How to Take Photos with Your Smartphone

Introduction

A complete guide to learning how to take better photos with your smartphone. From practical advice to technical analysis, to help you understand how to capture more beautiful and creative shots with the phone you already have in your pocket. Are you ready to make the most of your smartphone's camera?

Straight to the point

This guide on taking photos with your phone is fairly conversational. If you need to quickly find a specific topic, you can click the item below to jump directly to the dedicated section:

• Photography with a smartphone.
• Features, the sensor, and the lens.
• Light and motion blur.
• Photo editing.
• Advanced usage.
• Final thoughts.

Photography with a Smartphone

Nowadays it's possible to take high-quality photos using your mobile phone, especially if you're using a recent mid-range or high-end smartphone. Of course, the quality you can achieve isn't the same as that of professional cameras, but we've reached a point where the average photo taken with a phone can be considered more than acceptable.

The convenience of always having your phone in your pocket makes it the perfect replacement for a camera, which is often bulky and ends up staying in the closet. All the photos you'll see on this page were taken by us with a phone, and the same goes for most of the images published on the website.

It must be said that thinking of a smartphone as a real camera is difficult for a purist, but it's clear that in recent years there are devices capable of producing excellent photos, more than sufficient for most people. The photographic performance of an average smartphone in sunlight on a 30×20 print is better than that of a ten-year-old DSLR, and high-end models come close to the quality of current DSLRs.

Photos won't be ultra-sharp like those taken with professional cameras, but for casual use or capturing memories, they are more than adequate. Let's now look at some of the advantages of smartphone photography:

• Greater depth of field: The higher depth of field of small sensors results in less background blur. It's a somewhat counterintuitive concept, and we'll return to it later to explain it more clearly.
• Easy sharing: Thanks to the internet connection available on all smartphones, you can instantly share your photos on Instagram, WhatsApp, and other social networks.
• We always have our phone with us: The problem with a camera is that when you need it, it's often been left at home. Your phone, on the other hand, is always with you, allowing you to capture moments that would otherwise be lost.
• Low visibility and creative angles: Because a phone is discreet, it can be used in situations where a DSLR would be cumbersome or inappropriate.
• Real-time editing: The ability to install apps makes the smartphone a versatile tool for basic photo editing and applying creative filters, without necessarily needing a computer.

Of course, not everything that glitters is gold. Smartphones also have some drawbacks as cameras, as we can see below:

• Noise: A small sensor produces more "noise". Noise is a type of distortion that appears in photos. It becomes visible mainly in low-light shots, where the software is forced to push ISO to the limit. Noise appears as a layer of "grain" (sometimes green or red) that reduces sharpness and overall quality.
• Lack of zoom: The absence of optical zoom on mid- to low-range phones is a major disadvantage compared to cameras. Digital zoom, found on many phones, is not real zoom - it simply degrades image quality and is strongly discouraged.
• Automatic optimization: To achieve the best possible shot, the phone automatically boosts contrast, saturation, and applies sharpening. As with all automatic settings, these effects can sometimes be excessive, amplifying noise and creating under- or over-exposed areas.

Features, the Sensor, and the Lens

This section may be a bit challenging to understand, as we're talking about focal length and aperture. If you're not familiar with these topics and would like to read our dedicated guides, you can click the two definitions. Smartphone lenses are generally quite bright: even in the lower price range, the aperture is usually below f/2.8, often around f/2.6. High-end models reach f/2.2, and in rare cases even f/2.0. However, be careful if you come from the world of DSLR cameras. Even though the aperture may seem wide, the typical background blur associated with shallow depth of field is almost absent, because both the lens and the sensor are extremely small (click here to see how small). If this still feels confusing, just read the guide on aperture linked above. In the second half of that guide, there's a photo with chess pieces: smartphones behave roughly like a DSLR at f/11-f/16.

