This year, TIME magazine photographed and published twelve front page covers of powerful women using only an iPhone 6 or 7.
What?! So amazing!
No one can argue that phone cameras let us capture beautiful moments anytime and anywhere. And with the announcement of Apple’s iPhone 8 and iPhone X releases, we all know the smartphone camera quality will only continue to wow us.
The smartphone is a modern multi-tool at its finest. With its GPS I can avoid getting lost. With its mapping feature I can look up a restaurant’s phone number to make a reservation. And with its ever-improving lenses I can take a great picture of the outside before we go eat. A perfect tool while on the go.
My family loves to be on the go and to travel near and far. In fact, we love it so much that this year we decided to ditch suburban living in exchange for a trip around the world. It’s crazy to read that: We are going on a trip around the world. It required many months of research, selling and packing, and now we are nearly ready to embark on our trip.
One of the essential parts of planning this trip was to make sure I could document it all with ease. I’ll take my DSLR and favorite lens, of course, but I also wanted to use my iPhone 7. Besides my wallet, it’s the only other thing that I always have on me.
With just a few add-on products, I discovered that I could take my mobile photography to a whole new level. Here are five that I love to use.
1. Add a wide angle external lens.
Attachment lenses can really strengthen your phone’s photographic quality. My favorite go-to lenses are Moment’s wide angle and telephoto lenses. Each lens is less than $100 and mount to Moment’s phone case to make it easy to capture more than just the built-in camera can.
The Moment Wide Angle is an 18mm lens and does a great job capturing two times the amount of picture that your phone normally would. A simple selfie can become a portrait when it also captures your surrounding area and a simple landscape can become an immersive image with even more depth.
Below, the image on the left was taken with my phone and the right one was taken with the wide angle attached. I never moved between those two images.
2. Add a telephoto or zoom lens.
The Tele lens, also from Moment, is a 60mm focal length and is fantastic at capturing things in the distance without losing pixel quality. Using a phone’s stock digital zoom is a bit of a no-no as you really lose the details as pixels are sacrificed for artificial proximity. This lens makes it possible to “zoom” without losing the important details in your image.
This type of lens allows the user to reach out and be present without digitally degrading the quality of the image. Instead of missing out on taking the picture, this can allow you to quickly capture things in the distance.
Moment serves iPhone, Google and Galaxy users. They also offer macro and fisheye lens attachments.
3. Use an underwater case.
By putting your phone into a waterproof case, you are able to capture images similar to a GoPro. While you aren’t shooting in RAW format, you can still capture some beautiful and fun moments that would otherwise only reside in your memory.
There are quite a lot of options available for waterproof cases at a variety of price points. An excellent quality option for extreme water scenarios is the ProShot Case. The company also sells a selfie stick and external lenses as add-ons. Another popular case is the Lifeproof case. It is a sturdy hard case, similar to an Otter Box.
I opted for a simpler option, which still lets me capture some great images. This waterproof case is essentially a thick Ziploc bag that tightly seals at the top. Both sides are clear and allow the camera to capture moments in the water. To take images, I use both the volume up button or the camera button in camera mode.
Capturing underwater images takes a fair amount of practice and a good set of goggles. Give yourself some time to experiment!
4. Use post-processing apps.
After snapping a few images, I bring my favorites into my editing apps. I love VSCO and Afterlight for post processing and both are about $1. VSCO has processing bundles that can be purchased in the app but my favorite is the A-set which comes free. Lightroom mobile is also a great way to edit images in your phone if you already use Adobe Creative Cloud.
Here is a before and after of two images from the same burst. It’s amazing how a bit of editing can really create a polished image. All I adjusted was white balance, exposure and applied a VSCO preset.
One of my favorite tools in editing apps is the x/y skew, also called the tilt function. I can correct the angles of a building with a few tweaks, especially this one that was looming over me.
5. Print those beauties!
Mobile photography deals mostly in the art of convenience. Does this mean you can’t create final products with your images? It doesn’t! Hooray!
The iPhone 6 and 7 series can be printed with excellent, sharp pixel quality of 300 ppi (pixel per inch) up to 11×14. These camera phones were upgraded to 12 megapixels from the previous models’ 8 megapixels. Many say you can go up to 16×20 with good quality at 200 ppi. Versions older than the iPhone 6s can be printed up to 8×10 with excellent sharp 300 PPI quality.
This means you can create prints, postcards, and even canvases that are viewed at a distance with great looking quality.
Some of my favorite printing services for my iPhone images are Chatbooks and a newly discovered California based company, Social Print Studio. Both Chatbooks and Social Print Studio have an app that you can download to order product directly from your phone and the images you’ve edited and saved in your photo album. As much as I use my mobile images for online use, I really want to print them into tangible product too.
With a camera at your fingertips, you can create incredible images while on the go!
Words & photos by Jess Swenson
Great tips! Thanks so much for all the info!
Loved this article Jess! So many great tips!
Still using these and loving them! Thanks for sharing!!