Phone cameras are great,but..

Mobile phone cameras are great might seem like a strange thing for a photographer to say but as Obi-Wan Kenobi said it’s true, from a certain point of view. They are great for getting a quick snap of your dog when they’re sleeping on the sofa and looking super cute and I should know because I have loads of them!

I can’t tell you how many pictures of the worlds cutest dog, and doesn’t everyone have the worlds cutest dog, I’ve been shown or see on the socials. Lots of them are lovely on a phone screen. Then the phone gets put back in a pocket or handbag and the picture isn’t looked at again for months if ever. Then there are the pictures I’ve been shown where someone has a dark coloured dog and all the phone camera has manage to capture is a dark smudge or a light coloured dog that looks like a furry snowball.

I recently spoke to someone who has loads of pictures of their dog on their phone and asked how big they could print it. My heart sank for them. Here was someone who loves their dog and wants to go the extra step and have it’s picture grace their wall but who doesn’t understand the vast difference between something that’s good enough for the kids pocket sized album/memory book and something that’s wall worthy.

I’m not being a snob here, I’ve gone to the supermarket and printed holiday snaps off my phone for a family memory book and they look nice as a postcard sized picture. Try printing it at a size that would look good on your wall and suddenly you’ll be in dark smudge/snowball territory.

I’m not going to go into the technical reasons why you should give your mobile phone and High Street printer a miss when you want to display a picture of your fur baby but briefly colour calibration, exposure, white balance, contrast, shadows, clipping, saturation are all things which should be properly taken care of and won’t be.

As I said at the start mobile phone cameras are great, but if you want beautiful images of your dog that you can proudly show off…Who you gonna call? No not the Ghostbusters, me!