Another fundamental component is the sensor. There are hundreds of models installed in the various phones on the market. Sony produces some of the best sensors for smartphones and cameras. Companies like Apple, Nikon, Samsung, and many others use Sony-made sensors. Some of these are called BSI (Back-Side Illuminated): thanks to improved engineering, they are more sensitive to light-by roughly two stops. You can now guess why light isn't such a big problem when shooting with a smartphone, especially if your device has a BSI sensor.

The lens is a wide-angle, and the focal length typically ranges between 24 mm and 28 mm in 35 mm-equivalent terms. There are a few exceptions on the market with unusual characteristics. Of course, the lens is fixed, and optical zoom is not available on most phones. If you can zoom, it's usually just digital zoom, which reduces sharpness and quality-unless you own one of the very rare phones with optical zoom. A few models exist, but they are niche products and extremely uncommon.

Space inside a smartphone is limited, so the camera module must be very small. At this scale, lenses are made of "plastic"-but not the kind used for soda bottles. We're talking about highly advanced optical plastics. There are several reasons for using plastic: impact resistance, lower production costs, and practical advantages. At such small sizes, plastic lenses can offer nearly identical quality while being easier and cheaper to manufacture.

Working with a wide-angle lens introduces some well-known issues for photographers. The most obvious is distortion. There's no way around it: when you take photos with your phone, people near the edges of the frame appear oddly "stretched". This is completely normal-capturing a wider field of view requires distorting the image at the edges.

Below you can see a clear example of a distorted image. The effect is exaggerated, of course-smartphones have much less distortion-but it helps illustrate the concept for those who aren't familiar with what a wide-angle lens does.

This leads to an important tip: when taking photos of people, try to position their faces near the center of the frame to minimize distortion. You should also avoid taking photos from too close if you want to maintain natural proportions. The same applies when photographing others, although keeping the right distance and avoiding distortion can be tricky with a group of people. You do what you can.

When taking a selfie, the ideal approach is to extend your arm fully so the phone is farther away, allowing you to include more of your body while keeping your face closer to the center of the frame. This goes slightly against the rule of thirds-or better, it places your face somewhere between the center and one of the rule-of-thirds points. The goal is always the same: keeping your facial features as natural as possible by avoiding lens distortion. Using a selfie stick with a remote shutter would be ideal, but it's often more fun to ask someone to take the photo for you without feeling awkward. If you find a nice background and good lighting, have them take a few dozen shots. If you follow the advice in this guide, at least one will turn out well.

The sensor-and-lens assembly in smartphones is usually very small. This leads to a couple of peculiar characteristics: Large depth of field: This means focusing is rarely a problem unless the subject is very close and the background very far away. Subjects and background are usually both in focus when shooting with a smartphone. With DSLRs and lenses with wide apertures, you can achieve strong background blur. On mobile devices, you can't get the same effect unless you use editing or computational blur. High pixel density: 16 megapixels means sixteen million pixels-sixteen million "photodiodes" in an area the size of a pinhead. Quite challenging. Larger sensors (like those in professional cameras) can use larger photodiodes, which are more efficient. On smartphones, photos tend to look slightly more "smudged" when viewed at full zoom.

There are several reasons why taking a photo can feel slow: heavy software, autofocus time, exposure adjustments, and the time needed to save the image. Let's break it down: The camera software is quite advanced, so it takes a few seconds to launch. The more powerful your phone, the faster it opens. Once the app is open, you can take a photo. At this point, the phone focuses. If the subject is far away and there's plenty of light, it's quick; but in low light or with close subjects, focusing can take up to a couple of seconds. Once the photo is in focus, the phone evaluates the light and decides on the correct shutter speed. After capturing the image, the phone must process and save it to memory, which takes slightly less than a second.

