The challenge of cell phone photography

Sarah McRitchie at EnPuzzlement on Monday, October 6.

Shannon Turner (left) and Leilani Turk at EnPuzzlement on Monday, October 6.

       

 

      Cell phone cameras are one of the tools used by photojournalists; how useful they are depends on the quality of the camera. Most cell phone cameras have options you can find on a DSLR such as focus mode, picture size, picture quality, ISO, and white balance. While it is nice to be able to adjust these things most phones won't have the full range of choices you have for each option on a DSLR. Another downfall of cell phone cameras is that if you use the zoom on them the quality of the image deteriorates and it becomes harder to stabilize the camera to get an in focus image. The biggest downfall of cell phone cameras is the inability to adjust your aperture and f/stops.

      I know that I sound very anti cell phone camera but that's not the case. Some of the newer phones take beautiful images when well composed. I just don't think they should be viewed as a total replacement for DSLRs. If a photojournalist finds themselves confronted with a newsworthy event and they do not have their camera a cell phone camera in their back pocket is an invaluable tool.

      When I shot my cell phone photography assignment for class I ran into a few obstacles. My phone is about four years old and has been dropped more times than I can count, plus it's only a 3.2 mega pixel so the quality of the images isn't the greatest to begin with. A combination of my phone having a delay in image capture and not being able to control my f/stops caused me to have a lot of blur in most of my images. The lighting conditions weren't the greatest so I had to constantly change my angles to play with the light because I could not adjust my aperture or f/stops and I couldn't do a custom white balance.

      This assignment really made me have to think and get creative to compensate for what my cell phone camera couldn't do. I think if I had a better cell phone camera this assignment might have been easier but I probably wouldn't have learned as much.