iPhone Photography Again

[ralphmelton]

It's been a year since last I griped about this, so I have some hopes that I'll have a smattering of novelty with this post.

I'm currently mostly taking photos with my iPhone. I'm at something of a local maximum with my photography. The iPhone may not be a great camera, but I benefit from the automatic geotagging, and more importantly, I have it with me all the time.

But I'd like my photos to be better.
I've thought of buying a better camera, but I suspect the fault may be in me more than my camera, and I can't cheaply get the geotagging.
I've thought of taking a community college class. But I haven't convinced myself that a class would work well with the iPhone.

Recently, I've been trying relatively cheap ways of improving my iPhone photography, on the theory that it's at least no great investment to do so. I tried an iPhoto workshop at the local Apple store. I learned a bit, but I didn't learn how to redeem my bad photos with iPhoto as I had hoped.

I then tried buying a book on iPhone photography: Create Great iPhone Photos: Apps, Tips, Tricks, and Effects. I was very disappointed by this. I had hoped for detailed advice that addressed the problems I'm having, or maybe a series of exercises I could do to make my photos match my imagination. It has only a bare minimum of advice; mostly it's a big catalog of apps for applying funky effects. I don't feel that I want to apply funky effects much... mostly I want to create photos that look as good as I thought they would when I took the photo.

These are the sorts of questions that are occupying my attention right now:

For some pictures, especially with incandescent light, I get a pronounced yellow tinge. For example:

How do I fix this, either at the time of taking pictures or through retouching? (All my efforts to fix this in iPhoto end up making things look unappetizingly green.)

Many of the photos I take are just dull and washed out. For example:

I've tried randomly frobbing most of the controls in iPhoto with no great improvement, so I suspect that I should have done something different when I took the photo. But I don't know what I should have done.

Comments

[jeliza]

The yellow tinge is in fact due to the color of the light; incandescent aka tungsten light is much more yellow than daylight; camera flashes are set to a predetermined average of "daylight" (which is not always as blue as true daylight).

If iPhoto has a "white balance" control, that is the one you need to use on the yellow photos;

For the second, after the fact, all I can suggest is messing with the "contrast" controls -- either there is one labeled contrast, or if you can actually control the blacks and the highlights, twiddle those. But really, yes, when you took the picture, the light was very diffuse and even, with nothing to really help define the objects in it. Short of starting to mess around with adding flash (hard to do with an iPhone, I'm sure), look carefully at what the light is doing before you take the shot, and feel free to rearrange if possible, especially if there is, say, a window handy that can give you a more directed light source (and with it, more pronounced shadows.)

While it might be difficult to get through a community college class with the iPhone, picking up a basic photography text (heck, go used, like Horenstein's b/w book or Ansel Adams, the rules of composition really haven't changed much in the past 50 years) that talks about composition and using natural light will help; you won't have the control of aperture and shutter speed that it will talk about, but the tricky part is really the learning to see, and you can do that without the detailed controls.

It is possible, though I have done nothing with it, not having an iPhone, that something in the Chase Jarvis "The best camera is the one you have with you" trifecta may be helpful to you.

Heh. Wordy much?

[eub.livejournal.com]

For the second photo I am struck by the fact that you're shooting white food in a white bowl on a white plate. :) Needs snappy lighting!

I think there's also some schmutz on the lens there, which washes out the contrast a little but mostly gives it that dispirited schmutzy-lens look.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Is "snappy" a technical term? I've got a general idea of what snappy lighting would be, but I'm wondering if it would mean more to a photographer.

Hm. Lens schmutz is likely since I carry my iPhone in my pocket. I'm not sure how I would avoid that.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Probably not a technical term.

Here you want your lighting to emphasize more the differences in position, orientation, and texture from among your off-white surfaces. In broad outline, you get more emphasis by finding a light source that's smaller (like the sun instead of cloudy sky), which gives less ambiguity about surface normal and casts sharper-edged shadowing. And generally side-lighting, instead of coming say from behind you which makes the shadowing almost invisible to you. (But of course both of these can be taken too far.)

In this photo you'd try that contrastier lighting especially on the contents of the bowl, like moving it to have a window on one side if possible. And you notice the two curved specular reflections on the front lip of the bowl, and the brighter bottom? Those are great in helping to separate it from the plate, but it could use more. Bob your head around when taking the picture to try different angles, all the classiest photographers do it.

Aside from lighting, if you're focusing on the mashed potatoes (is it?) in the bowl, try getting in as close as you can and leaving other things out. People always say that, but it is a tradeoff, you'll lose the context which may be part of what you want -- but I'd try it here, I think part of what you see in this photo is that the surround has a lot *more* contrast and detail than the food.

[flit.livejournal.com]

Carry an eyeglass-cleaning microfiber cloth so you can wipe off the lens shmutz? You can even wrap the iphone in it to protect the lens while it's in your pocket. If you don't have any on hand you can use a square of old well-washed t-shirt.

