Digital age of photography has brought us many new expressions that would have sounded funny in the film era and ”shot on a phone” is one of such. If someone had said that 30 years ago, he or she probably knew nothing about phones or photography. However, today everybody uses a phone camera even to such extent that the sales of certain types of real cameras have seriously declined.
I too have used my phone camera quite a bit lately, because it’s so easy to carry, it saves gps coordinates and the image quality is sufficient, especially the raw. I use the Lightroom camera that captures raw image and is actually pretty usable too. Of course, a real camera handles better, but the LR camera has reasonably good controls for what I need. When using a phone camera I don’t even want that many control points, I just want to point and shoot.
One of the things many complain about phone cameras is the depth of field, but I like that. Everything is pretty much always in focus, so I don’t have to worry about focusing. Just compose and shoot. It also forces me to look carefully and acknowledge what’s in my frame, because I can’t hide anything behind a blur. There are situations when a very shallow depth of field is a good thing, but if the background is smoothed too much it becomes just a surface without content. For my personal projects I usually prefer a lots of depth of field.
I have only used my phone camera actively for about a year or so. Previously I only shot on a phone if I had to or when taking notes. These days I take a phone camera seriously and treat it like a true imaging tool. Here are some of my phone camera pictures, all shot during the past couple of months. Enjoy!
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