Category: Featured

Lesson 67: The Rule of Golden Light

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons
Sharp angle on the Market St bridge leading to the aquarium buildings and fountain
Peeking at the Walnut St bridge through the Market St bridge
Combination of the aquarium with a peek at the Walnut St Bridge
The foreground post conveniently blocked the view of a portrait photographer shooting a family under the bridge, but one little girl snuck into my frame
Symmetrical shot under the bridge

We have talked about the “Golden Hour” or “Magic Hour” on more than one occasion–see Lessons 16 and 17–but since I managed to get out to shoot briefly during Golden Hour, I thought it was a good time to revisit the concept.

Here’s the rule:  virtually anything you want to photograph will look better during the golden hour on a clear day than at any other time of day or under manmade lighting.  Since it would be unlike me to imply that any rule is always true, one exceptions that comes to mind is photos of objects, which can look great shot outdoors during the golden hour, but if you have some really specific details you’re trying to capture, manmade lighting might be easier to deal with.  Photojournalists have been known to scoff at the luxury of being able to shoot during the golden hour–history happens when it happens, not around the timing of the best lighting.

That said, if you have the opportunity to shoot during the golden hour, take it.  As I mentioned in Lesson 17, there is an app for that.  It’s called Magic Hour and you can set it to tell you an hour ahead of time when Magic (or Golden) Hour begins as well as when it actually starts and it will even countdown magic hour for you.

That said, I am currently living in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Chattanooga is surrounded by ridges and (small) mountains.  These high-elevation features make for great scenery, but they also block the sun.  My Magic Hour alarm went off at 7:37PM.  By 7:55PM, the only things still being hit by golden light were the tops of the tallest buildings around.  Geographical obstructions make for a very brief golden “hour”–more of a golden 15 minutes!

In any case, in those 15 minutes, I happened to be out walking my dog along the Tennessee River, so I grabbed some shots.  It’s hard to resist when the light is so pretty.

Your Assignment:  Try to get out during the golden hour with your iPhone (or other camera) handy.  Stay out of ravines that run North and South or you won’t get much light.  You can look up magic hour for your part of the world on a given date here:  http://www.golden-hour.com  Notice the difference in the color and angle of the light.  Try photographing things that you have photographed in other light conditions.  If you can, compare the photos and see if you can tell the difference the lighting conditions make.

Lesson 66: Pink Clouds, HDR, and the iPhone 5S

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

The other night, I looked up and saw pink streaks in the clouds directly across from me.  The sun was setting off to the side, out of view, and causing a lovely color display in the clouds to the North.  I pulled out my iPhone 5S and using the default camera app, took a couple of photos with the HDR turned on as well as with HDR turned off.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I never got a noticeable difference with the iPhone 4S, which is why I rely on the Pro HDR app for scenes with extreme differences in brightness.  I thought I’d give the new iPhone 5S a chance to show me just how gloriously the camera improved.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the HDR version and the non-HDR version:

iPhone 5S without HDR
iPhone 5S with HDR

Can you tell a difference?  There’s a subtle difference in the exposure of the dark trees in the background; otherwise, they’re pretty identical.

That was disappointing.  I pulled out the Pro HDR app and tried again to see if that worked better.  Here’s the Pro HDR version next to the Apple Camera HDR version:

iPhone 5S with HDR
Pro HDR App on iPhone 5S

Pretty big difference.  Not sure why I got the bright strip down the left side of the Pro HDR version.  Unfortunately for me, the sun set before I could try again–I’ve not had that happen before.

What I like about the Pro HDR version is the more intense contrast in the clouds that better shows off the pink against the dark gray–which is more what it looked like when I was standing there.  What I don’t like is that the properly exposed buildings in the foreground become more distracting when the sky is the subject.  And, of course, the bright stripe down the left side!

Next time, I will have to do a comparison of the 4S and 5S to see if there is a significant improvement between those too.  The trouble with grab shots is that you only have time to grab the camera you have with you.

Your Assignment:  Regardless of which version of the iPhone you have, if it has the HDR option, try taking some photos of scenes that are very bright in some parts and very dark in other parts.  Take a look at your photos and see if turning the HDR feature on makes a difference in the amount of detail you get in both the light and dark areas.  If you wold like to try the Pro HDR app in comparison, check out Lesson 9.

