Want Amazing Landscape Photography With Your iPhone? Try These Mobile Photography Tips
- iPhone Photography Tips: 5 Tips to Master Landscapes With Your iPhone
- Essential Tips for Better Photos With Your iPhone X
- Get the Specs and Pricing on SANDMARC iPhone Lenses
- iPhone Photography Tricks You Don't Want to Miss
I'll be the first to admit that my iPhone X isn't as good a camera as my Nikon D850.
However...my phone is pretty darn capable, and with all the accessories you can buy for iPhones and other smartphones, you can trick them out to make them even more capable landscape photography machines.
Paired with a few technical tips and composition advice, you have a recipe for improving your photography.
Here's a short list things you can do to master landscape photography with your iPhone.
Keep It Clean
Perhaps the simplest thing you can do to improve your landscape photos is keep your phone's screen and lens clean.
After all, it's hard to check the composition, framing, lighting, and so forth if you have to try to look through fingerprints and smudges on your phone's display.
And, unlike your "real" camera, you don't need anything special to give your phone a good once over. Your shirt sleeve will do the trick in a pinch, though I'd use lens cloths or something a little less abrasive to help protect against scratching the screen or the lens glass.
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Hold It Like You Mean It
Shooting with an iPhone means you have to hold it at arm's length so you can see what you're doing.
But taking photos with your arms fully extended is the worst way to support a camera - even a small, light one like your iPhone.
The more support you provide your phone, the sharper your images will be. With that in mind, bring your elbows into your chest rather than extending your arms fully.
By resting your elbows on your body, you immediately improve your ability to hold the camera steady for sharper results.
And since there are a wide range of tripods for mobile phones these days, you might as well invest in one to give your phone the ultimate in support.
The Joby GorillaPod 1K Kit shown above is an ideal choice because it's small, lightweight, easy to use, and includes a grip adaptor that holds your phone tightly and securely.
Better still, its flexible legs mean you can wrap it around any fence post, tree branch, or other sturdy object to get interesting low-angle or high-angle shots.
Editor's Tip: Help your phone take sharp images even more by using the timer function or by triggering the shutter using the volume keys on your earbuds.
Shoot With a Variety of Lenses
I've been impressed with the native lenses in my iPhone X, but they still can't match the performance of high-quality add-on lenses like the ones I picked up from SANDMARC not that long ago.
I fully admit that I was skeptical at first because my first foray into iPhone lenses a couple of years ago was an unmitigated disaster.
Given that experience, I was expecting poor image quality, light leaks, low contrast, and aberrations to occur this time around.
I was wrong.
My SANDMARC lenses have absolutely blown me away.
When I first pulled them out of the box, I could immediately tell that the quality of construction was leaps and bounds ahead of my old iPhone lenses.
These things feel sturdy and well-built, and with premium multi-coated optics, I get outdoor photos that have virtually no aberrations. Light leaks, ghosting, and flare are a thing of the past!
What's more, each of the lenses in my kit produce images that are clear and sharp with beautiful colors and gorgeous contrast.
Again, that was not the case with my old iPhone lenses.
Even better, though, is the fact that my kit came with three different lenses - a 16mm wide-angle, a 10mm fisheye, and a 25mm macro.
That gives me much more latitude with my creativity, allowing me to find new and interesting ways to photograph landscapes that would otherwise be impossible with the native lenses on my iPhone.
And since the lenses can attach to my phone in two ways - either clipped on or mounted to SANDMARC's ultra-thin phone case - I can tailor how I use each lens to the specific needs of each shoot.
I shot a lot of landscapes with my iPhone as it was, but now that I've geared up with these lenses from SANDMARC, I take even more photos - and better quality ones, too.
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Find a Way to Add Scale
Adding scale to a shot is an easy, yet effective trick that helps you give more depth to your images.
Not only that, adding a familiar subject like a person, a dog, a tent, or something of the sort gives viewers a greater ability to understand the dimensions of the scene.
In the image above, for example, adding the two people to the shot gives us a much better indication of how expansive the landscape beyond them really is.
Without something to add that kind of scale, it can be hard to discern just how big a mountain, tree, waterfall, or other landscape element really is.
In the end, these mobile photography tips aren't rocket science, but they can each have a tremendous positive impact on the quality of your iPhone landscape photography.
