How to take travel photos on your smartphone

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This was published 7 years ago

How to take travel photos on your smartphone

By Sue Williams
tra2-t&pPhones Smartphone cameras

tra2-t&pPhones Smartphone cameras

As a TV journalist, Stephen Davis covered the war in Iraq lugging around a $100,000-plus Sony broadcast camera on his shoulder. Today, 13 years later, he travels the world shooting video on a $700 Sony Xperia mobile phone slipped into his pocket.

"And the video is of a much greater quality!" he says. "I think a lot of people buy hi-tech smartphones and just use them for the phone or taking selfies but the quality of photos or video they can achieve is fabulous. You can download fantastic apps now that allow you to shoot and edit on your phone and end up with extremely high quality results."

As well as quality and convenience, another major advantage for all travellers is that taking photos on phones is so much less conspicuous than on a conventional camera.

The video and camera capability on any good new phone is very high.

The video and camera capability on any good new phone is very high.

"You stand out much less, and it's a lot less intrusive," says Davis, who's now the head of journalism and associate dean at Sydney's Macleay College teaching, among other things, mobile phone photography and film-making. "In many parts of the world a little discretion is always good for nice human interest shots, and you can send them anywhere instantly."

A number of internationally acclaimed photographers even use iPhones for their work now, like Sydney-based Samah El Ali and New Zealand polar photographer John Bozinov. For the rest of us, it's mostly about getting to know our smartphones and working out exactly what we can do with them.

The newer iPhones, for instance, have 12-megapixel cameras and shoot in 4K video – four times the standard definition quality.

A spokesperson says one of the most important things for users to know is about changing the exposure and focus of the camera. "When people do this, the most regular reaction we get is, 'Oh my God! I had no idea that photos could be this good!'" she says. "A lot of photographers now go to all corners of the earth with their iPhones."

Setting and locking a focal point on an iPhone can be achieved by tapping and holding the screen, while the yellow sun symbol that comes up when photos are shot is to help control the exposure. Sliding the sun up and down makes the photo lighter or darker.

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For a steadier hand, the volume keys can also be used as a shutter, while the camera will also take simultaneous photography and video.

Other smartphones have similar levels of advanced technology. Samsung's new Galaxy Note7 has the same camera as on their Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge, the first dual pixel camera on a smartphone. That technology, delivering sharper and brighter images, combined with the wide aperture and fast auto focus give the camera a faster shutter speed and more accurate autofocus, even in low light conditions.

In addition, their new camera mode, motion panorama, brings movement to traditional panoramic photos, giving the user a completely immersive visual experience. For those who want more, they've also just brought out a tiny camera, the Gear 360, which can be used together with the mobile phone to film and edit 360-degree video.

The only real issue with mobile phone cameras has always been their limited zoom capabilities. But companies are now working on dual lens technology that have one lens on a wider angle and the other one on a longer zoom.

"They have two separate optical lenses and can stitch the two images together to get a much better depth," says Seamus Byrne, editor of technology reviewers CNet Australia. "That's starting to appear now on a couple of phones."

As for whether regular sophisticated cameras are any better, Byrne says the specialist apps you can now download for use with a smartphone make those so much more adaptable. But just as people buy expensive cameras and leave them on the automatic setting, so many of us do exactly the same with smartphones.

"You can pick out subtle difference between the cameras of, say, Samsung versus Apple, but overall the quality you get on any good new phone now is very high," says Byrne. "And the classic thing they always say with cameras is that the camera you have with you is always worth more than the camera left back at home – and most of us always have our phones with us."

Even visiting Japan recently, Davis says he was amazed at how many locals were taking photos on their smartphones – with not a traditional camera in sight.

"The Japanese still make good cameras, but you don't see them there," he says. "The artists will tell you the lens on a traditional camera is still superior and they're probably right, but for most people, you wouldn't be able to see the difference."

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