Taking airgun photos with your phone
- By MDriskill
- Traditional Airguns
- 68 Replies
A friend was asking how I do photos, so I thought I might expand my reply into something I could annoy others with, ha...
Now, I am no pro photographer...so I welcome any ideas for improvements! And many of you already know a lot of this, so apologies in advance for insulting your intelligence. The notes below are for an iPhone (my 2-year-old basic SE model), but I think most Android phones are broadly similar.
When taking the shot:
1. Phone cameras typically default to a wide-angle setting upon opening, which can distort and curve the image. You get a more natural perspective if you zoom in a third or half way.
2. Find a "quiet" background, and get as close as you can - fill the screen with your subject.
3. To my eye, it adds some interest to photograph guns (especially rifles) at an angle, and inclined a bit, rather than straight on. Your mileage may vary!
But the real secret is learning the editing features on your phone (below is a screen shot, of a photo I've finished editing on my iPhone):
1. When you open a pic and hit the edit button, the exposure control window pops up as seen below. The three buttons on the left take you back and forth between that, special effects, and the rotate/crop control.
2. The buttons on the right of this window control a long list of exposure variables (brightness, contrast, shadows, sharpness, tint, and more). But if you click the top button - "auto adjust" - the phone automatically analyzes and tweaks them all at once! I almost always use this with artificial indoor lighting, but less often with natural outdoor light.
3. I usually jack up the brightness a bit more too, to compensate for the bad lighting in my room. (Most of the time, I don't touch any other exposure settings beyond what "auto adjust" comes up with - but experimenting with those is fun. You may find other tweaks you really like.)
4. Switch to the crop/rotate window on the left. Turn the image the way you want it, then crop the shot to get rid of extraneous surroundings (people wanna see my gun, not the other junk in the room, ha).
5. If desired, hit the graphics button at the top to add text, arrows, circles, etc. Choices are limited on my phone, but you can alter size, line weight, color, etc.
FWIW, the camera and editing on my old iPad work exactly the same as the iPhone, so you can shoot with one, transfer the image, and edit with the other. I do this a lot. My phone is more portable and has a crisper camera, but the tablet's bigger screen eases editing, organizing, and retrieving the images for posting.
IMHO the two biggies are zoom and crop. If you do nothing else, get the perspective right, and cut away the distractions. The other settings will vary, but again, are fun (and free!) to play with
. Most phone cameras these days can produce quite remarkable results.
Now, I am no pro photographer...so I welcome any ideas for improvements! And many of you already know a lot of this, so apologies in advance for insulting your intelligence. The notes below are for an iPhone (my 2-year-old basic SE model), but I think most Android phones are broadly similar.
When taking the shot:
1. Phone cameras typically default to a wide-angle setting upon opening, which can distort and curve the image. You get a more natural perspective if you zoom in a third or half way.
2. Find a "quiet" background, and get as close as you can - fill the screen with your subject.
3. To my eye, it adds some interest to photograph guns (especially rifles) at an angle, and inclined a bit, rather than straight on. Your mileage may vary!
But the real secret is learning the editing features on your phone (below is a screen shot, of a photo I've finished editing on my iPhone):
1. When you open a pic and hit the edit button, the exposure control window pops up as seen below. The three buttons on the left take you back and forth between that, special effects, and the rotate/crop control.
2. The buttons on the right of this window control a long list of exposure variables (brightness, contrast, shadows, sharpness, tint, and more). But if you click the top button - "auto adjust" - the phone automatically analyzes and tweaks them all at once! I almost always use this with artificial indoor lighting, but less often with natural outdoor light.
3. I usually jack up the brightness a bit more too, to compensate for the bad lighting in my room. (Most of the time, I don't touch any other exposure settings beyond what "auto adjust" comes up with - but experimenting with those is fun. You may find other tweaks you really like.)
4. Switch to the crop/rotate window on the left. Turn the image the way you want it, then crop the shot to get rid of extraneous surroundings (people wanna see my gun, not the other junk in the room, ha).
5. If desired, hit the graphics button at the top to add text, arrows, circles, etc. Choices are limited on my phone, but you can alter size, line weight, color, etc.
FWIW, the camera and editing on my old iPad work exactly the same as the iPhone, so you can shoot with one, transfer the image, and edit with the other. I do this a lot. My phone is more portable and has a crisper camera, but the tablet's bigger screen eases editing, organizing, and retrieving the images for posting.
IMHO the two biggies are zoom and crop. If you do nothing else, get the perspective right, and cut away the distractions. The other settings will vary, but again, are fun (and free!) to play with
. Most phone cameras these days can produce quite remarkable results.
