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
