As my ‘new girlfriend’ is still on loan, yet again I tried to explore the inner potential of my Nokia 6500 Slide.

Featured model is my beloved Mont Blanc Starwalker again. This time with Starwalker Junior - the 5ml travelling pack.

Yes, this photo is taken by a camera phone. Don’t believe? Let me share with you few key factors on taking great photos using your camera phone.

1. Focus.

It’s better to have a camera phone which you are able to adjust the focus distance either through auto-focus or manually (using the macro switch).

While taking the photo above, my phone was around 5cm away from the main object. A camera phone without macro function will not be able to focus clearly at this distance. Even if you can focus on the object from a further distance, the perspective will be different.

2. Exposure (Brightness)

It is alway very necessary to be able to adjust exposure of photos in the phone itself. Because normal camera phone meters the brightness of photos using averagebrightness of the whole picture, the exact area of interest might not be exposed correctly. For example, street lights are often too bright in night shots, and during day time your faces are always dark while the background is bright.

By manually adjusting the brightness of pictures before shooting (with sense of photography of course), you may be able to produce much more desirable photos.

3. Post-processing

Digital cameras or camera phones has a smaller dynamic range (or exposure range) compare to traditional film cameras due to the limitation of electronic sensors. Hence within its ability, camera sensor try to keep as much info as it has captured and store in the JPEG file. That’s why photos taken using digital cameras are always very ‘grey’, or low in contrast. This in fact provide user a wide range of choices on which details are to be kept, the bright ones or the dark ones.

So it is always necessary to adjust the brightness and contrast of digital photos, and present to audience the essential parts of an image.

There are, of course, other factors which will potentially affect photo quality such as lens quality, sensor size and pixel quantity. But for now, managing the 3 points I have just mentioned will be good enough to impress you audience.