Understanding Personal Injury Law

How To Use Your Smartphone To Take Vehicle Damage Pictures At Night

13 June 2016

Celina Nichols

So many people own smartphones these days, it is the gadget most people use to take pictures of car damage after an accident. Unfortunately, smartphones aren't known for taking excellent pictures at night. Since these pictures strengthen your insurance claim, do your best to make them clear. Here are six tips to that help make such pictures clear:

Clean the Lens

A dirty camera lens can give you blurry pictures at the best of times, so you shouldn't expect it to give you great pictures in poor lighting. Fortunately, cleaning the lens isn't difficult. You just need a piece of fabric; microfiber is ideal, but any clean piece of clothing will do, and use it to wipe the lens.

Calm Down

The accident may have shaken you, but you shouldn't shake while taking the pictures. Due to the low light intensity, your phone's camera needs a longer exposure time at night than it does for daytime action. Unfortunately, the long exposure time raises the possibility that your hands will shake and result in a blurred image. Therefore, make a conscious effort to steady your nerves.

Here are a few tips to help you avoid the camera shake problem:

• Pull your elbows close to your body.
• Breathe steadily.
• Spread your legs to improve stability.
• Brace yourself, for example, against a guardrail.

Go Easy On the Flash

The camera flash is meant for lighting up dark scenes before taking pictures, but it can also create a few problems of its own. For example, it can cause glare or whitewash the object. Therefore, use it only if the area is totally dark. Otherwise, you can rely on street lighting, light from other cars or even light from nearby buildings to take reasonable pictures without using the flash.

Take Multiple Pictures

Inevitably, some of your pictures will turn out to be not-so-great despite your best intentions. Therefore, you need to increase the probability of having great pictures by taking multiple shots. In fact, you don't have to strain for this because all you have to do is to shoot in burst mode, which takes multiple shots in quick succession. Do this from different angles of the car and you are likely to end up with a few excellent shots.

Once you have taken your pictures, don't edit them in any way. You need natural pictures that will show the scene and objects as they were exactly after the accident. 

Car accident lawyers, such as Palmetto Injury Lawyers, can provide more information.

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