How Much Does it Cost to Make the Photos You Take with Your Mobile Pho

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Do you believe the photo of this flower was taken with a mobile phone?

The color of the petals, the details of the textures, the blurry shallow depth of field effect below, it all means that - yes, it was taken with a mobile phone.

Because the lighting is in place.

"Photography is the art of using light", this sentence was later added a word by people who like to spoof, and it became "photography is the art of using light (money)".

It takes more than money to improve the quality of your photos. In other words, if you know where to improve, a little bit of money can be worth a significant upgrade in image quality

Where is it? The answer is in the sentence just now - light.

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1 Starts at $29.9

Let's start with a light first.

The subjects here are the flowers that have been photographed a lot recently. Let’s first look at the flowers shot without lights. The shooting environment is indoors under normal lighting, which is the same as most indoor lighting conditions.

Clear, colourful, but lacking in texture, as there is usually not enough light in the room.

So if you turn on an LED light and bring it close to the flower, what will happen to the picture?

It seems that the colors have improved a lot and the details have been enriched, but... it still seems to be "not very professional".

This is because to make a photo look good, light alone is not enough, otherwise the photographer will be out of a job. In photography lighting skills, another key point is where the light comes from, that is, the orientation of the light source, referred to as "light position".

If we use this $29.9 Weeylite S03 LED light to illuminate the flower from the top down, and let the phone be close to the center of the flower, not from the side.

The detail and texture of the petals are much better because the light is more abundant than before. This "light position" is very suitable for shooting the perspective of the flower center from the top down.

Then you might ask, why not shoot from the side?

The answer is actually in the photo above - because with only one light, we can only illuminate the top of the flower, not the bottom at the same time. Shooting flowers from the side looks like they appear suddenly in the dark, which is very abrupt.

Of course there are exceptions, if you move the flower and light closer to the background, then this LED can also illuminate the background at the same time, creating a nice effect:

Of course, then the background light must only come from above. So is that the only way? Of course not, if you have a second LED, the lighting will be freer.

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2 Plus $29.9 USD

Maybe not what you think, the second light is not to illuminate the stems and leaves, but to the white curtain in the background (you can also use a white wall instead).

What are the two bottles of drinks on the side for?

Don't worry, we'll talk about it later.

The function of this second light is not to directly bring the flower texture, but to illuminate a part of the background to make the background of the picture show a better gradient transition, thereby producing a better visual effect:

Compared with the pure black background, this lighting can not only show the branches of the flowers, the information is more complete and no longer obtrusive, but also because the background is bright and the branches are dark, forming a silhouette effect. This will not affect the flower illuminated by the light above.

What's more fun is that because the Weeylite S03 LED lights support group control via Bluetooth connection to the mobile app, you can make the two lights show different colors.

The main interface of Weeylite APP

HSL color selection interface of WeeylitePro App

On the control interface of Weeylite App, click HSL to set any color for the current group.

Different colors can bring different visual experience:

Of course, color is just a choice. In fact, I prefer the effect of black and white, because if you want a simple texture, the texture of black and white is actually stronger:

Ok, so far we have used 2 Weeylite LED lights and got good results, what if we used 3 lights? Will the texture be better?

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3 3 $29.9

Now, not only the LED lights will be increased to 3, but the beverage bottles that appeared before will also be used again. The function of these bottles is nothing but "light stands":

Two lights, one on the left and one on the right, outline the plant from the side, and hold a light on top to illuminate the top of the flower. You will get the following original image:

After simple curve toning and lens blur to simulate a shallow depth of field effect in Snapseed, you can get something like this:

Simulate the shallow depth of field effect of a camera lens,

You can use the Lens Blur feature in Snapseed.

In fact, the post-production of this photo is not the point,

Because of the light effect, the post-production is easy.

With the combined action of the three lights, you will find that the texture of the flowers is perfectly reproduced. At this time, our shooting tool is still the mobile phone, and the cost of these lights does not exceed 100 US dollars.

So this method of improving the quality of photos taken by mobile phones with simple lighting can only be used for shooting flowers? The answer is of course no.

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4 Subjects that require more texture

Have you shown your quality life on social platforms? If you want to make the objects in daily life look stylish, you can also use a lighting method similar to the above.

For example, at the beginning, we can look at the effect of direct shooting without lighting:

Clear, but lacking texture, even on a still life stage with good texture, this ALPA camera doesn't look very advanced.

And if you put an LED light on the left and right of the camera, and then use one hand to hold the light to illuminate the "forehead" of the camera, the effect of the picture will suddenly change greatly:

Similarly, we can also use only 1 light hidden behind the camera to brighten the background, and the other 2 lights are placed on the left and right to outline its outline:

And if we move our attention from mobile phone photography to camera photography, then the same Weeylite S03 LED lights can also make product images more textured:

In the end, it seems that the protagonist of this article has not yet shown his face. Since I have 3 lights, I will light it up too.

Well, that's all I want to share with you today. After reading this article, I think you should have more and more interesting understanding of "photography is the art of using light".