Photos By Mobile Phone

[The Old Ruminator]

One of The Tuesday Diggers has recorded our recent activities using a mobile phone. I have been a bit sceptical about cave phone photography but I am changing my mind now. Certainly phone cameras are becoming more intuitive. These have a longer exposure time than normal cameras but do have a certain charm about them. I get them by email and slightly adjust the tone using Photoshop. They come in at quite low res. around 150kb but I boost them up to around 400kb for my records.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

I am the elderly gentleman in the blue helmet. This all part of a very long project which I am recording by photographs and video. Currently some 600 images have been recorded in four A3 Photobox hard back albums.

 

[tomferry]

I do all my mine photography with my phone have never used a real camera , I personally believe unless it?s a very important image phones are now the future . They have came out very good I am sure you could refer back to them at that quality ?

 

[chunky]

They are the way of the future [emoji106]

Sent from my SM-A715F using Tapatalk

 

[The Old Ruminator]

I will be honest I know nothing about mobile phones. I dont even have one. I dont know what phone these images were taken on. Couple of things. Could the image resolution be increased to somewhere near 2mb ? My friend says he does not know how to do that. Re the exposure. Is it stacking of sorts. It seems to use available light and blends it in very well. To be honest I am getting to wonder where it will all end as you cannot believe anything you see any more. Latest editor has a sky replacement filter so no point in getting up early for those sunrises any more.

 

[Rob]

I think I've only taken my SLR underground once in the last two years. This is mostly due to:

• ease and speed of use of a phone camera
• acceptably high image quality, using only people's torches
• ability to share easily & quickly afterwards
• no drum or tackle bag needed
• I've normally got my phone on me anyway for surveying, navigation, etc

I normally quite literally point and click, using full auto (obviously flash off). Occasionally i'll use a HDR mode or even a Night Mode (which layers and blends similar to the Night Scene Modes seen on a few compact cameras), but either way it's never more than a minute per shot, and no tripods needed.

No idea why you're getting low resolution shots. My underground phone shots typically range from 2-8mb.

Here's a few example shots from a trip to Link Pot last October. All straight out of the phone, no post processing. (Note: I use a Huawei P30 Pro, ?150-200 second hand off eBay. It's my only phone, so i'm impressed and glad it's lasted 2 years of caving unprotected in my pocket!)

 

[wildsurf]

It could be the photos are being reduced in size when added as attachments, some email providers give an option to do this as a default.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

He emailed me again with the same batch but sent via his pc rather than direct from the phone. Some bumped up to 3mb that way.

 

[Ian P]

A really good (safe and protective) user friendly case is what would make the difference for me. Happy to take and use my phone on simple trips, but my TG5 tucked in my top pocket is still my preferred option for now on more ?environmentally challenging? trips.
Definitely agree though, phones are the future.

 

[mikem]

Their cameras are mostly used indoors, so have been designed accordingly, for dark places & artificial light.