Katrina Frazer is a professional photographer, also known as “Queen of Light” – her mission is to help photographers of all levels to make the most of technology. With her Nokia 7 Plus, she reveals some tips for getting professional photos from our smartphone.
All of us are used to using certain filters to transform our shots – usually, however, rather than capturing their beauty, we risk ruining the photograph completely. To obtain natural and beautiful images, without filters, Katrina suggests us to use some tools on the smartphone that are not used by us all.
Play with the shutter speed
We know that taking pictures at night is not so simple – the cameras capture less light than the human eye and, as a consequence, the automatic mode rarely reproduces what is framed. So to capture more detail, more light is needed and a slow shutter speed keeps the camera lens open longer.
Be careful, though, because even the slightest movement can produce a blurred image. Here are some tips to improve the quality of your shots:
- Use a portable tripod for more stability and, therefore, guarantee the perfect shot.
- If you do not have it, try to open your legs by holding your feet perpendicular to your shoulders and resting your back to create a tripod with your body.
- If you find a flat surface in front of you, rest your elbows (they must be wider than the shoulders).
- Another way to minimize movement is to shoot while slowly breathing out.
Altering the shutter speed will allow you to do much more than just night shots with an excellent level of detail
ISO – what?
Although the automatic features of your smartphone’s camera are good, another method to give a professional touch to your photos is to change the ISO settings (the sensitivity of light), thus changing the size of the lens.
To perform a portrait or selfie that highlights the outlines and shadows of a face, you need to use a low ISO. To optimize the detail that this setting offers us, it is important to position the subject with the face in full light – in these circumstances the flash ruins the image, then try to exploit the available light by adjusting the ISO values, to get shots from real professionals. To make it short: if there is little light, high ISO. For details, in the sun, low ISO.
The trick is in the detail
Smartphones are exceptional because they allow us to use the finger to identify the main subject of our photos – however there is the risk of losing the other details. Here the opening comes into play, that is the size of the aperture of the lens in which the light enters.
By manually checking the aperture, you can choose the exact distance on which to focus the camera of the smartphone and capture even the smallest detail available. The aperture ranges from f1,2 to f22 – fix it between f1,2 and f4 is perfect to capture all the details.
Do not get down, try it!
Some smartphones allow you to manually change settings on the camera and play with ISO, shutter, and aperture – what should you do? Try them, without fear! The Pro Mode mode on Nokia is the perfect interface for manually checking the settings.
Also available on the Nokia 7 Plus, you can access Pro Mode with a simple scroll and thanks to the manual control of advanced settings, you can view the effects in real time, before shooting. To conclude, Katrina explains why the Nokia 7 Plus is the best phone to try out this work. The photographer said:
” What distinguishes Nokia 7 plus from my point of view is the simplicity it offers to take a nice picture. The amount of professional level options available on a smartphone of this price range is remarkable and the interface is very easy to understand. With a basic understanding of manual settings, using Pro Camera lets you take realistic photos and then edit or share them directly from the app. “
