The best camera is the one (you might forget) you have with you…

Misty Morning - Birmingham

Like most photographers I’m a bit of a technology geek. Always prepared for an imaginary lottery win, I have an ever updating mental list of the one camera or three lenses I absolutely “need” to have the perfect creative arsenal. So when people talk to me about wanting to invest in a camera for their business or personal use and ask for my opinion, they can easily find themselves in a live re-enactment of the latest ‘which camera should I buy’ magazine.

Jon Boden performs at Lichfield Cathedral

The Small Questions

There are so many factors to consider I often find myself asking more questions than your average mortgage broker (though in my defence these things can be expensive!).

What will you do with the final images? Will they just go on social media or printed on a poster?

What kinds of subjects will you photograph? People, places, objects, are they moving or will they be stationary?

What type of environments will you be photographing in? Indoors, outdoors, sunshine, rain or variable?

Will you carry it with you all day? Does it need to be portable?…etc.

Bullring - Birmingham

With so many considerations before a reasonable suggestion can be offered, I think there is one simple question that can save a lot of time, money and effort if it is asked first. That is - “how often do you take photographs with your smartphone?”.

Early Summer - Birmingham

To many the mere suggestion that a smartphone is a camera will sound controversial so let me add a little petrol to that fire. If the final resting place of an image is Instagram or some other social media platform, it is virtually impossible to tell what type of camera has been used. Often viewed on mobile devices these images are simply not large enough to be able to make the distinction. A good smartphone photograph has far more value than a lousy photograph taken with an expensive camera - fact.

Royal Fusiliers War Memorial - London

But I’m not just posing this question to ruffle feathers. Those eager to buy a camera but don’t even use the one in their pocket are potentially denying themselves the most accessible learning experience modern photography has to offer. A camera that provides the photographer with a ‘real-time’ view of their final image before they press the shutter. An interface with controls so accessible they can simply tap the subject to focus and tap a button to capture their image.

Even those that regularly take photographs with their mobile phone are often surprised to learn that it is possible to manually control the exposure in much the same way as you can on a ‘professional’ camera. For android users this functionality is available immediately in the phone but those of the church Apple need only make a modest investment in order to get the advance features. My personal favourite in this regard is an application called Camera+, the current version costs GBP £2.99.

Derilict Building off the Tissington Trail, Peak District

Limitations make us creative

Of course there are limitations to smartphone photography. Almost all smartphone cameras have a fixed aperture, which means the depth of field (how much is in focus) cannot be adjusted. The lenses are also fixed so when you zoom you are actually applying a digital crop and reducing the quality of your final image. But limitations such as these can force us to be more creative.

Little Superman watches over the city from Birmingham Central Library

Having a large depth of field means a smartphone is ideal for environmental portraiture - showing a subject clearly in their environment. Composition becomes even more important and this means you will need to move around to find the best perspective, zooming with your feet.

Bullseye

Reducing the number of options available to us makes learning the fundamentals easier and more natural. Smartphone photographers are instinctively aware of how much they can fit in a frame and how much detail is lost if they stand too far away from their subject.

Everything is awesome... until you run out of ketchup

The Big Advantages

For most of us, the device is already in our pocket and portability is a factor that cannot be stressed enough. When I recommend cameras for personal use it’s almost always a compact type, because I know it is much more likely to be used if it can be easily carried. Even the most enthusiastic photographers can be put off by carrying equipment around all day.

Newcastle Central Railway Station

When we also consider that on top of having a capable photography camera in our smartphone, we also have the ability to shoot HD or 4K video as well, it’s staggering how often we overlook a device within our grasp. Corporate videos as well as family memories can so easily be captured, edited and uploaded to social media in a way that no dedicated camera can.

To those who feel they are ready to go beyond the limitations of smartphone photography I will say this for now - Mirrors are for cars and not for cameras (unless of course you are shooting film!). I’ll talk more on this in a future blog post - Tom :)

All of the images in this post are shot with an iPhone 4, 5 or 6.