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Useful Photography Tricks to Try with Your Mobile Phone or Apps

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Anybody can pick up a mobile phone and take a photo. However, you need photography tips and tricks to capture great photos with your mobile phone. This article highlights useful photography tricks that will enable you to take great photos with your mobile phone.

Take extra seconds

Mobile phones provide a chance to take photos really fast. However, if you rush when taking photos with your mobile phone your pictures will be of low quality. Therefore, take extra seconds to ensure good composition of your photo. This includes improving the angle or lighting and figuring out where the viewer will be interested in. Taking an extra second to apply the basic principles of composition will improve the quality of your photos dramatically.

Wipe the lens

Mobile phones spend a lot of time in the bags, hands or pockets. This makes them really dirty due to grease, dust, dirt and fingerprints. If you don’t wipe the lens before you take a photo with your phone, this grease, dust, dirt and fingerprints will have a significant effect on its quality. Dirt blocks light from getting into the camera sensor. It also leaves dust spots, blurs or smudges on the photo. A clean lens enables you to take a clear, sharp image with your phone. Therefore, wipe the lens with a soft cloth before you take a picture with your mobile phone.

Adjust the camera settings

You need to know the settings of your mobile phone camera. Ideally, you should take control of exposure, focus, ISO and white balance when taking pictures with your mobile phone. It is important to note that some mobile phone cameras lock focus and exposure together. This means you can change photo lighting depending on your focus. In terms of white balance, you have four settings. Match them on the basis of your shooting environment to ensure better lighting for the photos.

Use Mobile Apps

There are many cool mobile apps today to edit your photos, add more, make then fun, and also to make your shots better for the type of shot you are looking to take. Kurtis Hon of Kande Photo Booths A Photo Booth Rental San Francisco company stated he loves some of the photo booth apps and it always gives him ideas to add more onto his own photo booth rental service.

Set a high resolution

Your mobile phone photos will be of a better quality when you set a high resolution. Instead of zooming, try to move closer to the subject. Basically, cropped photos have better resolution that zoomed in photos. Of course, high resolution requires large storage for mobile phone photos. That’s where cloud storage and photo sharing apps and services like Dropbox and Picasa come in. You can also get an SD card so that you can transfer photos through the internet with ease.

Keep the phone steady when taking photos

This is particularly important any time you take photos with your camera at night or in low light. In these conditions, the camera of your phone uses a slow shutter speed so that light can have time to hit the camera sensor. In that case, any camera movement results in blurred images. Therefore, place the phone on a solid surface, use a tripod or hold it with two hands to ensure that it remains steady.

Employ the rule of thirds

This entails dividing up the image mentally using two vertical lines and two horizon lines and positioning important scene elements along these lines or at their meeting points. The rule of thirds is based on the idea that an off-center composition creates a better shot.

Taking a quick snapshot using a mobile phone might be easy. However, following these tricks gives you full control of your mobile phone camera so that you can take a truly amazing photo.

Gadgets For The Great Outdoors

If reports are to believe, most of the western world spend their free time staring at the television, playing video games or surfing the net for hours on end. While that may be some people’s idea of a good time, many of us would rather spend our leisure time outside, taking on the challenges nature has to offer. Whether you enjoy mountain climbing, camping, or just the occasional picnic in the countryside, there’s no denying the great outdoors is far more interesting than anything TV or the internet has to offer.

But that’s not to say that there’s no place for technology out in the wilderness. Some pretty smart inventions have been created for the outdoorsman (or woman) in mind.

Taking technology outside

There is a whole host of gadgets that can be of assistance when taking on Mother Nature. Some are well known and well loved, like the compass. But some, while newer and more hi-tech, are just as useful, and once you’ve started using them you’ll wonder how you ever survived outdoors without them.

For example, the portable UV monitor is a handy little gizmo that lets you know exactly how strong the sun’s rays are wherever you happen to be. Calculating against your skin type and the protection factor of your sun cream, it alerts you when you’ve had maximum exposure to the sun and would be wise to find some shade.

The solar backpack isn’t just useful for carrying provisions. It is equipped with a handy solar panel which stores energy from the sun while you are hiking along. This energy can then be used to recharge a device such as a digital camera or mobile phone, meaning you need never lose contact with the outside world, or miss the opportunity to take the ultimate wildlife snap.

For those that enjoy al fresco dining, but lack the patience to build the perfect bonfire, the portable flat-folding barbecue is a must-have. This lightweight, easy to carry an item, which is smaller than the average laptop computer, unfolds into an instant barbecue which can be taken anywhere – just add charcoal.

Gadgets for the urban survivor

One very cool mobile accessory is the Solar Power Bank Charger- the reason we love this little bugger is because having enough USB ports when you’re out and about and traveling is difficult to find, instead of constantly switching power cords and charging multiple items individually (which can be very time consuming), you can charge it all on one usb travel adapter efficiently. It also has multiple AC plugs for various countries, meaning you don’t have to buy a local adapter convertor in every country you visit. This is perfect for taking your gadgets with you overseas conveniently.

If you shy away from the wilderness, but still like to get out about in town, there are outdoor gadgets to suit you, too. Battery powered heated gloves are a real boon on those long winter nights. The shake-powered torch doesn’t need batteries, so can be relied on the event of a power cut. In the event of a breakdown at night, you’ll be glad you had an emergency rechargeable torch in your car’s cigarette lighter.

So if you’re going on walkabout, don’t just rely on the survival tips. Give yourself even more of an advantage with some hi-tech gadgetry. After all, if it’s good enough for anyone, it must be good enough for you.

Living luxuriously does not necessarily equate with frivolities and white elephants. The latest gadgets here are proof that you can enjoy powerful features in high priced luxury items too. With everything that these personal electronics and accessories can do, your investment is well worth every cash.