A modern phone is good enough for nearly any situation. The problem is rarely the hardware; it is a handful of habits that are easy to change.

Step back and zoom, do not move closer

This is the change that makes the biggest difference and almost nobody makes it. A phone’s main lens is wide, and a wide lens at close range magnifies whatever is nearest to it. On a face half a metre away, that is the nose.

The result is an enlarged nose, shrunken ears and a face stretched toward the camera. It is not a quality problem and no software fixes it, because it is geometry rather than a defect.

The fix: step back to twice the distance and zoom in with the telephoto lens if there is one, or digitally if not. At a metre and a half to two metres, facial proportions return to what the eye sees. Losing some detail to zoom is a far better trade than a distorted face.

Tap to meter, then slide to adjust

Automatic mode meters the entire frame and looks for an average. In a photograph containing a person that is almost always the wrong choice, because the face matters more than everything else while occupying a small fraction of the area.

Tapping the face on screen forces focus and metering onto that spot. After tapping, most phones let you slide up or down beside the tap point to raise or lower brightness manually. Those two actions solve most dark-face and blown-face photographs.

In backlit situations, deliberately add a little brightness after tapping. The background will be brighter than reality, and that is the correct trade.

Portrait mode: when to use it and when not to

Portrait mode blurs the background in software, based on the phone guessing which pixels are the person and which are behind. When the guess is right the result is very good and solves cluttered backgrounds. When it is wrong it cuts into hair, blurs part of a shoulder, or leaves a hard edge around the subject.

It works best on one person, standing clearly apart from the background, with a simple outline. It struggles with curly hair, glasses, an arm held away from the body, two overlapping people, and thin objects such as a bag strap.

If the background is already distant and you have stepped back and zoomed, the natural blur is usually enough and portrait mode is unnecessary. The best blur is always real distance rather than software.

Burst mode is the most important tool you have

Holding the shutter to fire a burst is the most underused feature relative to its value. With people, expression changes every tenth of a second, and the difference between a good frame and a wasted one is often a blink.

Use it for anything moving: someone walking, hair in the air, a group laughing, a dress turning. Then choose one and delete the rest. Shooting fifteen to keep one is normal professional practice, not a sign of inexperience.

It also solves the delay problem: by the time your eye registers the moment and your finger moves, it has passed. Starting before the moment and holding through it is the only way to catch anything fast.

HDR, beauty modes and things to switch off

HDR merges several exposures to hold detail in both highlights and shadows. In a high-contrast scene it genuinely helps. But when it works too hard the picture goes flat and artificial: grey skies, shadows removed entirely, and a face with no modelling left.

Shadow is not the enemy. Shadow is what gives a face shape and depth. A photograph where every area is equally bright is a flat photograph.

Automatic skin-smoothing should also be turned off. It erases skin texture and often softens eyebrows and hairlines with it, producing a plastic-looking face. Applying a little in editing afterwards is always more controllable than letting the phone do it at capture.

Clean the lens

A phone lives in a pocket all day and the lens glass picks up oil from fingers. A thin film cuts contrast across the whole frame and spreads a haze around every light source — very obvious when shooting into the light or at night.

A great many people believe their phone takes poor photographs when the actual problem is a dirty lens. Wiping it on a soft shirt before shooting is a two-second habit with a more visible effect than most other advice.