Take Better Pictures with Your Phone!

These days, it’s easy to call yourself a photographer. No need for expensive equipment, cameras, lenses, accessories, etc. Simply take out your phone, point and shoot! But there is a difference between taking photos, and taking good photos. Here are a few tips that will help you become a better amateur photographer!

Set up your shots using the grid

It’s easy to take wonky photos where your horizon is tilted one way or the other. If you’re going for a tilted horizon, no problem, and occasionally wonky photos can be really great. But for most people, it’s safer to align your subjects rather than hope for the rare wonky gold photo. Turning on the gridlines will help you with alignment. Superimposed over the screen will be a grid of lines that make it much easier for you to evenly line up your subjects and place them at the position in your pic. In the pic above you can see the fence gate perfectly aligned with the grid.

Go to Settings and scroll down to Photos & Camera. Here you’ll find camera options that are kept out of the app itself in order to keep things less cluttered. Scroll down for Grid.

Turn-on Auto HDR

One of the easiest ways to get better image quality using your iPhone is to experiment with HDR. What is HDR? HDR stands for high dynamic range, and it artificially enhances dynamic range by combining three exposures: one bright, one normal, and one dark exposure. Dynamic range refers to how well a sensor can render the darkest and lightest parts of an image before they get overexposed. HDR opens up these opposite ends (lightness and darkness) of the brightness spectrum to bring out small details that might not be observable in standard Auto mode.

With an iPhone 6 the ‘Auto HDR’ mode switches HDR on when it senses the time is right, but doesn’t force you in to using it all the time. In iPhone 5 you’ll need to hit the HDR button on the screen.

Add Accessories to Supercharge Your Photos

The immense popularity of iPhones has sparked off other photographic accessories too. One of the most interesting is the 12x Zoom Telescope Camera Lens Kit, which easily clips onto your phone giving you a zoom that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. This kit also comes with an all the accessories you’ll need, including a mini tripod for additional balance.

Also check out this cool 3-in-1 Magnetic Lens Kit, which includes lenses for fish-eye, wide angle, and macro.