15 Cool Smartphone Camera Tricks You Should Know

Back in the early aughts, there was a nagging fear in the zeitgeist that a coming "phone cam" tsunami would wipe away what tattered shreds of civility we had left. As it turns out, those alarmist calls were somewhat prescient—at least in the sense of how everything would soon change.

That's not to say that what came afterwards was necessarily worse. Sure, there have been incidences of our mobile "cams" leading to gross invasions of privacy, but overall I would argue that camera phones have improved our lives.

Thanks to our mobile gadgets, we all have the power to capture, share, and access images and video from around the world instantaneously. It has changed the way we express ourselves (memes and the rise of #selfie culture), eat (it's not a meal unless it's been on Instagram), and even the way we make with the nookie (there indeed is an art to sexting).

Right now, people are walking around with super powerful digital cameras in their pockets, allowing them to beam their POV to the rest of the world instantaneously—all super hivemind style, language barriers be damned. That's kind of amazing.

For its part, the public has enthusiastically shrugged off any privacy concerns it may have once had and learned to embrace mobile photography. And gadget makers have responded with better and ever more capable digital cameras. Chances are, you're not even taking advantage of all the cool things your phone's camera can do. Check out our slideshow for 15 truly amazing (as well as a few ridiculous) smartphone camera tricks.

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  1(Most) Phones Can See Infrared

  If you "shoot" an infrared beam directly into your phone's camera, the otherwise invisible light renders as a purplish beam in the phone's display. There are not many practical applications here, except perhaps allowing you to confirm if your TV's remote control is indeed running low on batteries.
  
  This happens because most digital camera sensors have the ability to pick up frequencies of light invisible to the human eye. But sometimes they will (imprecisely) translate these frequencies into the display's image. We were able to recreate this "glitch" on a variety of modern Android devices (the Galaxy S5, S6, and S7; Moto X; HTC One M9; and Nexus 7) and even on one old-school Samsung flip phone. However, we were not able to see the beam of light render on an iPhone 6 or iPad Air 2. This is probably because these devices have superior "IR Cut Filters," which theoretically make for better photos. (Though, don't despair Apple fans, we were able to see the beam of light on a MacBook Air).
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  2Your Phone Plays Nicely with Telescopes

  It's a simple, but useful little trick that people may not know. Just stick your phone's lens right up to the telescope and you'll be able to capture the magnified image on the other side. The above photo was taken by my phone through a telescope during my honeymoon in Costa Rica. I think there was supposed to be a bird or something, but it was a jerk and flew away before I took the shot. Works with binoculars, too!
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  3Cheap Phone Sensors Can Be Cool

  If you've ever tried capturing a fast-moving object on your phone's camera, you might have noticed it doesn't look quite right. The reason is that most consumer smartphone cameras utilize CMOS sensors, which capture images in a line-by-line sequence (AKA a "rolling shutter") as opposed to a more expensive CCD image sensor which captures all the action at once (AKA a "global shutter"). When capturing a still image, there isn't much of a discernable difference. But if something is moving quickly, the picture may appear warped as the object(s) may have moved by the time the next line has rendered, thus causing warping (sometimes known as "jellocam").
  
  Manufacturers have attempted (to varying degrees of success) to mitigate these effects with software workarounds. However, even today's newest marquee phones may experience warping when trying to capture video of a quick-moving object like a plane propeller or car tire in motion. And while it's not a reliable version of reality, it can be kinda cool. The guitar strings captured above aren't actually warbling in slow motion. It's just a trick of the digital camera's imprecise sensor.
  
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  4Your Volume Button Will Snap a Picture

  Taking selfies is serious business. But it doesn't have to be a difficult one. It's surprising how many people don't realize that you can just hit either volume button (on most phone models—both iOS and Android) to snap a picture. You don't have to hit the virtual button that's on your screen. This works one both the front- and back-facing cameras, but it's particular handy when shooting a selfie. If you didn't know this before, you will never go back to shooting by tapping the screen. We were able to confirm this feature on various iPhones and several Android models.

• • 5Your Headphone's Volume Buttons Is a Camera Remote*

    Similar to the aforementioned feature that allows you to use the volume button on the side of your phone to take a pic, you can also use the volume buttons on your headphones as a remote control for your camera app—on some devices.
    
    After some experimenting around the office, we found that this feature only really works on iOS devices, both iPhones and iPads (sorry Android users). Also, this feature only works on headphones with physical volume buttons—one of my associates' headphones with a volume slide did not prompt the shutter. Additionally, this feature appears to only work with wired headphones—we could not replicate the feature on a wireless pair of buds made by Beats (and therefore Apple). BUT fret not jack-less iPhone users, this feature did work on a jackless iPhone 7 using a wired headphone connected via a Lightning dongle.
    
