iPhoto 5: The Missing Manual, Fourth Edition

Cameraphone Photography

There’s an old photographer’s saying: the best camera is the one you have with you. The day you’re faced with a photo op and your multi-megapixel wonder machine is stashed in your sock drawer at home, you’ll be thankful if there’s a cameraphone in your pocket—a cellphone with a tiny, built-in lens that takes tiny, built-in pictures.

Of course, cameraphones don’t have all of the whiz-bang settings that you’ve come to adore on your digicam, but you can still take perfectly good shots (see Figure 3-19). Here’s a look at the most common cameraphone settings and how they can help you take better pictures.

• Picture size. This option gives you the choice between two resolution settings: large and small. (They would be more accurately labeled small and smaller, but that wouldn’t fly with the marketing department.) Choose large, which is usually about 640 x 480 pixels. You can’t make a very big print with these images, but they’re handy for emailing.

• Night mode. Since most cameraphones don’t have flashes, manufacturers had to figure out a way to let you take pictures indoors. What they came up with is night mode. Ironically, this setting doesn’t work very well in darkness. But in typical indoor light, night mode is pretty good. Turn it on for all indoor photography or whenever the light is less than full sunshine.

• Effects. You may get a menu of oddball settings called effects. Here you can change from normal color photography to things like sepia, black and white, or even ...