SMART PHOTOGRAPHY with KARL FEHLAUER
Introduction to Smartphone / Small Sensor Photography Welcome to my new column on smartphone/small sensor photography where I will pass on tips and techniques for creating better images and video from your smartphone (and tablets) or small sensor devices such as action cameras (GoPros / DJI Osmo Action etc.), drones and other portable devices which capture images with a small sensor.
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ll of the above devices have one thing in common and that is they have small sensors and usually (but not always) will have a fixed aperture at a wide setting such as F2.8 or F1.5. Having smaller sensors means that they are less efficient in taking images in low light conditions and can suffer badly from ‘digital noise’. Also, because they have fixed apertures it is very easy to overexpose your images unless you use very fast shutter speeds or filters. In future columns I will go into what aperture, shutter speeds and digital noise mean, what is meant by having a fixed aperture, and we'll look at accessories such as neutral density filters and how they are used to improve your image-taking skills. For now I would like to concentrate on a brief introduction into smartphone/ small sensor photography. You may ask "Why?" and the answer is very simple. Virtually everyone nowadays has a smartphone which has a camera and each day literally millions of photos are taken with these devices for both pleasure and work. 180
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All of the top brands (Samsung, Apple, Google, Sony etc.) now market their smartphones on the capabilities of the cameras in those devices and many of those devices have multiple cameras with different focal lengths (more about focal lengths in a future column). Of particular note is that the latest releases of the top of the line smartphones Samsung S21 Ultra, iPhone 13 Pro Max, Google Pixel 6 Pro, Sony Xperia 1 III etc. - are sold based on the photographic and video capabilities of their cameras and in particular with the S21 Ultra, Pixel 6 Pro and iPhone Pro Max, their low light capabilities, especially when taking astro/nightscape images. In the past, astro/nightscape images were the realm of the high-end full frame cameras such as Canon, Nikon and Sony, but now with the new phones mentioned above, you can capture some outstanding images in low light conditions if you know how and have the right equipment, but more on that in future columns.
