Sign Up

Thank you for signing up with Mobile Media Toolkit. Registration is free and will give you greater access to useful resources on the site.

* Required Fields
Personal Info
Organization Info
Upload a Photo
Max file size of 500k. JPG, GIF, or PNG.
Selections
Word Verification: Are You Human?
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.
CANCEL

Taking Photos on Your Phone

Background: Taking Photographs on a Mobile Phone

What does this article cover?

This Mobile Media Toolkit article covers tools and techniques that will help reporters and citizen journalists take good photographs on a mobile phone and produce reports based on those photographs. This section includes the following topics:

  • Selecting a good phone for taking photographs
  • Taking good photos
  • Editing photos
  • Uploading and publishing photographs

Who is this article for?

This article is for:

  • Anyone who wants to record breaking news.
  • Photographers who want a lighter, ever-present, and inconspicuous camera.
  • Reporters who want to be able to take photos without an accompanying camera crew.

Why should you take photographs on your mobile phone?

  • A picture can convey a thousand words; in breaking news situations, grabbing a phone and snapping a picture can be the quickest way to capture news.
  • More and more mobile phones can take photos today, and camera phones are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
  • Sharing photos has gotten easier as more tools emerge. Pictures can be more easily uploaded using MMS or data connections. Even citizen journalists without pre-existing publishing platforms can make use of social media tools to publish photographs.
  • When mobile phones are connected to a data network, reporters can provide live photo coverage of events.
  • Reporters can upload mobile photos instantaneously in areas with mobile coverage. This can be especially useful if there is danger of confiscation of the mobile phone.

 

Description: Taking Photographs on a Mobile Phone

In this Mobile Media Toolkit section: Taking good pictures on a mobile phone, selecting a good phone for photography, editing pictures (on the phone or on a computer), and uploading photographs to the web.

Landscape: How are Photographs on Mobile Phones Significant in Journalism and News Production Today?

Camera phones are pervasive today (reported estimates range from at least 60% of phones in 2010 having cameras to 78% of phones being equipped with cameras in 2010). With much more than half of the world's population owning a phone (estimated), this puts camera phones in the pockets of at least one out of three people worldwide. Even more, because they are also phones, these cameras travel everywhere with people. As a result, citizens are able to take pictures that are used in news publications (for example, see this iconic picture of the Hudson plane crash taken on an iPhone).

Camera phone usage is still low among professional reporters. While many reporting agencies have set up citizen journalism platforms for uploading pictures from anyone directly to the agency, professional reporters still overwhelmingly use other cameras in their work. Partly, this is because most mobile phone cameras have not reached the quality of professional cameras. But as camera phones take better pictures and offer tools to edit and upload photos instantly to the web, more journalists will likely use camera phones for professional reporting work. Some scenarios where mobile camera phones are becoming (or could become) especially important in photo reporting are:

  • Breaking news: Using his camera phone, Al Jazeera's cameraman Laith Mushtaq captured the aftermath of a bomb blast in Chad. He did not have a traditional camera with him at the time.
  • Everyday pictures: Photographer Chase Jarvis argues that any camera phone can be the best camera for most opportunities, as "the best camera is the one that is always with you." He has produced a book with these photographs, and uses his webpage to convey the same point.
  • Live photo blogging: Live blogging refers to covering an event on a blog live, as it happens. With camera phones, reporters can add photographs to their live coverage (like this live-blog did).
  • In insecure environments: In situations where there is danger of images or camera being confiscated, reporters can upload images as soon as they are recorded. With apps like picPosterous, reporters are less exposed when authorities confiscate a camera.
  • MMS photoblog: Even with a mobile phone without a data connection, reporters can set up an online photoblog (which is simply a web page to which photos can be posted easily). MMS-enabled blogging services are listed on this page on mobile blogging.

The key feature of camera phones in most of these scenarios is presence - we carry our phones to places we wouldn't carry our cameras; and connectivity - we can use camera phones to instantly upload photographs.

 

How To Take Photographs on a Mobile Phone

This section will walk you though:

1. How to select a good camera phone;

2. How to take good photos on mobile phone cameras;

3. How to edit photos on phones; and

4. How to share these photos online from phones.

Step 1: Select a Good Camera Phone

You don't necessarily need a high-quality camera phone if you want to capture breaking news; the quality of your camera often doesn't matter so long as you capture the right moment. In this photograph of the Hudson plane crash, the compelling scene more than made up for the low quality of the photo. According to the "best camera" community, "the best camera is the one that is with you," and your favorite phone (even one with a bad camera) could be just the camera for you.

However, a high-quality camera phone is, of course, an asset for photo reporters. Here are some reviews of high-end camera phones from various sources:

If you want to judge from example photos, this list of 10 great cameraphone photographs includes the type of camera phone used to take each photo.

From these reviews, and a few more we have encountered, here are some phones that are frequently recommended (links are to reviews): Samsung Memoir, Sony Ericsson Cybershot C905A, Samsung Behold, Nokia N97, Motorola Zine ZN5, and iPhone 3GS.