    If your phone doesn't happen to fall in this specific device demographic, there are a number of third-party remote Bluetooth devices you can use, like this and this.
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    6Scan and Digitize Old Negatives

    Let's start off by saying that this isn't the best way to do this. PCMag's resident photography expert, Jim Fisher, recommends a Lomography or Plustek OpticFilm scanner if you want to digitally capture your old negatives the right way. BUT, if you want a quick and dirty way to digitize (or just view) your old film negatives, you can use your camera's negative effect (as seen above) or take advantage of some of the many specialized apps like the HELMUT Film Scanner (available for Android).
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    7You Can Use Your Panorama Shot While in Transit

    Some have taken to calling this camera hack a "PanoDriveBy." Most modern smartphones come with some sort of stock "panorama" function that allows you to capture big wide vistas by stitching together various images as you tilt or move your camera (there are also plenty of third-party apps that do the same). While these are designed to be used by one person standing in one place, you can also make them work while in transit—just hold it steady and point it out the window. The stitching can sometimes be a little iffy (as you see above in my example from using the stock panorama app on my Galaxy S5 during a train ride along the Hudson River), but that can add a cool effect in and of itself.

8Make Multiple Yous, No Photoshop Required

Speaking of the panorama effect, you can also use it to make clones of yourself! From a visual effect point of view. Just have someone do a slowpan across a field of vision (<--- important) while you run behind them after they shoot you and back to the other side of the frame. Then repeat. (Via).

• 9Your Phone Can Read Barcodes

  And QR codes, too. All the major app stores have plenty of free barcode readers that can handle this function. Here are two really helpful reasons why this is cool: 1) you can scan the barcode on most packages that enter the USPS, UPS, and FedEx ecosystems and automatically transfer that info to your device and 2) you can get more information on just about any product—apps like the eBay-owned RedLaser will then check if a better deal is available elsewhere.
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  10Your Phone's Camera Lets You Know EVERYTHING

  Your phone's camera isn't only able to see more than your eyes, it's able to know more than your brain—with the help of some apps and a data connection. Apps like Amazon's Flow (iOS, Android) can recognize objects, places, and even text. Google's Translate app can even recognize and translate written language so you can read ev-er-y language in the world.
  
  At Google's recent I/O conference, the company announced a new skill called "Google Lens" coming to the Google Assistant (which is now available on iOS). Lens brings enhanced visual recognition skills, e.g. take a picture of restaurant to automatically pull up a review, or snap a pic of a local movie theater marquee for reviews and showtimes. Google promised that the skill will begin rolling out over the next few months.
  
  This omniscient tech has even been utilized by organizational apps like Evernote, which utilize OCR (optical character recognition) software to turn printed text (including handwriting) into digital (and therefore searchable) characters. Software like WhatTheFont will even be able to tell you what font something is written just by looking at a picture of it.
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  11Your Phone's Camera Can See Your Blood Pulsing Through Your Skin!

  There are lots of great fitness trackers out there, and many phones are beginning to incorporate trackers directly into the hardware. But say you don't happen to own a tracker and you want to check your pulse rate, what are you supposed to do? Put two fingers on your neck and look at the clock like some Victorian-era bloodletter? Fortunately, you don't have to!
  
  The developers behind apps like Instant Heart Rate (available for iOS, Android, and Windows) claim they can read your heart rate through your device's camera. Just place your finger in front of the camera and the app monitors the slight changes in skin color as blood pumps through your finger and then calculates your pulse. If holding your finger against your phone's camera seems like too much work, the Cardiio (iOS) app claims it can use your phone's camera to read your pulse just by monitoring the minute changes of color in your face!
  
  Big fat note: we haven't reviewed any of these apps ourselves to test the truthiness of their claims, so please don't consider these endorsements. However, there seem to be a lot of happy reviewers on the app pages, so do what you will with that information.
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  12Place a 'Derriere' in Any Image

  It's known as a #Knucklebutt (or, at least that's what I called it when this idea (which I stole from actor Paul Rudd) briefly became a lite meme several years ago. Mobile technology has finally given humanity the power to bring their butts everywhere—kinda. If you bend your finger over your smartphone camera's tiny lens, you can create a somewhat convincing pair of cherubic buttocks hovering delicately over any subject. The trick is to have some backlighting to illuminate the "butt" and find the finger fold that is most butt-like in appearance (all hands are different). Delight your friends, family, and co-workers by putting them under a giant butt. You're welcome.

• 13Make TV People's Heads Explode

  If you ever see someone on the TV or the computer and you want to convey how smart they are to your social media circles, you can visually expand their brain through a little trick of perspective. Holding the camera up to the screen and point downward.Then everyone will know how special their brain is. #Boom. Big head. No Photoshop required.
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  14Pinhole Effect

  With only a little piece of cardboard and a thumbtack, you can add a nice framing effect to your photos by holding the camera up to the hole. You can achieve different visual effects by playing with the size of the hole and using different materials.
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  15Go Retro Like a Boss

  You don't need Instagram to make a Polaroid effect. You can do it with a piece of white cardboard. Just cut out a frame, but just remember to make one side of the frame thicker than the others to get that old school feel. Also, try making objects come out and through the frame for an added effect.

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