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Education Your Phone's Camera Can't

Your Phone’s Camera Can’t: How to Photograph Your Dog Running

Chris Gampat
No Comments
08/15/2022
3 Mins read
Hillary Grigonis The Phoblographer Canon RF 400mm f2.8 review 0K7A3010

Your smartphone is an awesome tool! As a communication device, it’s impossible to beat right now. But as an actual camera, it’s lacking. For example, your smartphone’s camera is awful at tracking your dog running toward you. It does a terrible job shooting photos in burst and portrait mode at the same time to photograph your dog running and having your dog in focus. To get photos like that, you often have to reach for what some call a “real camera.”

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Why Your Smartphone Can’t Do This

Even the best Android and Apple phones aren’t capable of doing this because of the immense processing power needed. Think about it, to do this with your smartphone you’d need to shoot the photos in portrait mode and also in a burst. More than that, your smartphone would need to identify your dog, track it, and keep it in focus the entire time. Good luck getting most if not all of the photos perfectly in focus. 

So instead, to photograph your dog running and get that wonderful blurry background, you’d have to do it in post-production. But why do that when you can just have a “real camera” do it for you in the first place? 

The best photographers (and I’ll die on this hill) do everything they can to get it right in-camera. And a dedicated camera uses organic physics to keep your dog in focus.

What You Need

To make this happen, we’re going to recommend a few kits to photograph your dog running. These recommendations are based on our reviews of these cameras and the lenses they come with. And you can dive further into our reviews if you wish.

Long Lasting: For around $1,400 you can pick up the Canon EOS R10 with a lens. This camera has AI technology built in that looks at a scene and understands it sees a dog. Then it works to track the dog moving through the scene.

Mid Tier: If you want something a bit more affordable, there’s the Canon EOS RP with a lens that doesn’t have the AI the newer R10 does. But it has all the tracking capabilities you need. 

Super Affordable: On the even more affordable scale, there’s the Sony a6100 that’s also super small! In our review, we cited that it can track moving subjects with ease.

How to Photograph Your Dog Running

If you’re using a camera with animal detection AI autofocus built in, go into the settings and enable it. Different camera manufacturers will call it different things, and a quick Google search can help you find it. Or just check the user’s manual. 

Otherwise, what nearly every other camera can do is just track a moving subject. Switch the camera’s autofocus settings to Continuous autofocus. Different companies, again, call it different things. Sony calls it AF-C and Canon calls it Servo. Why they don’t all agree on one set of nomenclature is beyond us. But anyway, there are a few ways to proceed.

Set your camera to burst mode shooting. If your camera has a touchscreen, set the camera to focus on your dog by tapping your dog’s face after making sure it won’t just fire the shutter after tapping the screen. Otherwise, select the focus area for the center. Then when your fur buby is running at you, hold down the shutter button. It should be able to lock onto your pup running and keep it in focus the entire time. For the best results, keep the focus reticule over your dog’s face at all times as best you can. 

When you’re done, you’ll have those gorgeous photos of your four-legged friend.

Your Phone’s Camera Can’t is budding a series on The Phoblographer dedicated to educating people on how to step up from their smartphones.

autofocus camera Canon EOS RP canoncanon eos r10 dog photograph your dog running smartphone sony Sony A6100
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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