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Your Blotchy Pictures are NOT your fault

It’s a result, in my opinion, of modern cell phones. In short, cell phones are limited by pure physics in how good their cameras can really be. They are forced by their form factor to have a small image sensor, and small lenses. To make up for this, phones use complex “computational photography” with machine learning and AI to enhance every picture being taken without you really knowing about it. This can result in unpleasant images. For Macro photography specifically, such as close-ups of your minis, the extreme sharpening and other effects applied over a picture taken by a not-very-great macro lens results in that blotchyness you see.

But, there are a few things you can do to make it better. On this page I will list sample photos from the different techniques so you can see for yourself.

Really what you need is strong lighting to help your macro lens do its job. You can force your camera flash to be on, even if you’re in a well-lit area, and you should immediately see improved results. Alternatively for more control, you can get a super cheap portable light/flashlight type thing, ideally with brightness control, and hold it in your free hand to manipulate the lighting while you take the picture. This has the benefit of adding great shadows and contrast to the image over a cell phone flash, adding ambiance and such.

Alternatively, if it’s feasible, you could look for an old used mirrorless or DSLR camera AND a used macro lens for that camera. Even if you got something from, like, 2015.. It would be leagues better than any modern cellphone. Old Olympus OM-5 cameras can be found pretty cheap, and their 60mm macro lens as well. Or a Canon T5/T6 Rebel, with any of their ~100mm+ macro lenses. If you want to take a lot of miniature/painting pictures, a few hundred dollars on old equipment could go a LONG way.

iPhone 16 Pro Max Macro
(No Flash, No lighting)

I think the blotchyness you show and describe in your reddit post is SUPER evident here. Lets see in the next photo if forcing the built-in flash improves things a bit.

Tips for Pics - SpencerATX Photography

iPhone 16 Pro Max Macro
(Forced built-in Flash)

Not saying this is an award winning photo by any means, but I think the it goes without saying that the flash has helped reduce some of that blotching and color-meshing to a noticeable extent..

Let’s see next with a handheld little light source

Tips for Pics - SpencerATX Photography

iPhone 16 Pro Max Macro
(Handheld small light source from Temu)

Of the phone pictures, in terms of blotchiness I think this one succeeds the most. It’s still not amazing, but if I took a few more shots and had a steadier hand (there’s a tiny bit of image shake) we could definitely see slightly sharper results. You should try these methods!

Tips for Pics - SpencerATX Photography

Comparing to a dedicated camera with a macro lens

For this sample I used my OM System OM-3, and the OM 60mm 2.8 macro lens. None of that matters though, I could achieve similar or better results with old, budget camera equipment. This is just to illustrate that at a certain point with phones, you really are just running into limitations around their AI/computational photography and limitations of their sensors/lenses/size

OM-3, OM 60mm
(Cheap handheld light source)

Virtually all artificial blotchiness is gone. Any blotching you’re seeing is purely from my poor dry brushing haha. The other nice thing about using a dedicated macro lens is that depth of field, how things from the focus point start to blur away, I think it just makes for very pleasant miniature photos compared to a smartphone. But, as you can see above, there’s definitely things you can do to get solid cell phone pictures and I’d keep experimenting around lighting and seeing if you can get some happy results for yourself!!

Tips for Pics - SpencerATX Photography

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