BETTER PHOTOS, WITH A SMARTPHONE

[gregzeng]

1) Have the phone as still as possible. Wedge it against your body, a wall or other object. Mount, tape or clip it to a solid object.

Check with Android's freeware app "Vibrometer". A concrete floor > 3-legged-stool > 4 legged-stool > wall.

2) Use the HDR (high dynamic range) cameras. There are several. I'm not sure which is best.

3) Clean the lens surface of the camera with soft tissue.

4) Use timer to set the camera off; it removes hand-shake.

5) Protect unwanted light and glare shining onto the camera lens. Photographing into bright lights is a way of testing camera quality, sometimes.

6) Turn camera sound down.This may add unwanted vibration.

7) If possible, use the lowest ISO (less electronic noise), largest lens aperture, best possible color for the lighting (outdoor is usually better than artificial lighting), and monochrome if OCR-text capturing.

8) Any modifications of the captured picture can be done at leisure. Use the camera software, or specialized photo editing software AFAIK.

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Fifty years ago I used to be a professional newspaper photographer (NT NEWS, Darwin, Australia, 1966). Then I've been promoted many, many times ... to my "level of incompetence". (English wisdom phrase: Peter Principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

[WuddaWaste]

These are good principles. Holding still, using good (or at least interesting) lighting, and learning to frame a good shot are the biggest things most people can do to DRAMATICALLY improve their pictures. If your cameraphone and software both allow for it, mastering your focus is the next thing I'd add to the mix.

I politely disagree with #2. I believe HDR to be a post-processing effect more than an effective shooting mode. Traditionally it was done in cases where a shot would contain details in both very high light and very low light areas of the same picture. HDR would allow a photographer to take pictures with a very fast exposure (for high light) and very slow exposure (for low light), and then selectively merge the images to capture the best of all details. I used similar for the picture here, done post-processing:
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In general, my mental phonetography process loosely of as follows:

1. Pick photography subject
2. Determine best lighting or figure out how to improve lighting
3. Fill the frame with my subject
4. Pick the angle and focal point
5. Focus, test shot, evaluate, adjust
6. Steady phone, snap photo
7. Admire how good-looking my friends/family/food/environments/beer/car happen to be

After that, I may do some post-processing.... which is another talk for another time.

@gregzeng: do you have any recently photos you've taken with your latest device?

[linr76]

this could become a very interesting discussion.
i happen to be a hobbyist photographer also but i am far from good...
but even i can say that taking good pictures with a cell phone camera is a lot harder and requires a lot more attention that doing the same with a DSLR.
the phones ususally don't offer much when it comes to focussing, so a steady hand or @gregzeng tip #1 is very important.
on the other hand, if you are into Lomography a phone camera actually is far better for that than to buy a lomo camera.

to make a photo more interesting you can also experiment with the compositioning.
eg - play with the rule of thirds and such. having your object of "desire" smack in the middle of the picture is what most people will do but its not very interesting then.

[nikstar]

Also I will add to those, take 4-5 shots, so you will have more possibilities for a better result!

[linr76]

and also keep in mind, its better to have imperfect pictures than no pictures at all.
since you'll most probably wont carry a camera everywhere you go but you will most likely have your phone with you it really pays off to try and "train" a bit with the phone camera, you'd be surprised for what you can get out of these small sensors.
if you want and need perfect pictures, there is still no way around a professional camera, not even the top of the line Lumia phones take pictures anywhere near an entry level DSLR.
or the other way around is true as well - if you don't know how to make a good picture, the best and most expensive camera/lens combination won't do you any good.
mastering the art of photography is nothing you'll get good at in an afternoon, professional photographers have years and years of experience.

[gregzeng]

Smartphones launching new types of photography.

Inbuilt GPS, stabilization, HDR, auto-exposure, movement sensing, water-proof cases, remote control, remote-viewing, external power supplies, ... makes it suitable for many remote surveillance work.

Practical uses: drone planes/ cars helicopters, surveillance cameras, transport "black-box", room/ area monitoring, ...

I used to have portable web-cams on the widscreen of our car. Common practice in Russia. Now a smartphone serves the same purpose, much better. Many apps help this now: "Dashboard Cam Web Player".