Are Phone Cameras Capable Enough?

Not a day passes by when I do not end up taking pictures on my smartphone.

Not a day passes by when I do not end up taking pictures on my smartphone. The more I take, the more I feel better. I have been trained as a Photojournalist at one of the most sought after photography school and courses in India. Not only this, my mentor is one great man and a great photographer who is a Pulitzer Prize nominee and a World Press Photo award winner for his coverage of the Tsunami in 2004. In my one and half year stint at the photo school, we are taught and trained to adapt, improvise and shoot no matter what. We learnt that it is not the camera that limits us, it is out thoughts which cause invisible ‘limitations’ in our minds.

As students of photojournalism, we were expected to have our cameras on us all at times. Be it a walk down the alley for daily necessities or a detailed walk around the maximum city, you always have your camera on you, switched on in power saving mode and ready to fire off shots in burst mode. To make things easier while shooting frantically, we were advised to use the aperture priority mode (A) mode on the DSLR mode dial. This allows you to select an aperture according to the situation you are shooting in, select an ISO setting and simply fire as the camera will decide the shutter speed depending on the ambient light. One angle would not satisfy sir and he would often ask me if I had taken the picture from a top, bottom, left and right angle.