Quick Tip: Instantly Improve Your Cell Phone Photo Quality

Do you use your cell phone camera, either for quick snaps, or as your primary camera? If so, we need to talk about zoom.

One thing most dedicated cameras have that cell phone cameras lack is optical zoom. Optical zoom uses--you guessed it--optics to zoom in or out of your scene. In other words, the lens itself adjusts the zoom.

A photo from my cheap cell phone camera. No zoom used. Click to enlarge.

Digital zoom, on the other hand, is essentially a simulation. Digital zoom enlarges the central portion of the image and cuts away the rest. Basically, it's doing in-camera editing--cropping and enlarging the photograph as you take it, without actually magnifying the scene.

Optical zoom will not result in a loss of quality in your image (or if it does, it will generally not be a significant loss of quality, and any loss in quality will be related to the quality of the lens itself). Digital zoom, on the other hand, will irreparably degrade the quality of your photograph.

Similar photo, same cheap camera. This time, I used digital zoom. Click to enlarge. Yikes!

So what should you do? Avoid zooming in with your cell phone camera! If possible, get closer to your subject. If you can't get closer, consider cropping in post-processing--at least you'll have more control over the final result.

If you've ever wondered why your cell phone pictures just don't look very good, digital zoom may be the culprit.