Lesson 65: Sunset Makeover

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

OK, this is the 3rd and final makeover post of Gina’s vacation photos (at least for now).  This time, we’re going to take a look at my favorite photo of the 3 Gina sent me.   I love this photo.  I love dramatic contrasts and I never tire of sunsets.  This one has lots of appeal with the way the light is reflected on the lake.  The exposure is great and the focus is perfect.

Here is the original photo Gina sent me:

Original Photo from Gina
Original Photo from Gina

She felt it was too dark.  Specifically, the foreground.  Without understanding what Gina was shooting for (sorry for another pun), I looked at it and said, “Oh, this would be great shot symmetrically.”  To simulate what that would look like, I used Snapseed to crop the photo a lot (and to turn up the contrast a touch and did a slight straighten) to get this:

Cropped to simulate a vertical, symmetrical version
Cropped to simulate a vertical, symmetrical version

Gina liked it, but she said she had liked the curved beach in the foreground of the scene–that was the part that was too dark.  Realizing I had missed the beach entirely, I went back and tried again.  This time, I used the Brightness Selective Adjustment in Snapseed to brighten up the beach along with a very slight contrast and straighten adjustment.  This is what I got:

Beach brightened just enough to show itself in the foreground
Beach brightened just enough to show itself in the foreground

Gina liked both versions.  Her comment was that it was cool to see the same thing two different ways.  I agree.  I often shoot a subject vertically, horizontally, using the rule of thirds, using symmetry, standing up, laying down, and anyway else I can think of.  Sometimes I get nothing.  Sometimes I get several shots I love.  But what I hate is when I get home and look at my photos and think, “Oh, if only I would have shot  _____ way.”

One final comment:  it’s pretty tough to get an exposure that works for the beach, the water, and the sky.  The only option is the Pro HDR app, which isn’t necessarily going to work that well for a sunset (depends on how fast things are moving and how well you can hold still).   Plus, Pro HDR probably wouldn’t have created the dramatic contrast between the sunlight and dark water.  Using apps like Snapseed to adjust after you shoot lets you decide how you want different parts of the photo to look–something the camera just doesn’t always predict well.  They’re still working on the mind reading camera.

Your Assignment:  Try this checklist the next time you’re taking photos of something (of course, not all of these work for all subjects):

Screen Shot 2013-10-01 at 8.29.10 PM

Lesson 64: Photo Makeover Landscape Style

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

Gina sent me a second photo that she wanted some input on, also from her recent vacation on the lake.  Her question was, “This one is boring.  Too many trees?”  Here’s the original photo from Gina:

Original iPhone 4S photo taken by Gina
Original iPhone 4S photo taken by Gina

There are times when you walk around a lake until you find the perfect, sweeping landscape view and get a dream shot.  Then, there are times when you’re on vacation, hanging out with friends, maybe having an adult beverage or two, and you happen to really enjoy the view and you’d like a picture of it.

These are the times that you whip out your camera and you get the view that you have.  But then, you look at the photo and you think, “Gosh, it looks so much better in person.”  I find that most of the time, things look  further away in a photo than in person to me.  This is especially true with the iPhone’s very short focal length–it spreads things apart and makes them look more distant than they do when you’re standing there looking at the scene–don’t ever let anyone tell you photos don’t lie.

In this case, because Gina asked if there were too many trees, I looked at the sky to see if it was doing something dramatic and compelling.  It wasn’t.  So, I decided to try cropping the photo to a simple rule of thirds composition where the line between the far edge of the lake/trees and the sky fell at the top ⅓ horizontal line (see Lesson 52).  This puts the focus more on the lake and less on the sky.  It also pulled us in a little closer to the lake, making it feel bigger.  I also straightened it slightly, but those were the only two edits I made–the exposure is perfect and the focus is great.  Here’s the edited version:

Slightly edited version of Gina's photo
Slightly edited version of Gina’s photo

I used Snapseed to edit.  To see how to crop a photo in Snapseed, go to Lesson 41.  Now, just to make it easier to compare, here are the two versions side-by-side:

Original iPhone 4S photo taken by Gina
Slightly edited version of Gina’s photo

Your Assignment:  Which version of the photo do you like better?  Do you know why you like it better?

Take a look at a landscape photo you’ve taken where maybe it doesn’t quite work the way you’d like it to, but you’re not sure why.  Did you apply the rule of thirds to the photo?  Can you crop it to create a rule of thirds version without removing any important elements?    Do you like it better?  Are there other issues with the photo that you can identify?

