Source: Luke Palmer on Unsplash

Basic course in smartphone photography: Better photos with the smartphone

5. July 2018 Published by Raphael Doerr

So, your camera is what matters most when it comes to taking photos? Wrong! You need to look at motifs the right way, compose your picture and know a few basic tips and tricks. Our new series shows you how to take better photos with your smartphone from now on. The first part provides you with a few basic tips. They will help you take better photos – but you are responsible for the right motifs.

Clean the lens on the smartphone’s camera

Many of us wonder time and again why our pictures aren’t perfect, but are instead slightly blurred. So our first tip is: Clean the lens on your smartphone’s camera. It’s rarely protected by a cover and, of course, many smartphone cases also don’t protect the lens – after all, you want to be able to take photos without having to remove the phone from of its case every time. Yet that also means your phone is exposed to damp, dust and lint from your pockets the whole day. All that affects the lens.
So it’s all the more important to clean it regularly. But please don’t use your shirt for that, but rather a microfiber cloth or soft cloth for cleaning spectacles. And remember: Your phone has a lens at the front and rear.
You can find more tips on how to clean your mobile phone correctly here.

Always use two hands

Our second tip has to do with stability. Just like when you take photos with any other camera, you should make sure you have a firm footing and hold your smartphone with both hands. That means you and the phone are stable and avoids blurred and wobbly pictures. Just take your time – after all, we’re taking photos and not just snapshots. Also make sure you’re holding your smartphone as straight as possible. That prevents slanting lines and distortions in your photos.

Holding the camera the right way is extremely important – if you use both hands, you can avoid unsightly shaky shots.

Use the options offered by your smartphone

The smartphone is like any other camera in that automatic mode is the quickest way of taking pictures, but the results are rarely the best. If you want to take photos regularly, you should delve into the various settings modern smartphones like the Gigaset GS370 offer. Get to know the features and simply try out how different settings change your pictures.

The limitations of smartphone photography

Let’s not kid ourselves: If you want to take professional photos, you definitely need the right camera. That’s also true when it’s dark or your motif is far away – most smartphones simply run up against their limitations in such situations. But that’s fine. After all, most of us want to snap amazing shots without a lot of equipment. You always have your smartphone at hand, it’s ready to use in a jiffy, and it offers many great ways of sharing photos with family and friends quickly. It’s simply important to know what limitations your smartphone camera has and perhaps to pack the right camera if you intend to go night hiking.

Upgrade your memory capacity

Many smartphones, like our Gigaset GS185, now offer a resolution that’s a match for that of normal cameras. But that also means the image files can soon take up quite a few MBs. So it’s all the more important to have enough storage space. The advantage of our Gigaset smartphones: You can easily add storage capacity with microSD cards.