Smartphone Photography Tips for LED Signs

Digital signage and displays are now commonplace almost everywhere. As such, knowing how to photograph LED lights is important — whether they’re the focus of the picture or part of a larger scene. The resulting beautiful LED image can go on websites, be published in print media or get sent to clients as a demonstration of how their advertisement looks.

The best way to photograph a digital sign or billboard is with a standalone DSLR camera. However, we understand that not everyone has the budget for premium photography equipment. Luckily, there are ways you can get excellent digital billboard pictures with a smartphone. Use these LED light photography ideas from Watchfire Signs to get the right shot.

Taking LED Pictures with a Smartphone

LED displays showcase eye-catching and dynamic content that begs to be shared. To convey that excitement over social media, you first have to capture it accurately. In order to take great pictures of digital signage, controlling the shutter speed of your camera is important. This is because digital displays have a refresh rate that makes the images look static to the naked eye but can cause problems in photos.

If you’re using a smartphone, you’ll need an app that lets you adjust shutter speed. A wide variety of camera apps give you more choices regarding the settings of your phone’s built-in camera. In the iPhone world, you can find some great ones in the App Store like Manual, Camera +2, Obscura 2, ProCam 5 and plenty more to choose from. Any of these apps can give you the manual control that you need to take great shots of LED signs. There are plenty of good photo-taking apps for Android phones as well.

For the most part, your app choice is going to be based on three primary factors: price, interface and use. These inexpensive apps range from a couple of dollars to several dollars each, so the price is usually the smallest factor. More importantly, each app has a totally different look and feel. Some show minimalistic screens while others have a plethora of options showing at all times. Some are very simple to use, but these apps may have smaller feature sets. Other apps are more complex — they may have a bit of a learning curve but offer a greater depth of features and functionality.

Regardless of the app you choose, if your primary concern is taking great shots of digital signs, any of these will work great. Your final choice should be based on how the different features will best fit your needs. See if a free trial version is available that lets you test the app before purchasing.

Smartphone LED Display Photo Tips

Once you have your app selected and installed, the process of getting great photos of a digital sign is quite simple.

1.  The first step to getting a great photo is to slow down the shutter speed to a range appropriate for the refresh rate of the display type you are working with. Start by setting the shutter speed at around 1/30^th of a second and you are good to go. The higher refresh rate of some displays will require a little faster shutter speed, so plan to experiment. Take three or four shots in a row with various shutter speeds and see how your photos improve. A sequence using 1/30^th, 1/45^th, 1/60^th shutter speeds will give you a variety to choose from.

2.  A second necessary step is controlling the exposure. All smart phones have a fixed-aperture which means reducing the shutter speed can result in an over-exposured image. Luckily, the solution is simple – just pick up a variable neutral density filter. These are easy to find online at minimal cost, and comes with a handy clip to hold the filter in front of your camera lens. By rotating the filter you can reduce incoming light until it is appropriate for the slower shutter speed you are using.

3.  Vibration and movement are a real problem when shooting at slower shutter speeds, causing blurry, unattractive pictures. Most modern cameras and lenses have some type of anti-vibration tech built-in, and the current generation of iPhones (and even a few models back) all have built in vibration control. Make sure you turn on vibration control before shooting. If you don’t have vibration control available, use a tripod to stabilize your camera in order to get quality images at slow shutter speeds.

By using these simple tips, you can grab your iPhone or smartphone and head out to take some great pictures of LED displays. At Watchfire we are always glad to see your images, so don’t hesitate to tag us, share them on our social media accounts or email them directly to us.