove the lens cap. And for the most part, smartphones are cheaper than DSLRs, which is also very pleasing.

website I’ve put together some tips for you on how to take cool photos using your smartphone.

Programs

A camera in a smartphone is, first of all, a program that maintains the lens and matrix. Therefore, you should not stop at what Android or iOS dictates to you. You may want to use different programs For different cases shooting. Some give a more interesting color rendition, others - a little more close-ups: Pudding Camera, CameraMX, Photosynth, VSCO Cam, Slow shutter cam, Pro HDR, Camera+, etc. Why limit yourself if you have a choice?

Having chosen a program, it’s worth delving into the settings. Set the image resolution to high, remember that in difficult cases you can play with white balance, ISO and turn off autofocus. And in general, find out what interesting things a specific program can do.

Zoom

Cropping as a replacement for zoom.

It’s better to forget once and for all that your smartphone has digital zoom. Such an increase in most cases is achieved by serious losses in image quality. The best zoom is the legs: come closer, move further away.

If this is not possible, then it is wiser to cut out the frame you need from a large photograph during post-processing. The framing function is available even in the most simple programs. Plus, you don’t waste time adjusting the size, you just take it off. And already in a calm environment, you correctly compose the frame, without missing details that you could accidentally crop out while using the zoom in the field.

Series

Take several shots of the same scene. Subsequently, you can choose the most successful photo and work with it. And, before deleting photos from your smartphone, it’s a good idea to view them on your computer, since you may not notice them on your phone’s small screen nice photos just because they will appear overexposed or underexposed.

If it doesn’t turn out interesting, you should change the shooting angle.

When photographing something or someone, don't be afraid to change angles. You can take a photo head-on, or you can change the angle a little and get an interesting shot. Moreover, compact dimensions smartphones allow you to take angles for which a photographer with a large camera will have to work hard.

Light

The flash on a smartphone should be used very carefully. As a rule, it “deads” the photo, distorts colors and shadows. Flash is only good when you need to take pictures immediately, otherwise you'll miss the moment.

At the same time, light is the photographer's main tool. This is important for professional cameras, but for smartphones it is much more important. Therefore, always look for the light, pay close attention to how it falls on the subject, and you will get the shot.

Good light in the morning and evening. On a sunny afternoon, you will have to work with too high a contrast, which threatens with artifacts in the pictures. The pre-storm sky gives luxurious effects.

Object shooting

On the left is a photo with a lack of lighting, on the right is with a flashlight.

If you want to take a photo of something or someone at home, the smartphone can become stubborn - there is rarely enough light in the room. But you can take a simple LED flashlight and a sheet of white paper to compensate for the too harsh shadow. Let's say a flashlight is shining from above on the right, we bring a sheet of white paper to the left, which reflects the light of the flashlight and additionally illuminates the object, and press the button on the phone.

Lens Cleanliness

Frame through a fingerprint.

It would seem that an obvious thing is the cleanliness of the lens, but smartphone lovers often come across this issue. The phone is used constantly, lies in your pocket, and when you take it to answer a call or SMS, the last thing you remember is that you left a fingerprint on the glass of the lens. When shooting, this print gives, of course, a slight mysterious blur, but, as a rule, this is the effect you do not expect in the intended photo.

Response delay

It is important to take into account the fact that the shooting program in a smartphone in most cases operates with a delay. You have already pressed the button, but the camera is still thinking before taking a photo. Therefore, it is important to think proactively, like a hunter who shoots not at a hare, but at the place where, according to his assumption, the hare will be at the next moment.

Let's say you are photographing a flower in a field, and it is windy on that day, you need to take into account the speed of the camera and at the same time capture the moment between gusts of wind. It’s difficult, but the result will be more valuable due to the effort spent.

Post-processing programs

Simplest editing on Instagram.

Most professional photographers do post-processing of photographs, absolutely always in commercial photography, but for smartphone photography this is a vital necessity. You cannot adjust the shutter speed and aperture on a smartphone. This limitation is compensated for by a variety of post-processing programs. This is beyond the well-known Instagram and Flickr.

• VSCO Cam. Allows you to apply a variety of filters and settings. Distributed free of charge.
• Afterlight. Good for color correction. Costs 34 rubles.
• Touch retouch. This simple tool allows you to remove minor imperfections in a photo and clone parts of the image. There are free and paid versions.
• SnapSeed. Great amount filters and effects, such as tilt-shift and focus adjustment, sharpness and color adjustment. Distributed free of charge.
• Pixlr Express. Big choice filters, frames, effects. Completely free.
• Photoshop Express. It doesn’t provide any special settings, but it does have a lot of different filters that make the processing process as fast as possible. Can work with RAW files. Free of charge.
• Rookie. There are both free and paid features. The standard application package contains many vintage filters adapted for different genres of photography: portraits, landscapes, city sketches, macro, etc.
• Phonto. Allows you to add any fonts you wish to your photo. Distributed free of charge.
• Moldiv. Free app in Russian, which allows you to make collages by combining up to 9 pictures.
• MultiExpo(for iOS). Interesting application to create a multiple exposure effect. Distributed free of charge.
• Photo Grid. Free application for creating collages. Can work with high resolution files.
• LensLight. The application allows you to add glare, glow and bokeh effects to your photos. Costs 99 rubles.