Panel
- Bart Busschots (host) – @bbusschots – Flickr
This solo show is dedicated to a simple piece of advice — don’t try to use a phone camera as if it’s a high-end DSLR, it isn’t, so let that reality guide your use of this wonderful photographic tool. Avoid the the inherent weaknesses, and lean into the inherent strengths!
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Notes
As I record this show in late July 2025 I'm coming to the end of two weeks of annual leave, and one of the things I've been focusing on while liberated from the day-to-day concerns of normal life is a presentation I've promised to deliver to a Mac User Group (MUG) later this year. The topic is very broad, basically my thoughts on taking great photos with an iPhone. I'm never quite sure if a broad topic is a blessing or a curse, but regardless, I wanted to use my rare mental freedom to figure out the big-picture story for the talk and get a rough skeleton of my slides together.
I've settled on using this show's theme for the narrative structure, breaking my talk into two haves, one on the art of iPhone photography, and one on the craft of it, but in the reverse order. Start with the practicalities of how to use the iPhone as a camera, then switch to more artistic themes for the second half. I'll start the second half with some general advice for photography in general, hitting some of my favourite themes like evangelising shooting freely and culling mercilessly, cropping without feeling guilty about it, and not slavishly following guidelines as if they were rules, but my main point will be to emphasise the importance of avoiding the iPhone's weaknesses, and leaning into its strengths. As I was writing I realised the iPhone's weaknesses are not specific to the iPhone, they're ultimately down to the physics of small things, so they're shared by all phone cameras. And when looking at the iPhone's strengths, some were down to the iPhone's size, and the rest may have been the result of out-of-the-box thinking in Cupertino, but those idea have had time to spread, so they apply other similarly high-end phone cameras too. In other words, this section of my iPhone-specific presentation would make for a fun discussion on this show
Weaknesses to Avoid
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Small sensors inevitably result in deeper depths of field, that's simply how the physics works!
- Computational Photography does offer work-arounds by way of portrait modes, and while they sometimes work amazingly, they still struggle with fine-detailed edges, especially when they have closed loops
- Better to avoid relying on these artificial blurs for hiding background distractions and paying more attention to getting good backgrounds when shooting
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Small sensors have smaller pixels which reduces their signal-to-noise ratio, so the image signal processing chips have a lot more noise removal work to do (again, physics!)
- The more signal you have, the less noise you have, so that means phone cameras love light
- The more you zoom, the more you spread out the light, so the less light hits each pixel, and the more noise you get
- So, the lower the light, the less you should zoom in!
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Compact auto-focus systems are good, but they're not as good as what you'll get on high-end dedicated cameras, they have their shortcomings!
- I find the iPhone is easily confused by very small subjects, especially when they poke up, or worse still, when they move — my iPhones simply refuse to focus reliably on some some small pointy flowers when there's even the tiniest breeze making them sway!
- If you can't get the focus you need, move on, the shot is just not there!
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Phone cameras use rolling shutters, they will distort things moving rapidly across the frame (slanted fronts on trains, etc.)
- The more movement the subject makes across your frame while the shot is being captured, the bigger the effect
- The effect will be strongest for subjects moving side-on, so consider shooting at a more oblique angle
- The effect is lessened by zooming out
Strengths to Lean in To!
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Your phone is the camera you always have with you!
- It will reward you for always keeping an eye out for interesting shots! (See LTP 140 on Luck for a deeper discussion)
- With a little practice, you can be shooting within seconds!
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Compared to dedicated cameras, phones are small and light, enabling unusual points of view
- Easy to hold up high — especially if your phone has a dedicated shutter button or if you can use the volume button as a shutter button
- Lenses are very near the edge, so you can shoot a few mm off the ground!
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With their multi-sensor arrays and built-in exposure stacking features phone cameras are great in mixed light, offering much higher dynamic ranges than traditional digital cameras
- Deep shadows don’t lose detail
- You can even shoot into the sun!
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Also to thanks to their multi-sensor arrays, and perhaps helped with built-in focus stacking, high-end modern phone cameras have great macro modes (with the afore-mentioned auto-focus caveat)
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The third killer feature empowered by the multi-sensor arrays and exposure stacking are stunning night mode (assuming the scene and the camera are not moving too much)
- Bracing with elbows can increase exposure times and sharpness significantly
- Use a tripod for maximal effect (small pocket-sized mini tripods or stands work great!)