Toward Better Landscape Photography, Part 1

Many of my readers want to take good nature pictures of flora and fauna. Whether you have an Android or iPhone smartphone or a "real" (dedicated) camera from a major camera maker like Nikon, Canon, Sony etc., you can take good pictures with it! It’s always true that "the best camera is the one you have with you." But there are some techniques that can help you improve your nature pictures.

BTW, I talk about many different kinds of cameras here, not just smartphones. For a list of many different camera types, see my web page on camera taxonomy.

It’s been said that plants are easier to photograph than animals, since they don’t move. But in fact they do, swaying in the breeze just enough to make sharp focus tricky. And the insects that pollinate them move even faster! Dawn Renfrew of Headwaters Nature in Orangeville, ON, sent this email recently:

…​a fun and easy photography technique …​ is to use the slow motion video setting on the phone camera to make a video of an active pollinator on a flower. I was trying to take photos of bees in flight as they were landing and leaving flowers in my garden the other day and was having no luck with my timing and my timing was not good enough. I decided to try the slow motion setting instead and the results were spectacular with many frames of the bee in flight.

That is a great technique! The only minor downside is that, on many cameras and camera apps, when you record video it drops the resolution down to 1080p (1920x1080), so any prints you get from it won’t be at the full resolution that the camera is capable of. Still, 1080p is adequate for use on social media, and most of the people reading this are not professional photographers (if they were, they’d already know about these techniques!). Most readers just want pictures they can use on social media, not to enlarge enough to print on a shower curtain, for example.

Here are some other techniques for fast-moving flyers:

  • The standard smartphone camera apps on iOS and Android will, when they detect the subject moving while you’re taking a picture, shoot a short film strip (at full res) from which you can choose the best shot or shots. I think that this happens by default on both Android and iPhone with the built-in camera apps. To view the strip and choose the best picture, select the "Edit" button, then "Live" on iPhone or "Motion" (far right of edit buttons) on Android. Then slide across the viewstrip that shows under the main image and pick your best shot, and save it.

Multi-Image on iOS

Multi-Image on Android

motion ios

motion android

  • Higher-end cameras and some smartphone apps let you set a high shutter speed (to freeze the motion) AND take a series of images. This is more complicated, but here’s a brief outline; the details will vary depending on what kind of camera you have.

    • It involves taking the camera out of automatic mode. On a Nikon and most other cameras, turn the big dial on top to "S" for Shutter Priority. Canon does things differently, so you have to use "Tv" (for shuTter) instead.

    • In a smartphone app, use whatever menus it provides.

    • Set the shutter speed to 1/1000.

    • Leave ISO on Auto.

    • Set "release mode" to "Continuous".

  • Now you can press and hold the shutter button, and the camera will take a series of probably-sharp-focus pictures of that waving plant or buzzing bee at full res, continuing until you reach the number of exposures selected or until you release the shutter button.

Finally, some high-end digital cameras let you grab full-resolution pictures while in the middle of recording video.

For any type of camera, you can extend your ability to take close-up shots of these tiny hard-working pollinators by adding a "macro" lens. That’s one that changes the focus to be more appropriate for very-close-in pictures. For smartphones these come in the form of add-on lenses. Interchangeable-lens cameras can accept low-cost add-on macro lenses; professionals or serious amateurs will likely use a more expensive purpose-built macro lens from any of their usual lens manufacturers.

Also, for both iPhone and Android, there are third-party apps such as "Camera FV-5" or "Secure Camera" on Android. For iOS, see Best iPhone Camera Apps. Or just look in the app market for "Camera app". These can be used instead of your phone’s default camera app, and give you many of the same controls as on a traditional camera. Settings include ISO, shutter speed, aperture, and white balance. Exploring these might be gist for a future article.

Meanwhile, whatever you’re using to take nature pictures, don’t be afraid to read the manual that came with it; you will probably learn some helpful techniques there too!