Using your cell phone to do photography.

Over the past few years we have seen cell phones becoming more than just a cell phone. We even have even gone as far as calling them "Smart Phones" (does the air quotes with hands). Yes our phones have almost become a mini computer for some. We have seen a change in technology. Just about everyone has access to a cell phone. As the phones get faster and better we see them with more and more features. The megapixel size on phones have also gone up over the past years in the process. Giving us more pixels in our images to give us better quality.

If you take a look at the images I have posted I used a trick from an old DVD player. We had an old DVD that stopped working and I took it apart and got the lens that is in the DVD player using a bobby pin to hold it in place and some tape. So what I've found is that just about any lens you can pretty much put it on the eye of the camera and see what results you get. The other day taking apart a solar light I found a half dome looking lens in it. It was used to spread the light from the small LED light. Most of the time that I have found that it will give you a macro lens now. Helping you to zoom into small things you want a picture of.

I've started to come across more and more cell phone attachment lenses. The now have Fish eye,wide and macro lenses. This is good because it keeps you from having to tear apart a DVD player for a small lens to use to create macro shots. I've always had fun using a cell phone with attachent lens to get a different effect. It just takes some experimenting with each one to see what works for you. Personally I'm all for the macro lenses. Anything that can bring me closer to that miniture world thats below our feet!

A setting a lot of us over look is the panoramic setting. I took this image of a grasshopper using this setting. It doesn't have to be a full panoramic either. I feel sometimes we think panoramic images need to be of a landscape setting or something big. But here you can use it just the same for the small world of insects around us. Experiment with this setting and see if you too can get different images out of it. If you can keep your hand steady it will help you get a cleaner shot in the end.

I know all cell phone cameras are going to vary based on what type you have. But if you have to option to download Snapseed I highly recomend it! The app is free and is very powerful as far as being able to edit images with it. I have yet to see an app that does it as well as Snapseed does and free on top of that! I'll try and do a separate hub on how it can make your images pop and have fun with it. But for now download it and play around with it. I really think you will be surprised on what you can do with it. So far they have been improving it over the past year and have really done a good job with the updates. I have tried other apps but this one I found to be the best for my needs.

One thing I feel that is worth mentioning is to keep your camera settings at the highest. This will keep your images from losing quality in the end. Plus I often find that it's easier to have the extra pixels just in case you choose to crop your images. So just keep a mental note to check your settings and make sure they are set.

I hope this hub gave you some ideas of how to use your cell phone for photography. And hipefully you will experiment with the different settings on your phone. Just remember to have fun with taking your pictures. This is the only hobby that we can almost freeze time and look back at it a few years later. Time will slip away from us over time and this is one way to slow it down. So take a few pictures today and hold on to those memories!