I don't know what kind of white balance settings an iphone has, but one trick I use on my point-and-shoot, when I don't like the results I'm getting from auto-white-balance, is to set it for a cloudy day even if it's a sunny day. It sort of warms things up a little. This is assuming mostly natural light. Tungsten light bulbs need to be adjusted for. The auto-white on my point-and-shoot is pretty smart, though. Using the camera has taught me volumes about how good at adjusting the human eye is, since I can see in a LOT of places where the camera goes 'buh,' and I have automatic color correction in my brain.

For food, going in close in macro mode can make a picture look a little neater. Soup is pretty hard because it's... soupy. Adding a spoon or a little something to garnish can help.

If you're getting blur on too many shots, brace your hands on something, like a water glass, as an ad hoc tripod. That can help with resolution in settings where you don't have very good light.

I've snapped a few photos with my shiny new android phone, but the sensor on it is not very good even compared to an iphone, and my cheapo point-and-shoot blows it away. It also has no flash. On the other hand, I will carry it around with me on walks and I tend to not like carrying the point-and-shoot, so hmm. I did get an Eye-fi SD card for the point-and-shoot a week or so ago, so that it will automagically upload my stuff to flickr for me, but I've lamed out on actually configuring it yet. There are some versions of Eye-fis that will geotag, if you're thinking about doing photography with a more standard camera; if you have a digital camera already, the Eye-fi might be compatible with yours. (Shake correction and lens size are both good reasons to use that. Another darn thing to carry is a good reason not to, but you might like a point-and-shoot with decent macro settings and a physical zoom lens for your food photography.)

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Wordy is great! Thank you very much.

Your comments about the yellow photo made me think about the light in that room. It's not actually a tungsten bulb; it's actually a compact fluorescent. (I led us astray there.) And though I don't know the details offhand, I find it easy to believe that radiating light in just a few wavelengths and then capturing light in a handful of wavelengths doesn't match the human optical process.
And this gives me a potential fix for my home food photos - if I pose them in the dining room under the incandescent chandelier, preliminary experiments suggest that they don't look so yellow.

I still haven't mastered fixing the picture, though. I used the "pick something white so we can fix the white balance" eyedropper and clicked on the curtains, and I got this:

The most charitable thing you can say about this is that its coloring really suits a St. Patrick's Day party. But it doesn't make the mocha frosting look tasty.

I think your suggestion of a basic photography text is a good one. Can you suggest one with a series of exercises, please?

I have looked briefly at the Chase Jarvis book on Amazon, and I didn't think it was for me, at least not yet - as far as I can tell, it's just a book of his photos. I don't think I'm yet at a point that I can look at a photo that I admire and say "how can I make my photography more like that?"

Many thanks!

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I hit "contrast" a few times on the cheese grits picture, and it did end up looking better. I couldn't see a change in each step, though - I only noticed the improvement when I did 'revert to original'.

[ladyjestyr.livejournal.com]

Can I recommend one of two iPhone apps? Either instagram or cameraplus both allow you to edit the photo after it's taken; I've used both, and I found CameraPlus to be better. It lets you adjust the photo based on the light when it was taken, crop, rotate, and apply filters/fx to add some vibrancy to your pics.

[ladyjestyr.livejournal.com]

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/id329670577?mt=8 is the Camera+ app.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for the recommendation. I've downloaded Camera+, and am fiddling around with it - the adjustments based on the light appeal to me.

This is what I got with the fluorescent adjustment with Camera+. To my eyes, it looks much like the original.


Here's what I got running that through Perfectly Clear. To my eyes, it's the best of the lot, but I can't explain why it's better.

[ladyjestyr.livejournal.com]

Well, it's lightened a bit, which makes the yellows seem less intense and unnatural. I'll have a look at Camera+ and see what suggestions I can make :)

[eub.livejournal.com]

Here's a shot at white-balancing in Lightroom. This should be doable in about any photo-editing app, as long as it gives you two sliders to twiddle for color balance. It's still a bit Lileks-y. (Was the tablecloth background white? What color was that curtain really?)

From temp photo

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I'm curious as to what you mean by Lileks-y. Are you referring to the Gallery of Regrettable Food?

iPhoto does have two sliders, so I will try replicating this myself.

The tablecloth background was white, and the curtain was also white - at least, it's white when it's by itself in daylight.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Not that the cupcakes are Regrettable, but the Gallery photos often include skewed color balancing as part of their charm.

[cellio]

What kinds of settings are available on the iPhone at the time you take the picture? My camera (not an iPhone, also nothing special/fancy) allows me to tell the camera what kind of lighting is involved, for instance, and it adjusts stuff. Not perfectly, mind (see "nothing special/fancy"), but it compensates some for my lack of skill.

Someday I would like to take a photography class.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

The iPhone controls are awesome when they work and frustrating when they don't.
You see a preview of what's showing, and you can tap a spot in the preview to say 'focus on this and adjust the exposure for this'. That's most of the controls you get, though there are also controls for 'flash on/off/auto' and 'take three pictures and make an HDR photo out of them.'