Fast reactions, the correct settings and confidence in your equipment here is essential as you could miss the shot.

Be prepared to take lots of photos. More than any other type of scene, sports requires more photos to be taken as capturing the image due to the fast pace of movement and difficulty of capturing the moment. If your smartphone has a burst mode…very few do then use it, you stand more chance of getting the picture.

If possible get in a part of the stadium/venue where there is plenty of light. Using a smartphone camera you want to get as much light into the camera as possible ( do not shoot directly into light) to assist in capturing a good shot.

Many venues, especially stadiums can have roofs and shadows which can affect the light and outcome, so think ahead.

Talking of thinking ahead, try where possible to be ahead of the action to make it a bit easier to get the perfect image. If you are constantly following the action you are always going to be a fraction behind!

Do not always focus on the winner. Get pictures of the looser, the injured runner, the passionate fans and family. There will often be a great deal of interest and emotion in these shots. Getting the photos of the winner is always great, but everyone goes for that shot, go for something different.

Also remember to try different apps that may help you capture a photo faster.

Created by a man that is leading the offensive on promoting smartphone cameras, the book ‘The best camera is the one that’s with you’ by Chase Jarvis is an outstanding collection of nothing other than photos taken on his iPhone 2 megapixel camera.

Chase’s iPhone images make up a visual notebook—a photographic journal—from the past year of his life. The book is full of visually-rich iPhone photos.

With editing only having been done using applications on the smartphone itself this pouch promotes everyday photography on the move through the lens of a smartphone camera.

From the back of the book:

A beacon of creativity with boundless energy, Chase Jarvis is well known as a visionary photographer, director, and social artist. In The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You, Chase reimagines, examines, and redefines the intersection of art and popular culture through images shot with his iPhone.
Whilst Chase may have the artistic flare, this book demonstrates how expensive cameras need not be the way forward. I must stress there are no tips or tricks in the book, it is simply a montage of photos, but if you like photography or smartphones, you could do a lot worse than investing in this book.

Very few cameras come without the ability to zoom. The question is, how they zoom?

Standalone cameras will normally have a optical zoom, whereby the lens extends and twists to magnify in on a subject.

They will too have a digital zoom, whereby it digitally zooms into the image further. This is what is found on smartphones.

Where possible do not use digital zoom, get closer to the subject or take the picture from further away and then crop it.  You do not have to but you get best results this way.

Digital zooming has its place but on a smartphone due to the lower quality camera lens the image will often look really grainy.

Image: Graeme Weatherston / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Another simple method for creating something different is to move the camera when you take a photo.

You might be thinking that is crazy and that is what a video camera is for, but try it. Move the camera left to right really quickly, spin on the spot, move the camera in circles, s shapes anything.

Imagine a colourful bunch of flowers, move the camera as you take the picture and you will be left with a colourful pattern across your screen, it is original, its different and others have proven that it works.

Also when moving the camera, try at different speeds!

Here are some of the results we have had.

We have been demonstrating how the smartphone camera could replace your standalone camera in many everyday circumstances and hope you are discovering just how you could get improved photos from it. However, before these tutorials how did you use your smartphone camera? Even if you haven’t been paying attention to what we have been covering how did/do you use it?

Did you use it at all?

Occasionally?

All the time?

Mainly for video?

Will any of what we have shown you change the way in which you use the smartphone camera?

We are interested to hear what you have to say.

I brought you details of what I thought was a very interesting advert by Olympus yesterday but it seems the camera manufacturer is doing all in its power (in Australia at least) to kill of what I think it may see as a threat.

[Read more...]

So you have taken the photos.  They are on the phone internal memory or on an SD card and now you want to view them.

So you could send the files by email or connect your phone to your PC and view them, wirelessly sync them even or use a HDMI Cable (if applicable) to view them on a big screen.

But when it comes to viewing them on the device on which you took the pictures then there are a few options.  Using an Android device as an example the standard gallery application isn’t bad as a lot of devices will too sync with Facebook, Picasa and more.

However there are other options out there that do similar but different things and may be better for different people.

Quickpic

Probably the most popular photo viewer for Android it brings images to you faster, with more clarity.  Thumbnails can be clicked for a larger view.  You can hide folders or include them in an image search, delete, crop and more!

http://market.android.com/details?id=com.alensw.PicFolder&feature=search_result

Gallery Pro

Gallery Pro works based on the standard Android Gallery app but allows customisation of slideshow times, customisation of the thumbnail size and more.

http://market.android.com/details?id=com.gmail.kdjsoftware.gallerypro.media&feature=search_result

This post is kind of related to smartphone photography, but kind of not!

I saw this advert today in Stuff magazine and love what Olympus have done with it! It uses the camera of your smartphone to help sell a digital standalone camera that lives up to environments your smartphone camera can not!

Here you use your smartphone camera to be scan the QR code in the bottom corner of the advert and then sit your phone in the middle as it plays a YouTube promotional video of the Olympus TG-810.