Lesson 63: Photo Makeover

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

As I’ve mentioned, my best friend Gina is the inspiration for this blog.  Today, she sent me a picture at just didn’t work for her.  I thought this would be a good opportunity to pull together several earlier lessons in the context of one photo.

Here’s the photo Gina sent me:

Original

She and her husband were recently on vacation with another couple and Gina wanted a shot of her friends standing in front of the lake they were staying at.  Unfortunately, it was extremely windy, making it difficult to hold the phone still.  Although the photo was shot at 7:58PM during the golden hour, the lake and sky were far brighter than the light on Gina’s friends.

The first thing I did was try using Snapseed to see if the photo was fixable.  Had I had my glasses on and realized the severity of the focus problem, I might not have tried–focus is something you really can’t change much in software.  However, ignoring the focus problem for a moment, let’s look at what can be achieved through editing:

Snapseed–brightened and cropped
Aperture–brightened only

To some degree, the lighting on the people can be helped.  I edited in Snapseed using the Selective Adjustment tool to brighten the people.  As a comparison point, I also edited the original in Aperture using several general adjustments rather than selective adjustments.  Both methods work to brighten the subjects.

So what would have prevented the focus problem?

  1. Selecting a face to set focus (see Lesson 4)
  2. A faster shutter speed, which can be partially accomplished by setting exposure separately from focus (see Lesson 8 on using Camera Awesome and Lesson 61 on picking a brighter part of the scene to get a faster shutter speed).

But how could Gina have gotten more light on her subjects’ faces?  Given that this was shot right after sunset, it might have been a good time to have her subjects facing the fading light.  They might have been lit in the last glow of the golden hour–or, they might have gotten some light bounced off the lake.  In either case, they would at least have been brighter.

The other choice, if having the lake in the background was important, would have been to apply two previous lessons:  Lesson 22 on placing people in front of landscape scenes and Lesson 31 on using the flash to fill.  The combination of these two might have allowed the flash to brighten up the people.

Since none of these things may have been possible (I wasn’t there and every situation is different), a couple other thoughts on how to prevent the motion blur:

  1. Turn on image stabilization (see Lesson 34)
  2. Prop yourself against something stable or set the phone on something stable (see Lesson 34)

And, finally, for exposures that are so disparate, this might be a good time to use Pro HDR, see Lesson 9 and Lesson 18.  It’s kind of a toss up–with a high wind, the movement might have been too much.  But, if Gina’s friends were willing to hold still for 30 seconds or so, Pro HDR might have solved the exposure problem and still achieved focus (although the blowing hair would have been a problem).

Your Assignment:  Pull up a “photo failure.”  Can you fix it using Snapseed?  If not, what is causing it to “fail”?  Do you know what to do differently the next time around?  Now, test yourself.  Pick a subject with similar challenges to your “photo failure.”  Shoot the subject every way you can think of.  Use every app you know how to use.  Shoot vertically, shoot horizontally.  Use the rule of thirds, the rule of symmetry, the rule of telling a story.  Try different angles and think about position for light.  Try with and without flash.  Try to get at least 20 different photos of that subject.  Did you get anything that surprised you in a good way?

Lesson 62: The Rule of Telling a Story

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

“Every Picture Tells a Story” isn’t just a Rod Stewart song and album, it’s a rule that many photographers live by.  We’ve all heard the expression, “a picture speaks a thousand words.”  That said, sometimes, the story isn’t so obvious.  Sometimes, you could make up a lot of stories and they would all work and yet the photo is still compelling and/or beautiful.  But sometimes a photo works only because it tells a story.

Here’s an over-simplified example using my favorite chair.  Compare these two photos:

Story of a neglected, lonely chair
Story of a missing person who has left their comfortable reading chair briefly

What story would you tell about the first one?  Is it a story about someone wasting electricity by leaving the light on for no apparent reason?  Is it just someone who wants to show a friend what their favorite chair looks like?  There’s not really any hint about what the photo is about besides that I seem to think the chair is interesting.

Now look at the second one.  What story would you tell about that?  The presence of the book and glasses suddenly explains why the light is on.  It implies someone has just walked away.  Do the old-fashioned paper book and old-fashioned glasses sitting on the modern lines of the chair give you a sense of irony?  Does it make you wonder what the book is about and where the person reading it has gone?

To me, the second photo is more of a cliff-hanger.  It asks us to wonder why the book and glasses have been left at the ready.  While, perhaps it’s not as exciting a story as, say, a hardcore photojournalist’s shots from the frontline of a war, it leaves more to the imagination.