So what's the problem? The issue is that from the moment you press the shutter button to the moment the photo is actually taken, there's a small delay. In a spontaneous shot, this delay can ruin the photo because the scene may change in the meantime. We now understand why smartphones have shutter lag-though the same applies to cameras as well. Is there a solution? Unfortunately, no. Manufacturers have, however, found a way to reduce the problem significantly. Many cameras-and higher-end phones-allow you to half-press the shutter button. This lets the phone focus and calculate exposure in advance, eliminating most of the delay. You then keep the button half-pressed while framing, and press fully at the decisive moment. The delay becomes almost negligible. Unfortunately, not all phones have this feature. If yours doesn't, keep it in mind for future purchases.

For the best possible image quality, the lens must be as clean as possible. Another major issue is scratches, which are inevitable after long use. If your camera module is flush with the phone-or worse, protruding-I recommend using a case with a bit of thickness to prevent the lens from rubbing against surfaces when you set the phone down. Otherwise, over the years, you'll see the lens become increasingly damaged.

Light and Motion Blur

Motion-blurred photos come from a single cause: insufficient light. There's no way around it-if the scene isn't well lit, blur becomes inevitable. Of course, this is only solvable when you actually have control over the lighting, which usually isn't the case. But why does motion blur exist? For a photo not to be completely dark, there must be light. Light is made of rays that originate from a source, hit a surface, bounce around, and scatter everywhere. Some of these rays reach your eyes, others reach the sensor of your phone's camera. It doesn't matter whether the source is the sun, a streetlamp, or a light bulb-these are just rays of light that leave a source, bounce off a surface (picking up its color), maybe bounce again, and eventually hit something capable of perceiving them: an eye, a phone, a DSLR...

When a ray of light hits your phone's sensor while you take a photo, the sensor records it. Imagine a sixteen-megapixel (16 MP) sensor as sixteen million tiny sensors that, as soon as they're hit by light, record its intensity. When you take a photo, these tiny sensors activate and begin-allow me the simplification-"filling up" with light. Eventually they reach their maximum value, which is white. Your phone decides how long to keep the sensors active based on how much light is available, so that they "fill up" evenly. In daylight, a few thousandths of a second are enough. But when light decreases, exposure times increase dramatically. A person making a quick movement or a car driving by will almost certainly appear blurred after sunset or indoors, because they move quickly and shift position during the time the sensors remain active, leaving a trail-that trail is motion blur.

To try to solve this problem, manufacturers invented ISO sensitivity. Put simply, they managed to make sensors more sensitive to light, at the cost of image quality-what photographers call noise. In practice, you get a photo with the same brightness in half the time, but with slightly worse quality. You can increase ISO further to reduce exposure time even more, but quality will continue to degrade. Technology is advancing rapidly, and soon sensitivity will be high enough to greatly reduce this issue.

Sunlight is without a doubt the best light source. The sun is extremely bright and allows for very short shutter speeds-just a few thousandths of a second-making motion blur virtually impossible. You might think that the ideal time to take photos is at noon, but that's not always true: midday light is extremely "harsh". Coming almost directly from above, it tends to flatten shadows and reduce the three-dimensionality of the image. Often you can't choose when to take a photo, but if you can plan ahead, you should prefer times when the sun is lower in the sky, such as early morning or the hours before sunset.

The light becomes golden, shadows grow longer, and they add depth to objects, faces, and backgrounds. This doesn't mean it's "illegal" to shoot at noon, but if you want to give character to a mountain landscape or a beach full of umbrellas, the long shadows created by a low sun will make a big difference. Direct sunlight creates very defined shadows, ideal when a photo needs strong visual impact-think of a mountain panorama or the portrait of an older man, where deep, well-defined wrinkles add intensity. However, many types of photos benefit from softer shadows: the first example that comes to mind is the portrait of a young woman. In this case, soft, subtle shadows would give her face a gentle look that enhances her features. When soft shadows are needed, clouds come to the rescue. When the sky is cloudy, shadows become much softer, edges blur, and their intensity drops dramatically. Clouds diffuse the light, cast interesting shadows on the ground, and we strongly encourage you to experiment with cloudy-day photography-under softer light, you may capture excellent shots.

