A good while back, I wrote an article about using a mobile for serious photography. At the time, I was using a cheap Vodafone device that had cost well under £100. During the last year, I’ve upgraded to an iPhone, and it seems worth having a quick reassessment of my views.
I’d concluded that mobiles are good for traditional personal pictures – the sort of thing that you’d have used a basic consumer camera to take: bright light, generally good conditions, and no particular emphasis on creative photographic techniques. A fixed wideangle lens, and the lens wide open is a combination that works pretty well for many subjects, but it really lets you down in low light, or if you need a long lens, or if you want to try differential focus. And, weirdly, they’re good for closeups.
With my basic but very competent iPhone, what changes? It has a better camera in it, and copes with more difficult conditions, but without spending more money – a lot more, for a far bigger and less-pocketable tech chunk – I’m stuck with one wideangle lens. Completely unsuited for portraits, I’m sorry to tell all the selfie-takers. And there’s a continuing difficulty with framing and holding the thing steady at arm’s length.
Really, while it’s sometimes useful to be able to take a record shot and send it through the ether at once, I’m not fussed, and I will continue to carry a proper camera all the time…
But I note that there are some people who are really rocking it with occasional shots. I’ll cite three – whatriveristhis, woollybill, and dark_lord. They post mobile images regularly – far more so than I do, and have a knack of matching the strengths of the medium to their images. Search the galleries on their names, or on Mobile Monday…
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