Sometimes we catch a facial expression that says it all.  Here are a couple of recent dog photos that I think express what my dog is thinking pretty clearly:

“OMG! I fell asleep for 2 seconds and she snuck up on me while I had my eyes closed!”
“She’s still flashing that thing in my face . . . yep, still at it . . . still flashing . . . will she ever leaving me alone?”

Sports photos are compelling largely because of their elegance in expressing the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.  Sometimes, the story a photo tells is simply, “the world is beautiful.”  So much for a thousand words.

When it comes to photos of people, my personal opinion is that it’s best to avoid photos that say, “I posed these people uncomfortably so I could get a photo.”  I prefer awkward moments, ridiculous faces, raw emotion, all-out belly laughs, and loving looks given in moments when the subject thinks you’re not looking.  This explains why I’m not a portrait photographer–most people don’t want to see what they look like frozen in time with contorted expressions.

Your Assignment:  What’s your story?  Can you take a photo that says a thousand words?  How about 10 or 20?  Can you include everyday objects in a photo that changes it from a “record of what something looks like” to a story that draws people in?  Do you find these photos more interesting?

Lesson 61: The Rule of Light

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

In yesterday’s post, I compared the iPhone 4S and 5S flash photos.  Today, I want to switch gear’s and revisit the rule of light.  This is a rule of photography that cannot be broken, although it can be bent, manipulated, and worked around.  But no matter what you do, you have to have light and enough of it to get a photograph–after all, that’s what photography is: a recording of light.

In Lessons 16, 17, and 18 we talked about how time of day affects outdoor lighting, how you can choose the direction you shoot from based on the lighting, and how to use Pro HDR to help combat big differences in light and dark areas in your photos.

What we didn’t talk about is indoor lighting.  The iPhone has traditionally struggled with low-light situations and most rooms create a low-light situation–especially at night.

And what happens when you shoot in a low-light situation?  Well, if you might remember from Lesson 31, when you don’t have enough light you get more blur.  In Lesson 31, I didn’t explain this because my best friend Gina, the inspiration for this blog, doesn’t want to know.  However, today I have decided to risk upsetting Gina by explaining that it’s because the less light you have, the slower the shutter speed will be on the camera and the slower the shutter speed, the more blur you’ll get.

The best way to combat this indoors is to add light.  Add light by turning on every light in the room.  Move a lamp over to your subject.  Move your subject over to a lamp.  Position the lamp to light your subject as best as possible.  Do all of these things if you can.  For example, you may remember this example of flowers from Lesson 50:

 

Still flowers under bright light = sharp photo
Still flowers under bright light = sharp photo

By putting the bouquet of flowers directly under a lamp, I was able to get a sharp photo because both I and the flowers were holding still.  The more light you have, the faster the shutter will open and shut.  The faster the shutter opens and shuts, the less blur you’ll get.

In this photo, the shutter opened and shut at the exact same speed as in the photo above.  However, because Twiggy, the dog in the foreground, was moving, her face blurred:

IMG_1350

If you can’t add any more ambient light, you can always turn on the flash.  But there’s another option we haven’t talked about in past blogs:  set the exposure based on a lightest part of the photo.  For example, in this photo of my dog, I chose to expose on the white side of his face:

IMG_2232

This got me a slightly faster shutter speed than in similar photos where I set the exposure on a darker part of the subject.  It’s probably not a big enough difference to stop my dog’s motion if he were to, say, jump up from the couch.  But, it is enough of a difference to help with more subtle movement.  Because white reflects more light than black, when you select a white area for exposure, you get a faster shutter speed.  If you need a reminder on how to set the exposure separately from the focus, check out Lesson 8 on how to do this in the Camera Awesome app.

Your Assignment:  Try taking some pictures indoors.  Try taking a picture of your living room for example.  In one photo, choose a dark object for the exposure.  Take a second photo with the same composition but pick a light object for the exposure.  Can you see the difference in the exposure of the two photos based on what you selected?  Now, try including a subject with a tiny bit of slow motion like a relaxed dog or a person who will move slowly for you.  Does choosing light vs dark areas for exposure make a difference in stopping the motion of the moving subject?  How slowly do they have to move before it makes a difference?

