I visited a phone camera photo exhibit at a small café in Napa, California. It showed off five photographers all of whom were good, and I enjoyed the exhibit which featured about three dozen photos. I was struck, however, by the message that the exhibit sent.
The largest photos were 8″ x 8″. Most of the photos were 4″ x 4″. I interpreted the exhibit to be saying, you cannot expect to get large high-resolution prints out of a phone camera, so this exhibit has to feature small prints.
What a naïve message! A 10-megapixel (MP) digital camera is the equivalent of 35mm film. Photographers routinely used 35mm film to produce high-resolution prints that were as large as 30″ x 40″. The photos in the exhibit presumably were taken during an era when phone cameras typically had 5 MPs or more. To think that you can’t make good prints bigger than 8” x 8” with 5 MPs assumes a distinct lack of post-processing skill.
I don’t know what the reason was for the small prints. Perhaps the photos were taken at the dawn of phone cameras a few years before the exhibit when the typical phone camera had only 2 or 3 MPs. Today things are different, however. Many phone cameras have between 10 and 20 MPs, and some phone camera several years old have between 8 and 12 MPs. Even with 5 MPs you can get a sharp print as large as 12” x 16” assuming you took a sharp photo and did some post-processing.
The point to be made is that there is no longer any smallness to phone camera photos. Phone cameras are perfectly capable of taking photos that can be made into large sharp prints.
You do need to keep in mind that most photos require post processing and in particular sharpening. You’re not likely to get many good prints from photos that have not been processed. Then too, different phone cameras have different capabilities; that is, they produce photos of different quality. Although many phone cameras have astoundingly high quality today, some don’t. In addition, cameras with small sensors, such as phone cameras, have difficulty taking sharp pictures in low light. Nonetheless, phone cameras are serious photographic instruments today.
With the above in mind, go for it. Don’t be afraid to use your 8+ MP phone camera photos to make large sharp prints. But before you make any prints of any size, learn to do some basic post processing, particularly sharpening.