Your Android phone camera, whichprobably comes with a minimum of 6 MP, can take some excellent pictures. The bad news is that if you don’t apply a few basic photography rules, your images end up looking horribly pixelated. So how can you take quality photos with your Android phone? Here are a few tips to help you out!

Clean The Lens

Owners normallytend to take good care of their dedicated camera lenses.However, when it comes to phone cameras, people hardly pay a second thought.Keeping your phone camera’s lens smudge-free is the first step towards taking crisp and neat photographs.

Composition

Don’t just click a photo! Think a little bit about the composition, and take the rule of thirds into consideration. Look at your phone or camera app,and turn on the feature that forms a grid on your screen when you focus. Placing the main objects on the meeting points of these lines can lead to a well composed image.

Background

In most likelihood, your Android phone’s camera will not be able to isolate the foreground from the background. To solve this issue, you can either use your subject to fill up the entire photograph, or place your subject in front of a plain background. However, if you are out on the streets, a cluttered background adds a lot of charm and character to an image.

Flash

Does your Android phone’s flash always turn on when you take a photo at night? And do you usually end up with pictures that are glaring and harsh? The white LED light can be toned down by placing a thin white tissue over it, which would help reduce the harshness.

A surprising benefit of having a flash on your Android phone is that this feature can be used to take great pictures during the day! Though this seems unusual, a flash can help reduce sharp shadows within an image. For example, a non-flash portrait would result in a bright forehead, and dark eyes. However, the burst of light from a flash improves the exposure, and fills the underexposed areas.

ISO

High exposure allows more light into the lens, and which makes your photos brighter. On the downside, excess exposure can lead to noise, and pixelated photos. However, the right exposure tweaks can produce excellent images. So play around with the settings, and see how the ISO can be alternated to your advantage.

Lighting

It is important to have as much light as possible on the subject. Use lamps and windows to add additional lighting to your surroundings. Usually, the subject should be facing a light source. The phone on the other hand should face away, as its camera will tend to focus only on the bright light source.

Stable Shot Setting

In order to reduce camera shake, make sure that you are standing absolutely still, and resting your elbows on something stable. Then take a deep breath, and press the shutter button. The trick is not to lift your finger till the photo has been captured. If you are taking shots of fast moving objects, then turn on the sports mode in your phone camera.

Resolution

Cameras come with various resolution settings. If you want to send a photo via MMS, then a low resolution will do just fine. However, if you wish to keep a photo as a piece of memory, then it is essential to select the highest resolution settings. This may sound very obvious, but sometimes it is the little things that people tend to forget the most.

Don’t Use Digital Zoom

Your Android camera phone comes with fixed optics, which means that the lens can’t move. The digital zoom cannot capture fine details. It simply blows up the pixels, and enlarges the image. This is something that you can easily do after you have clicked a photo. You can always crop down an image, but you can’t crop it up. Instead, get closer to your subject.

Apps

Instagram, MoreLomo, Dermandar, PicPlz, Hipstamatic, and Molome are popular photography apps that provide different tools and filters to help you create better images. The Fast Burst Camera Lite can take thirty frames per second, and is said to be the fastest camera app for Androids. Keep your software updated, and Google around to see which apps are best suited for your photography needs.  You may also check out these Top 5 camera apps for Android.

These tips are meant to help you understand the basics of camera phone photography. Take a lot of photos, and experiment with your device. Try out unique perspectives, different lighting, unusual backgrounds, and unconventional compositions. Though these tips are not written in stone, they will certainly help point you in the right direction when you use your Android phone’s camera.