Another major advantage of clouds is that they solve one of the biggest problems when shooting in sunlight: squinting. When the sun is in your face, you have to narrow your eyes to tolerate the brightness, and as you can imagine, someone squinting into the sun rarely looks photogenic. Let's assume the situation is ideal, with the sun low on the horizon. There are a couple of ways to solve the squinting problem (besides choosing a cloudy day): the first is to position the sun to the side of your subject. This makes the light more tolerable, but there's a downside: side lighting creates long, intense shadows, leaving the shaded side of the face much darker. It's not terrible, and often this is the best solution, especially since the alternative-placing the sun behind the subject-would blind the camera instead, resulting in a silhouette. The second solution is very simple but extremely effective: move into the shade. This way, the light will still be more than sufficient, but neither you nor your subject will be blinded.

We've now understood that sunlight is a great ally for photographers, but it can also be so strong that it creates overly harsh shadows. Clouds help, but they completely change the mood of the photo and aren't always ideal. So how do professional photographers take great outdoor photos with visible but softer shadows? Simple: they use flashes and reflectors. And by flash, I don't mean your phone's flash, but a dedicated one-powerful enough to compete with sunlight. Your smartphone's flash is too weak, though you can experiment by getting very close to your subject; you should notice some differences. The second solution is reflectors. You place the sun behind the subject, creating backlight, and then someone holds large white or gold panels to reflect sunlight back onto the subject. This softens the shadows using reflected light. A quick method that doesn't require an assistant is to find a composition that allows you to use a wall behind the photographer as a reflector.

We could write a whole book on this, but let's assume none of you have professional lamps or studio lights with hundreds of watts-otherwise you probably wouldn't be reading this guide. So we'll focus on the lighting we typically have: household bulbs. Incandescent bulbs, LEDs, and fluorescent lights are extremely weak. Our eyes are incredible-they let us see well even under a single bulb, almost as well as in daylight, but only because they are extraordinary organs. In reality, artificial light is extremely weak-hundreds of times weaker than sunlight. As you already know, weak light means longer shutter speeds, which leads to motion blur or very dark, extremely noisy photos when shooting in very low light. What do we mean by noisy? Earlier in the guide we mentioned ISO sensitivity. When your phone detects very low light, it uses a "trick" to make the photo as bright as possible. The sensor can operate in a "rougher" mode by raising ISO and reducing shutter time. When the light is too weak, the phone is forced to use very high ISO-very "rough". The photo becomes as bright as possible, but the quality is terrible. This loss of detail is called noise. As you can imagine, photo quality in low-light conditions-such as artificial light or, worse, darkness-is far inferior to what you get in optimal lighting. The results cannot be improved in any meaningful way, and the final quality depends solely on your sensor's ability to raise ISO while losing as little detail as possible-something you cannot control. So when shooting at night, you'll have to accept the result, even if it's mediocre.

Photo Editing

Today we have software capable of applying filters-sometimes very heavy ones-automatically in just a few seconds. The funny thing is that we now have increasingly advanced cameras, with incredible resolutions, excellent dynamic range, and a level of quality that was unthinkable until recently, yet we often see filters applied that create an aged look, a burnt effect, or simulate film defects caused by light exposure, essentially negating the advantages of ever-more powerful sensors.

A while ago I read an article by a photographer-quite full of himself-who claimed to be outraged by the proliferation of photos that, to his "photographer's eye," looked ugly and artificial. You know what? That photographer is a foolish snob. To begin with, everyone edits their photos however they like. It doesn't matter if some pretentious professional tells you that heavily edited smartphone photos are ugly-if you like them, that's all that matters. There's nothing more to add. Even if it were true that many of the "retro" effects commonly applied to photos aren't exactly the ideal of photography, it's equally true that the photography world follows its own rules, dictated by the tastes of most photographers. If the trend of the moment is HDR or "fake damaged" photos, traditional photographers will simply have to accept it. Today photography is for everyone; it's no longer the elitist world it once was. And while it's true that a photo taken with a professional DSLR and edited in a "traditional" way is generally considered more beautiful by people with photographic culture, it's just as true that most photos today are taken and heavily edited on a smartphone. It's neither right nor wrong-it's simply what mass photography is today. They'll have to deal with it.

