Take DSLR photos with your smartphone camera

Modern phone cameras can produce professional-quality images - if you know how to use them. Darien Graham-Smith finds out how to get the best from modern camera technology

- Darien Graham-Smith

You wouldn't expect the slim little smartphone in your pocket to take pictures that can rival a "proper" camera. But after two decades of fierce competition and year-on-year refinements to both the hardware and software, mobile camera technology has reached a point where it's often impossible to tell whether a photo was taken on a DSLR or a high-end smartphone at least, not without deliberate and careful inspection.

As with a DSLR, though, if you want to shoot great pictures from your phone camera it helps to understand its capabilities, and how to operate its settings. Here's our guide to getting the best from your smartphone camera.

How many lenses does a camera need?

Just as a professional photographer might carry around a selection of different lenses, smartphones almost always have two or three lenses on the back. However, while a DSLR uses interchangeable lenses in front of a fixed sensor, smartphones use a separate sensor for each lens. In effect, you're carrying around a whole set of cameras, each one optimised for a different sort of photography.

The main camera (sometimes called "wide") is the one you'll use most often. It's designed to capture scenes similarly to how the human eye sees them, with a broad field of vision that's suitable for shooting scenes or groups of people.

Some phones also offer a telephoto camera for close-up shots, and engaging this is a lot easier than attaching a zoom lens to a DSLR: simply "unpinch" on the screen to zoom in and the phone will switch to the appropriate camera (you may see a jump as this occurs). Smartphone zoom is also more versatile than a DSLR lens, as you can freely zoom in and out even beyond the optical capabilities of the lens; however, the phone achieves this using digital upsampling, so you may lose detail.