Taking Photos with Mobile Phone

BrianKC

New member
I posted this tangentially in a different thread but thought I'd share more broadly. My wife works in advertising and a few weeks ago one of her photographer colleagues shared an app that he uses when he doesn't have his high-end camera handy and only has his cell phone. It's called VSCO. It's available on both iPhone and Android. The usability of this app SUCKS (hence the forthcoming tutorial) but it works really well. At the end of this post I've shared the difference between two photos taken 10 seconds apart; the first with the native iPhone camera app on an iPhone 6 and the second with VSCO. Here's the short-hand to get near-accurate photos of your reef with VSCO (these instructions are for iPhone. I'm sure android is similar but different). I hope this helps avoid all the super-blue photos I see on here all the time:

1. Open the app.
2. Hit the "take picture" button; it's a circle with a square around it in the lower left.
3. With the camera on, hit the lower-left button again. It may look like a sun, it may say something else.
4. Pick WB. This is white balance. Slide it pretty much all the way to the right. This neutralizes the over-blue that your LEDs and your phone can't agree on. This is the main value of the app.
5. Hit that button again. Pick the sun. This is brightness. Slide it around until the pic looks about right to you. Your phone thinks your tank is brighter than it is and tends to over-darken the image.
6. Optional; if you tap the image area with two fingers, you can independently adjust the exposure and focus area. Contrast that with the stock iPhone camera where you can tap, but it sets both focus and exposure on the same point. This is very cool if you want to get some additional depth of field/focus going on. Use this outside of your reef photography at a party or outside to get some cool bokeh effects happening.
7. Snap yo pic.
8. Tap the new thumbnail in the lower right.
9. Pick your pic.
10. Tap the dotted circle in the lower right.
11. Tap save to camera roll.
12. Your pic is in your camera roll ready to share with RC and the world!

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My android phone was kinda crappy so I had to play with the brightness and darkness to create an appealing image :D

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I downloaded the app but couldn't figure out how to make it work on the android version. :( Eventually I'll get motivated enough to figure it out.
 
I downloaded the app but couldn't figure out how to make it work on the android version. :( Eventually I'll get motivated enough to figure it out.


Yeah. They definitely need to go to app development school. But once you figure it out it is great.
 
Octospawn are one of my fav and prized possessions. Too bad all my corals died in a recent crash.



I'll rebuiling my tank now and my first coral will be an octospawn xD


I don't really know the difference between octospawn and frogspawn, but I just got this guy a couple weeks ago. It's already grown since this pic but I love it and my hammer. Wife prefers these to "those boring stick corals (SPS)."

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One thing I've heard is if you turn off the blue's (led lights) the pics will come out better. The one thing I found out while taking pics with my phone is to put it right up against the class. Then touch the screen on the location you want the camera to focus on before hitting the pic button. I do this when I try to zoom in on something and it works pretty good for a camera on a phone.

Zoomed in 4x off my GS4 (blue's are still on)
 
Aha! Finally figured it out. For anyone using Android you do all the color correction after taking the picture. Once you have your shot click on it to preview and click on the slider thing. For decreasing blue go to the icon that looks like a thermometer and slide that all the way to the right. You can also crop and do other things in there.
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