Photography has always been closely tied to editing. Years ago, film was developed in the darkroom: the chemicals used, the time negatives spent in the solutions, and the types of film chosen were nothing more than "analog editing." There is nothing wrong with post-production, nothing wrong with heavy editing. Even traditionalists-who often turn up their noses at digital tools-have always edited their photos to make them look better. Polarizers, filters, darkroom tricks-they were all pure and simple editing. The tool doesn't matter; the goal does. The goal is to create a photo we like, whether it looks natural or heavily stylized. If the photographer is happy with the result, nothing else matters.

It's well known that to create an objectively good photo, post-production is necessary-and in some cases, full retouching. But what's the difference? Post-production refers to minor adjustments: fixing brightness, white balance, highlights, shadows, and color saturation. Retouching, on the other hand, involves more significant changes: removing a lamppost, eliminating skin imperfections, or completely transforming the image. The first is almost mandatory to achieve a decent photo; the second is optional and up to the photographer. But both are important for creating an image that stands out.

Today, young men and women have rediscovered a photographic technique that has always existed to drastically reduce skin imperfections: High Key. You can see an example next to this text. In practice, it involves "overexposing" the photo so that the bright areas hide almost all flaws. This technique is ideal for people who are expected to have smooth skin-young people and women of all ages, except the elderly. We expect smooth skin from these subjects, but no one has perfect skin, so the best way to hide imperfections is to "burn" the photo intelligently. So how do you look better in photos? If your goal is to appear better than you do in real life, there are a few steps to follow: first of all, you need to take lots of photos. In a series of forty or fifty shots, with different angles, you can be almost certain to find at least one where you look good. Once you've chosen the best one, you should apply an effect that suits your personality. If you're young, the High Key effect will hide most imperfections, so try to take photos in soft light.

If, on the other hand, you're older, or you're a man whose charm comes from expression lines, then you should use harsher light and choose an effect that enhances those features-such as Low Key. The topic is huge, and this is just a brief introduction, but it should give you a couple of starting points.

To conclude, let me tell you a story. I know a very funny girl. One evening at a dinner with friends, she launched into a hilarious monologue about how on Instagram girls post heavily edited photos where they look like stunning models and get hundreds of likes, but then you see the same girls at the bar in the evening and they look terrible compared to the photos where they seemed the most beautiful people on the planet. She laughed heartily thinking about the guys who leave comments like "you're gorgeous," without realizing that the person in the photo is practically someone else when seen in real life. The reason I'm telling you this is simply to make you reflect: even if our ego is satisfied by taking a photo that looks better than the others, it's still a "little lie" we tell ourselves and those who see the photo. There's nothing wrong with it, but we should learn to love ourselves more for who we are, without giving too much importance to appearances. And, as unpleasant as it may be to say, not everyone is beautiful. You must first learn to accept yourselves, knowing that no matter how good a photo may look, if you retouch your waist, chest, muscles, or anything else, people may realize it's an exaggerated edit. There's no point in trying to look like a model if you're not one. There's nothing wrong with wanting to look as pleasant as possible, but I wouldn't recommend overdoing it-you risk looking ridiculous.

Advanced Use

Most smartphones, once you explore the advanced camera functions, allow you to select various preset scenes. There are no universal rules-each device may offer different options-but they are usually so simple to understand that there's no need to analyze them one by one. I'm referring, for example, to Panorama, Night, Portrait or People, Fireworks, and so on.

