How to improve your life as a smartphone photographer
Look, let’s be honest, everyone loves photos. According to Mary Meeker’s annual report, more than 1.8 billion pictures are uploaded to the internet everyday. The sole reason why photography got so ubiquitous is because we are empowered to shoot amazing quality shots from our smartphone. But just like the old saying, you can’t make bricks without straw, allow me to humbly offer some advice before you upload your next post.
Google photos lets you store unlimited photos and videos for free
Google Photos was a build-in feature in the notorious Google+ social service that got shut down in 2018, but it was made into a independent service after Google decided to discontinue support for its photo service — Picasa. The main purpose of Google Photos is to help you organize your own photos, it leverage Google’s unrivaled AI technology to sort all your photos by face, object, time and place.
It’s true that Apple Photos offers the same kind of service, however, Google does offer something that nobody would ever turn down — Free, Unlimited, Secure photo storage. Yes, that’s right, Google Photos allows you to archive all your photos for free, that means you’ll longer need to buy tons of hard drive to store your memories, that definitely saves you a lot of pain.
Do note the unlimited option will compress your photos, however many reviewers have claimed that there is technically no difference between the Original and High-Quality compression if you only take photos with smartphones.
Can you guess which one is the Original and which one is the High-Quality version?
The answer is at the end of the article.
Here are the drawbacks of Google Photo, if you are a enthusiast that loves to take Photos with DSLR, I would strongly recommend you not to use Google Photos, because unlimited storage will compress any photos that is larger than 16 MP, and videos will be compressed to 1080p if they go beyond the resolution. Do note that you can still upload your ultra-quality shots using Google Photos’ Original Quality, but you’ll be consuming your own Google Drive’s personal storage.
The second drawback is more controversial, privacy. As much as we want to trust Google, Google still regulate its services by the Google terms of Service, which clearly states that Google has a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify and publish anything you submit, store, send and receive. But it also states that you retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. So you’re left with the confusion of owning your data yet licensing it to Google to do whatever it believes to be legitimate. In my opinion, you can still trust Google, but trust it like a gym locker rather than a guarded safe. So keep the sensitive data to yourself, and send the rest to the cloud.
Everybody should take photos with GCAM
Google debuted its powerful algorithm HDR+ in the original Nexus 6, the algorithm paved way for a brand new era of “computational photography”, which veered away from the traditional exposure-centric approach while adopting algorithms to output beautiful photos that stood on the pinnacle of smartphone photography.
The XDA community have already ported GCAM, Google’s proprietary camera app to almost any Android phone on the market (Sorry, Apple fans.). As a Android fan, getting the privilege to exploit your phone’s camera by installing GCAM seems almost too good to be true.
Although GCAM can be a huge upgrade for your phone, since it’s not an official port, you might encounter bugs when you install them. Also, GCAMs have many versions developed by enthusiasts around the world, the most famous being Arnova8G2, BSG and cstark. If you don’t like risks, try to find a stable version and simply enjoy HDR+, but if you’re a tech-savvy person, feel free to try the newest verion to explore features like Google Nightsight, Slow Shutter and Front Portrait mode.
A reminder is that if you happen to own a phone that does not run on Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, you are mostly out of luck, because GCAM was specifically optimized for the Qualcomm Snapdragon family. I do happen to know a version of GCAM which phones with Exynos processors can use, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll give you the link.
Some samples of Galaxy Note 8 (Left)and Google GCAM on Galaxy Note 8(Right):
Google’s HDR+ algorithm wins in dynamic range, exposure, Color……anything you expect from a great smartphone photo. Same phone, Same camera, but better photos.
Gear UP
Being a smartphone photographer means that we value weight, ease of use above anything else, it always occurred to me that if you have to carry a giant tripod and tune settings before taking a photo, then it wouldn’t fit the notion of “Smartphone Photography”. Sure, it’s hard to defend smartphone photography against DSLR, but it gives us more freedom to be flexible.
If you really want to take photography to the next level, maybe you should consider buying lens attachments, mobile tripods for a better experience. Just to keep in mind, don’t spend too much to the point where you could get a decent DSLR.
Answer:
Top: Original, 3.2MB
Bottom: Compressed High-Quality, 445KB
Did you get it right?