Lesson 60: The iPhone 5S

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

My iPhone 5S arrived!  This means 2 things at my house:

  1. I’m geeking out,
  2. My dog is scared.

In the first case, I am having a ball with the fingerprint unlock feature.  I can’t tell you how excited I am about that feature!  I feel like a safer driver already and I haven’t driven anywhere yet.  I’ve had my husband and my dog try to unlock my phone with their prints and so far, I’m the only one it recognizes.  😉

I’m also geeking out on the new flash feature.  This is what has led to case 2.  My dog has been hiding out in a totally dark room, trying to avoid me.  I managed to sneak up on him and grab a couple of shots with the 5S and with the 4S so we could compare how the flash looks.  I used the default iPhone Camera app just in case the 3rd party apps are not optimized for the new flash yet.  Here are the results:

This is my favorite. I caught Tisen with the 5S just as he realized I was sneaking up on him again.
The 4S makes Tisen look ghoulish from his black side
Tisen looks like the sweet but annoyed dog he is with the 5S
Tisen looks possessed from his white side with the 4S

I ran into a glitch (already) with the 5S flash, however.  I set the flash to “on,” but out of 5 shots, the flash only fired 2 times.  I’m not sure what’s going on there, but hoping that will sort itself out quickly–like by the time I finish downloading the first update to iOS7.

What I want to focus on in the meantime is how much of an improvement the 5S is over the 4S.  Let’s talk about the circumstances I was shooting in:

  1. Dark room with almost no ambient light
  2. Black and White dog on a dark couch who wouldn’t hold still (except in my favorite of the four photos above)
  3. Hand-holding and guessing at exactly where my dog was because the room was that dark.

These are pretty challenging circumstances.  Let’s compare these two photos since my dog was moving around about equally and I got the white side of his face in both images:

Tisen looks like the sweet but annoyed dog he is with the 5S
Tisen looks possessed from his white side with the 4S

First, let’s talk about why the 5S photo is so much sharper.  This could, in part, be due to the fact that I was closer with the 4S and, therefore, had less depth of field.  However, under magnification, the 4S photo has no sharp areas at all, which implies it had a hard time finding focus.

Now, I can’t say for certain that I was holding both phones with identically steadiness nor that my dog was moving the same amount, but, the 5S introduces some really cool technology that takes 4 images and combines them to get the sharpest image possible.  That’s pretty cool.  Although, I would appreciate being able to turn it off.

Second, take a look at the quality of the light in each image.  Again, virtually all of the light on my dog is from the tiny little LED flash on each iPhone.  Both did a pretty good job of lighting my dog (I was only about 2-3 feet away), but notice how much warmer the light in the 5S shot looks?

Finally, also on the subject of the light, notice how my dog’s eye is glowing a lot more in the 4S version in spite of the fact that his eye is turned further from the camera than in the 5S version?  This is a nice improvement.  My poor dog has looked possessed in far too many iPhone photos.

I took a very close-up look at both photos (I told you I was geeking) and the difference is even more impressive under magnification.  I can’t wait to get my dog into some better light so I can see what it looks like without the flash!

Your Assignment:  Pay attention to how much you use flash and how often you’re getting shots with blur.  Since these are two things that make the 5S attractive, it’s a good time to notice whether these features would make a difference to you or not.

Lesson 59: Quick iPhone Photo Sharing Tip

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

You’ve probably figured out how to send someone a photo from your iPhone.  Hopefully, you’ve figured out how to send several photos, too.  But there is a less-known tip for attaching photos to an existing email.

I often found myself replying to an email, writing a fairly long response (for an iPhone keyboard), and then deciding to attach a photo, which usually led to a lot of cursing.  I confess, it took me until I was on my iPhone 4S before I figured out how to do it–and boy was I excited when I did!

Here’s what you do.  You’re in your email, writing away.  Then, you decide to attach a bunch of photos.  So, double-click the home button to get to your open apps or single click to return to your home screen if your Photos app isn’t already open.  Next, choose the album where your photos are and click the “Select” option in the upper right corner:

iOS 7 – Switch from your email app to your Photos app
iOS 7 – Choose the album you want
iOS 7 – Click “Select” in the upper right corner
iOS 6 – Choose the album you want
iOS 6 – tap the box with the arrow in the lower left
iOS 6 – The screen changes to select mode

Tap on each photo you want to attach; a check mark appears when it’s selected:

iOS7 – Selected photos
iOS6 – Selected Photos and Copy Button at bottom of screen

