Photographing a mobile phone

Mekrel · 16 May 2015 at 13:16

I don't really do much product photography and as a result, I don't own any macro lenses.

Occasionally though, I do need to take photos for things like eBay and the member's market here and I'm trying to take photos of my Nexus 6. I'm finding that when I resize the images to a respectable size for the member's market, the text on the screen is looking very pixelated and I'm assuming this is because I'm not filling the frame up with enough of the phone. Or maybe it's my LR5 export settings.

Any tips and tricks for taking photos of mobiles without any lightbox? Mrk, SDK and others always seems to take great photos of their phones and watches.

Gear and lenses I have (none of the lenses have short min. focusing distances I believe)
Fujifilm X-T1
XF 23mm
XF 56mm
XF 10-24mm
XF 18-55mm
XF 55-200mm

King4aDay · 16 May 2015 at 14:28

Example?

Mekrel · 16 May 2015 at 14:38

It doesn't look so bad after uploading it, not sure the serial number is clear enough for the mods though!

Energize · 16 May 2015 at 15:52

You need to make sure you are using a decent resize algorithm like lanczos and crop the image to make the phone fill the frame.

Vertigo · 16 May 2015 at 17:43

Looks fine - shoot it from the left though and the serial will be nearer/clearer

King4aDay · 16 May 2015 at 17:47

Yeah just take a second shot face-on so the numbers are readable. If you have PS then there's an excellent free script called Web Sharpener for resizing and sharpening for web display.

Smeghead · 18 May 2015 at 09:27

Underexposing just a tad would probably make the screen a bit more readable as it's a little bright. Or maybe spot/centre meter.