In each of these scenes, the phone uses different color profiles and exposure settings that should be ideal for the selected situation. In panoramas, blues and greens are enhanced; in portrait scenes, the phone tries to produce more pleasing skin tones; in night scenes, ISO sensitivity increases and the color temperature becomes cooler to better convey the nighttime atmosphere.

If you don't plan to edit your photos, it's definitely recommended to take advantage of these presets. But if you intend to do post-production, you can achieve the same results through editing while using the standard settings.

Manual focus is typically a feature of DSLR or more advanced cameras. To be fair, finding a smartphone that allows manual focus adjustment is quite difficult-most only offer autofocus. If you're lucky enough to have a phone with manual focus, I believe the situations where it provides a real advantage are rather limited. Aside from creative shots, the only case where it may be genuinely useful is macro photography. A feature that is much easier to find, however, is "touch focus." In this case, the phone focuses on the point you tap on the screen, and this can be very helpful at times.

Most higher-end phones offer burst shooting and various advanced functions, which differ from device to device. The only way to discover all the possibilities is to explore the advanced menus and see what your smartphone can do.

So let's look only at the most common ones. Burst mode allows you to take a rapid sequence of photos so you can choose the best one. This feature is especially useful for sports photography, but not only. For example, imagine a child jumping into a pool: by shooting a burst, you can choose the frame where the child is just touching the water, or the one with the most interesting splash. Some phones even allow burst shooting when photographing a group of people. In these cases, it's very likely that someone will have a bad expression. More advanced phones allow you to replace each person's face with a better one from the burst sequence.

Another fairly standard feature is panoramic photography. You take a photo and then start rotating, and the phone automatically creates a very wide image-up to 180°-resulting in a very interesting panorama.

The last advanced feature that almost all phones now offer is HDR photography. There would be a lot to say here, but this guide is already long. In short, the phone tries to produce an image with a wider dynamic range than usual. If you want to learn more, you can read our HDR photography guide written for DSLR cameras, which still explains everything you need to know.

Final Thoughts

With the advent of smartphones, the natural evolution of mobile photography has been the sharing of images. Social networks-first and foremost Facebook and apps like Instagram allow us to photograph and share anything we want in just a few seconds. There are programs such as Pixlr, Camera Zoom FX, and even Adobe Photoshop Touch, which let us perform quick or even relatively advanced edits without ever needing to transfer the photo to a computer, working directly from the device. In three minutes and with just a few taps, you can take a photo, crop it, straighten it, adjust colors and lighting, and publish it on Facebook. In recent years, the trend of sending photos on WhatsApp has also exploded, along with the rise of selfies, and now an enormous number of photos of every kind are taken and shared every day.

Traditional photographers are often critical of this "trivialization" of photography. They argue that today you no longer need photographic knowledge or expensive equipment. Anyone can publish their photos and make them visible to hundreds of people. Personally, I don't see this as a problem-on the contrary, I find it an interesting phenomenon. Of course, I also believe that a professional photo is often far superior, but we frequently see interesting images that would otherwise have been lost forever simply because no professional photographer was around. In the end, in my opinion, photography for everyone brings more benefits than drawbacks. And if many photos turn out to be ordinary or uninteresting, it's not the end of the world-you just move on to the next one.

Almost all phones have two cameras: the front and the rear. The first thing to understand is that the front camera is significantly lower in quality compared to the rear one, which is much better. Selfies are extremely popular today, but in reality, if people simply turned the phone around, the photo would come out much better. Phones with good-quality front cameras are starting to appear on the market, although still inferior to the rear camera, and on many devices the front one is just barely adequate. The camera you should use is the one on the back-the less convenient one, unfortunately.

To conclude the guide, we couldn't avoid at least mentioning video. All smartphones allow you to record video sequences using the built-in camera, but we prefer not to delve into the topic, both because it's not very relevant to our website and because we lack the expertise in editing and directing.

Conclusion

We hope you liked this page about smartphone photography for beginners. Before saying goodbye, we would suggest you read our home page, with all the articles we wrote about Cortina d'Ampezzo.

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