Now, tap the little box with the arrow in the lower-left corner.  A bunch of choices appear.  Normally, you would select “Mail,” but if you do that, it will create a brand new email instead of adding the photos to the email you just wrote.  Instead, pick the “copy” button

iOS7 Options when you tap the “share” icon
iOS6 – Selected Photos and Copy Button at bottom of screen

Double-click the home button to go back to the email you were writing.  Place your finger on the email until you get a pop-up that includes the “Paste” option and touch “Paste.”  The iPhone pastes all the photos you selected into the email you were writing.

iOS7 – touch your email screen until the paste option appears
iOS 6 – Touch your email screen until the paste option appears

The photos you selected will be attached to the email you were writing:

iOS7 – Photos are attached to the email you selected
iOS 6 – Photos are attached to the email you were writing

Finally, when you send the email, you’ll be prompted to pick what size photos you want to send.  You can choose what size makes sense based on who you’re sending to, why you’re sending it, and whether space and/or bandwidth is a consideration or not:

iOS7-Choose the size most appropriate for the purpose of your email/photos
iOS6-Choose the size most appropriate for the purpose of your email/photos

Your Assignment:  Write an email to yourself, but before you send it, attach several photos to it.  Send it to make sure you get the photos.  Will this come in handy?

Lesson 58: The Rule of Getting Close

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

In Lesson 53, I talked about what “filling the frame” means when you’e shooting a landscape.  In Lesson 3, I talked about filling the frame when you’re shooting a person (or dog).  In Lesson 3 (and a few other times), I’ve mentioned not to use the zoom function on the iPhone but to use your feet instead.

There are two times when using your feet might not be a good idea.  First, sometimes getting physically closer to your subject is not possible without peril (like Capa, who, as I mentioned in Lesson 53, was killed stepping on a land mine).  There can be physical obstacles or social ones to getting close to your subject sometimes.  Second, as I mentioned in Lesson 41, getting too close can cause unattractive distortion in the your subject’s face.

So, if you’re not supposed to use the digital zoom feature on the iPhone (the only “zoom” capability the iPhone offers) and you can’t get physically closer to your subject, what are you supposed to do?  Well, the only other option is cropping your photo.  I showed you how to crop a photo using Snapseed in Lesson 41, but I thought I would show you today how cropping compares to using digital zoom.

Compare the following 3 photos:

iPhone 4S with no zoom, uncropped
iPhone 4S Digitally zoomed photo
iPhone 4S Cropped version (from the first photo)

The first one is taken with no zoom and I didn’t crop it.  The second one is zoomed in all the way using the digital zoom capability.  The third one is actually the first photo cropped to approximately the same “zoom” amount as the second photo.

Notice that the digitally zoomed photo is blurry and very grainy compared to the cropped photo.  In theory, this should not be the case.  In theory, taking a photo and cropping it after you take it should result in the exact same quality photo as digitally zooming while you’re taking it.

Since my dog doesn’t usually hold perfectly still, it’s possible the increased blur is due to him moving rather than the difference in zoom vs crop.  To test that, I did the same exercise using a wooden bear carving since, so far, it has never turned its head in the middle of a photo:

The cropped version of the bear
Bear shot using digital zoom

Interestingly, I got the exact opposite results.  The digital zoom yielded a slightly sharper image than cropping a non-zoomed photo.

This is not exactly a scientific process, but my experience in the field is that I have consistently gotten better results by taking the photo without zooming and cropping to the degree the photo can tolerate before it gets too grainy and blurred over trying to zoom in while I’m shooting.  the main advantage to not digitally zooming while shooting is that you can decide later how much cropping your photo can stand without creating graininess and reducing sharpness.  If you shoot the photo already zoomed in, you cannot go back–the only photo that got recorded has the noise and blur recorded, too.

As a side note, in case you’re curious, I also got out an old 10 megapixel DSLR (to make it somewhat more comparable to the 8 megapixel iPhone–although it’s still apples and oranges) to demonstrate what optical zoom looks like.  Optical zoom is always better than cropping (assuming all other variables remain the same).  You get closer to the subject using a lens rather than degrading the quality of the image by spreading out the remaining megapixels when you crop (or digitally zoom).  Here’s a comparison for you:

DSLR cropped
DSLR using the optical zoom of a lens

Your Assignment:  Try the digital zoom function.  Do a similar exercise to the one I did–take the picture both zoomed in digitally and without zooming and cropping later.  Are you able to get better photos with the digital zoom or by not zooming and then cropping?  How about with a subject that doesn’t necessarily hold still all the time?  Do you get the same results?