Common Mistakes with phone photography

Common Mistakes with phone photography

Here are some Common Mistakes with phone photography to get you on the right path. 

No Focal point

The first Common Mistakes with phone photography seems simple, but if your photo doesn’t contain a center of interest. it will most likely fail to grab the attention of your audience. Think of a subject as a resting place for your eyes – somewhere that your gaze can easily fall. Until the viewer’s brain and eyes lock onto a subject, they have to keep hunting around for one. This takes effort and feels unresolved until the subject is found. So whenever you see a scene that you’d like to photograph, always ask yourself, “What’s the main focal point in this scene?” If there’s no obvious focal point, look around for a different viewpoint that allows you to include a subject of interest, or wait until something interesting appears in the scene.

Subject in focus

Another Common Mistakes with phone photography focus.  When you’ve worked out what your main subject is, it’s vital to ensure that object appears in sharp focus. Rather than letting the camera’s autofocus decide which part of the scene to focus on, you should always take control and set the focus manually.

Thankfully the phone makes this simple.  All you have to do is tap where your subject is on the screen and take the photo. In the photo above the background is in focus and the main flower in the foreground is out of focus. This happened because I tapped on the background part of the scene before taking the photo. You should experiment with setting focus on different areas of the scene to get an idea of how this works. Just tap different parts of the screen and watch how the focus changes. You’ll notice that a yellow box appears to indicate the area of focus.You’ll need to take more care with subjects that are very small in relation to the rest of the frame as it can be difficult to tap on that exact spot. It may take a few attempts to set focus on a small subject. 

Exposure: under or over

A third Common Mistakes with phone photography is exposure.  Our eyes do a great job of discerning between very dark and very bright subjects at the same time. But digital cameras suffer with a narrower range of darkness/brightness that can be captured simultaneously. The phone camera analyzes the scene and decides on an exposure that will best capture the mixture of dark and light areas. Inevitably this means that detail in either or both extremes (the most dark and most light areas) may not be captured. If the camera doesn’t get the exposure right, you can end up with an image that’s under-exposed (too dark) as shown in the example above, or over-exposed (too bright) as shown in the example below.Therefore it’s important for you to take control and adjust the phone camera to ensure the photo is exposed correctly. On an iphone, After you’ve tapped to set focus on the main subject, simply swipe up or down on the screen to access the exposure slider. Swiping up will brighten the image, and swiping down will darken it.

Camera shake

Even if you tap to set focus on your subject, you can still end up with a blurred photo if you move your iPhone (even slightly) while pressing the shutter button. This movement is called “camera shake” and it will result in a completely blurred image. Camera shake is more common in low light situations and at night.Why? Because the phone has to use a slower shutter speed to let enough light in for a decent exposure. If the camera moves at all during this longer exposure time, it will result in a blurred image. 

Poor composition

A “mistake” that many beginners make is to always position the main subject or horizon directly in the centre of the frame. But it often creates a more natural and balanced composition if you place these elements off-centre. Of course, this is subjective and it’s always worth trying out different compositions until you find the best one to suit your scene.  A useful guide to help you with off-centre positioning of the main subject or horizon is the rule of thirds. To use the Rule of Thirds, simply ensure your subject (or subjects) fall as close as possible to the lines on the grid. Even better, try to get the most important part of your scene to be positioned where any two lines converge. Try placing any vertical subjects, such as a person on either of the two vertical lines on the grid. This often results in a better composition than placing the subject centrally. Try these and other tips coming in the next blogs to get great photos with your camera.