It bothers me to no-end that the main selling feature for mobile devices today is their camera systems. Smartphone companies are boasting new features like Portrait Mode which promote a sure-fire way to capture stunning portraits no matter what the circumstance is—it’s a load of Bologna Slices if you ask me!

I have found that most smartphones lack the fundamental components needed to capture a good portrait in the first place—with or without using Portrait Mode! In this article, I want to expose (no pun intended—how many times has that joke been used by a photographer!?) one of the aspects of the “camera phone” that enthusiasts should be aware of when attempting to create stunning portraits with their devices: the lens.

The lens on your average smartphone is not a portrait lens!

I probably shouldn’t say that it isn’t a portrait lens; let’s face it, no one is stopping you from taking selfies!

Perhaps we should define what a portrait is; for the sake of this article, I am going to describe it as an image of a person photographed from the waist up, where they take up the majority of the frame, and look fairly respectable—like a school photo or business headshot (although we all know that those can look quite ridiculous as well).

To say it more diplomatically, the lens on your smartphone is a wide-angle lens; the iPhone, for example, has what is equivalent to about a 26mm lens, which is actually 2mm shy of being considered an ultra wide-angle lens. It is a lens that is typically used for landscapes or architecture—not portraits!

Walterdale Bridge shot at 24mm, f/11, 1.6s, ISO 400,

The camera adds ten pounds and inflates my head?

The reason is simple: distortion. Objects that are close to the sides and corners of the frame appear stretched; although this is great for landscape and architectural photography where it is often the skies, shorelines, and manufactured landscapes that undergo the exaggerated effect (while still maintaining believability), the same cannot be said for a close-up portrait of a human being. Depending on where the subject is situated in the frame, this can lead to abnormally large hands, feet, and head which is quite unflattering to say the least!

“Her head is disproportionately bigger than her body!”

he told me emphatically.
My head shrunk a few sizes after that critique.

Another thing to consider is your Subject to Camera Distance. Take a look at the portrait of Danna above. It’s a great image, right? Wrong!

While studying photography at MacEwan University, my instructor was very critical of this image. “Her head is disproportionately larger than her body!” he told me emphatically.

My head shrunk a few sizes after that critique.

Objects that are closer to a camera fixed with wide angle lens appear larger than those objects that are further away. Not only will getting closer to your subject make them larger in the frame, but the part of their body that is closest to the lens will look disproportionately larger than the rest of the body—it’s unflattering (did I mention that already?)! Sorry Danna!

Combat lens distortion with portrait lenses!

Portrait lenses typically have focal lengths between 85-100mm; for the record, they aren’t actually called Portrait lenses, but the reason they are considered as such is because this kind of glass (fancy photographer word for “lens”) has minimal distortion and allows you to take advantage of another phenomenon known as lens compression. Notice that my assistant, Lance, becomes much more attractive as the focal length of the lens increases (my headshots are typically shot with a 100mm lens). This is the effect of lens compression.

But I thought we were talking about iPhone photography? The device with the 26mm lens?

We are; in fact, you can actually purchase third-party zoom lens attachments for your smartphones such as the Sony QX10 that have focal lengths of 28mm-100mm!

You may be thinking, “well, I can just zoom in with my smartphone camera!”

This is true; however, you will never actually achieve a suitable focal length for a standard portrait (similar to the ones that you see above) with the camera’s innate lens capabilities. In fact, the closest you can realistically go is about 2x (or 50mm which is still considered wide angle) before the digital zoom takes over (digital zoom is when the camera crops a portion of the image and then enlarges it back to size—this isn’t a “true zoom” or ”optical zoom” as it is otherwise known).

Another option is to capture environmental portraits.

Remember when I mentioned that I probably shouldn’t say that [a wide angle lens] isn’t a portrait lens? Keeping your subject relatively small in comparison to the rest of the image and placing them in (or very near to) the centre of the frame—the area with the least amount of distortion—will help you avoid the unflattering effects we discussed earlier. You will likely incorporate much more of the environment into the photo (hence, the name—environmental portrait), but this technique can be used to create an image where the emphasis on the location says as much, if not more, about the person than the person themselves.

Bioware’s Jon Warner shot at 35mm f/4, 1/160th, ISO 100.

Screw it! Go for the distortion!

Since, we are now officially calling wide-angle lenses portrait lenses, we may as well go for broke!

Who is to say that distortion isn’t something that you want as part of your portrait? Perhaps you want to emphasize parts of the subject that reveal more of their character. Perhaps you want the subject to appear comical. This photo below says both, in my opinion.

This is a photo our family dog. Sadly, he was put down a couple of months ago. I actually took this on my iPhone years ago. The distortion emphasizes his face which is really where we find his character—he was a large, shaggy, but fun-loving animal that we miss dearly. R.I.P Bear!

Distortion can be used as an effective tool for your portrait…if you follow the rules. Distortion rules!

I’m not saying that Portrait Mode or any of these other gimmicks aren’t well and good—I have enjoyed playing around with them myself—but they won’t necessarily help you capture a better image or make you a better photographer unless you know some of the fundamentals of the craft. I hope that this article sheds some light (no pun intended—how many times has this joke been used by a photographer!) on some of the ways to better utilize your phone camera and the features that it comes with.

Happy shooting!