Some of the important characteristics to look at when choosing a camera phone include:

  • Resolution of photos. While digital cameras now take extremely high resolution photos, camera phones are still playing catch-up. The greatest camera phones (C905A, Memoir) can catpure 8.1 megapixel photographs, while good ones can take 5 megapixel photographs. The only camera we recommend that cannot take 5 megapixel photos is the iPhone 3GS, which gets the recommendation based on the software it offers.
  • Autofocus and ISO settings. Camera phones typically don't offer many of the controls of traditional photography, like shutter speed and aperture control or manual focus. On camera phones, you should look for good auto-focus, and ISO settings that can be changed depending on situation.
  • The software. Camera phones can be used to share photos online, as well as to edit images. It is important to see if the phone allows you to share photos in a friendly way. See this New York Times article on the iPhone 3GS's apps for a glimpse at what kind of software a phone can offer.
  • Wi-Fi, 3G, bluetooth, and GPS. It is great to be able to upload photos over Wi-Fi or 3G networks, geotag a photograph with the location it was taken using the GPS, and transfer files to computers or other phones using bluetooth.

 

Step 2 : Take Good Pictures on a Mobile Phone

Mobile phone cameras are usually simple cameras, without much zoom and with sensors that do not do well in poor lighting conditions. The following guides should help you take good pictures on such cameras:

We also found a good video that offers tips for camera phone photographers. It is embedded above.

The top five tips that we found:

  • Use natural and other ambient light. Camera phones have small lenses, and the more light you let in, the better your pictures will be.
  • Stabilize the phone and yourself. Camera phones typically don't offer super-fast shutter speeds, which means that you will need to make sure the camera is still. Use two hands, lean against something, or use mobile camera phone hardware. This site provides 3 tips for avoiding shaky footage on a mobile camera phone, including using oven mitts and acting as a human tripod.
  • Use the highest resolution and quality settings your phone offers. Camera phones allow photographers to take photos at a variety of qualities and resolutions. For serious photography, make sure to select the highest quality available.
  • Keep the battery charged and the lens clean. Camera phone lenses are often exposed to the elements and may need to be cleaned frequently. And because you will also be using the device as a phone, it is important to pay attention to battery level (and keep extras on hand if need be).
  • Avoid using digital zoom. Digital zoom degrades quality of photos taken, and can be later emulated in software. It is much better to move to get the right composition, or to take a wider shot.

 

Step 3: Edit Your Pictures

There are three ways to edit photos: directly on your mobile phone, on the web, or on a computer after you download photos from your mobile.

  1. Editing pictures directly on your mobile phone: There are few options available for directly editing photos on your phone. These applications are only available on select smartphones. The iPhone 3GS has a Photoshop app and several others while Android options include the Photoshop.com mobile web app, and picSay. We haven't yet found good options for BlackBerry, Symbian, or Palm phones.
  2. Editing photos on the web: There are many web photo-editing tools available (here is a good catalog we found). The advantage of these tools is that some of the HTML tools (note that Flash isn't supported on most phones) are usable from phones with browsers, although we haven't tested these tools ourselves. These apps will only offer fairly simplistic photo editing, but will let you do it without buying sophisticated software.
  3. Editing photos on a computer after downloading them from the phone: While Adobe Photoshop is regarded by professionals and considered by many the most popular photo-editing application, it is also expensive. There are many free and open source software options are available (see a list of them here). GIMP is widely considered the best free/open source alternative; a guide to using it is available on Tactical Technology Collective's Message-in-a-Box guide.

 

Step 4: Upload Your Photographs

There are many ways to get your photographs off your mobile phone:

  • You can use the cables that come with your phone, store the picture on your phone's memory card and use a memory card reader to access the pictures, or use bluetooth for transferring photographs. See Mobiles-in-a-Box for guidance.
  • Another option is sending photographs using MMS messages. Most handsets have MMS picture-sending built into the menus of the photo gallery software. A few things to note regarding MMS:
    • Carriers often have size limitations on MMS messages; large images and files will not always be transferred over MMS.
    • Many carriers allow the recipient of an MMS to be an email address. Sending MMS messages to email addresses can be a quick way to get the photo onto someone else's computer.
    • MMS messages can consist of multiple pictures, audio content, and/or text captions.
    • For more information on MMS peculiarities in the United States, read the notes from Mobile Voices' experiences with blogging using MMS.
  • Consider a photoblog (whether you have a data connection or MMS). In our section on blogs, we have indicated which blogging software and platforms support photoblogging from mobile phones. A photoblog will let you publish photographs directly to a website from a mobile phone using MMS, the mobile web, or applications, depending on the blogging software and your phone.

More tips about where to publish your photographs are available in the Mobile Media Toolkit article on sharing multimedia online.

 

Limitations to Taking Photographs on a Mobile Phone

  • Mobile phone cameras are getting more sophisticated all the time, but they still cannot produce professional-quality photographs. Cameras on phones have an especially hard time capturing photos at high shutter speeds and low lighting conditions.
  • Photo-editing software on many phones is still not great, which might make it necessary for you to have a computer to edit photos before publishing them.
  • Some photo-blogging services, and most live photo-blogging services, require a data connection.
  • MMS, which can often be used to upload photos when data connections aren't available, can come with its own problems. Some handsets make it extremely difficult to send MMS to email addresses, while other carriers may not support MMS altogether (see our case study of a project that uses MMS in their work for more).

 

New Here?

See how we provide guidance to a variety of different individuals and organizations.