Which of these photos would you prefer?

For most people these days most of their photography is done with their smartphone. We see the results everywhere online. Even in a Bentley advert, shot entirely on iPhones – https://youtu.be/lyYhM0XIIwU.

What you can achieve with smartphones wouldn’t have been believed back in 1979, when I first picked up a camera in earnest and loaded a 36-exposure roll of Ilford HP5 35mm black and white film into my first SLR camera.

Soon I was developing my first film in the school darkroom and watching the image emerge like magic on the photographic paper in the developer tray under the glow of the red safe light. And that was it – I was hooked.

Almost 38 years and eight cameras later, I’m still as passionate (some, including my wife, would say obsessed) about photography as I was then. And my ability has moved on to the level of an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, as informally assessed at one of its Advisory Days in 2010 (I’m working on a submission for formal assessment).

Equipment advances

Photographic equipment has too. My humble little manual-only Cosina CT1 had a light meter needle in the viewfinder to help you set exposure with the shutter speed dial and aperture ring. And a self-timer lever to allow you to take selfies long before the term was coined.

Now my Canon EOS 5D Mk IIIs can shoot multiple-exposure images in-camera, track a moving object using a 61-point autofocus system, shoot broadcast-quality Full-HD video, capture six frames per second at 63 Megapixels per image and get good quality images in very low light (ISO 25,600).

What smartphones can achieve is pretty impressive too – from video to automatic High-Dynamic Range (HDR) pictures. So there’s no need to hire a professional photographer with all their big cameras and lenses for your marketing and PR images and videos is there. You can just shoot them on your phone instead.

Well, you can. But not if you want to get results which will represent your brand best and show potential customers the quality you provide in whatever you do.

It’s like your LinkedIn profile photo. First impressions count. Would you want your next potential big customer to see a selfie shot in dim lighting or a professional headshot?

Why your iPhone can’t compete

Don’t get me wrong – smartphone cameras are great, but they aren’t a match for the kind of camera bodies and professional-spec lenses I and other pros use.

What about that Bentley ad? Check out the behind-the-scenes video – https://youtu.be/PQmzuT0C8T4 – and you’ll see how much extra kit they had to add to the phones to get the fantastic film you saw. And create perfect lighting for each scene. Which meant any limitations of the phones wouldn’t be shown up.

In the real world you and I have to work in, there are a lot of technical reasons why your iPhone or compact camera can’t replace a professional camera for quality, particularly as the resolution (how much detail you can see) and contrast of the screens pictures are being viewed on are rising.

Control of factors such as white balance (colour accuracy), contrast (range of tones from black to white), focus, depth of field (what’s in focus), sharpness, flash balance (how much flash versus the ambient lighting), low-light digital noise (graininess) and chromatic aberration (wrong colours due to lens design and coating) can be crucial to getting the images which best sell you and your company.

Compare the two pictures at the top of this article. A pro-spec camera’s larger sensor will also ensure you have images big enough for high-quality print reproduction in media such as glossy magazines and posters and the high-quality lenses will ensure the details captured are sharp.

Why you need a pro behind the camera

So you should just buy yourself a decent DSLR? Well, you could. But unless you’ve got years of experience in photography your results won’t be much better than with your phone.

Why? Because the most crucial component that leads to a great photograph or video is the person holding the camera and their knowledge, experience and talent. You could give the world’s best pro camera to a bad photographer and they’ll still take bad photos. Very high-resolution bad photos. But still bad.

What a good professional photographer brings to your images are things such as:

• Ideas about how to communicate what you want to say in the picture
• Where to stand
• When to take the shot – Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘Decisive Moment’
• How to light it
• Composition – what to have where to make it visually appealing
• Full, considered control of all those technical details such as depth of field and flash balance
• Years of experience
• A passion to get the best picture possible.

Can your iPhone do all that?

THE TAKEAWAY – Ok, you get my point that your smartphone isn’t good enough for professional marketing images. But there’s more to this post than that.

Smartphone cameras have their place:

• Getting that ‘I’m here’ selfie to be posted straight to social media
• Your Facebook Live video at the big event
• When you don’t have time to get a professional photographer in

But they’re not for every picture or video. If you want high-quality images that impress, you need the right tools with the right person using them.

Working out what you can and should do yourself on your smartphone and what you should hire a professional photographer for makes sense. Use the right tool for the right job if you want the visual communication of your brand to best represent you and what you do.

To see a range of my best images go to the Pictures page – http://bit.ly/ASM-Pictures