Mobile phone cameras have more and more features to take better photos, with options to improve image quality, to edit photos before saving them, to adapt brightness according to the environment, to take panoramic photos and so on. In addition to taking photos and taking selfies, however, the smartphone camera can also do several other things and it is interesting to try some of the most curious tricks listed here, in some surprising cases, which make the cell phone camera a very useful, fun tool, and also good for scientific experiments .
1) See infrared rays
If you want to check if the TV remote control works or not, just point it with the infrared sensor to the smartphone's camera and frame it to see it light up.
That is the beam of infrared rays sent by the remote control, which are invisible to the naked eye.
This is because most digital camera sensors have the ability to display frequencies of light invisible to the human eye.
2) Take photos from the telescope or binoculars
By pointing the camera lens of the mobile phone on a telescope or binoculars, we can photograph the same enlarged image that we can see using our view.
The photo should look great, without distortions or blurring.
3) Use the volume button to take a photo
Taking a selfie can be tricky if we were forced to use the button on the screen.
Fortunately, on almost every model of Android phone and iPhone, you can also take the picture using one of the two volume buttons on the side of the phone.
This works for both front-facing selfies and normal photos.
4) The earphones become buttons for taking photos from a distance
If the trick above, that is to use the phone's volume key to take a picture, works then we can do the same thing with the volume buttons of a headset, which can become like a remote control from a distance.
This time, however, the trick only works on the iPhone and iPad, and only on the earphones with the wire, not the bluetooth ones.
5) Develop negatives of old photos
If we have the negatives of non-digital photos, those taken using film, we can try to digitize them with the camera of the mobile phone and an app that has the "negative" display.
For example, on Android, the HELMUT Film Scanner app can be used.
NOTE: You can instead scan and digitize old photos on paper with Google Fotoscan.
6) Panoramic photos in the car
If the panoramic shooting mode, which allows you to create a very large image by putting several photos together, is available on our smartphone in the camera app, it may be interesting to find out how you can create a panorama while driving, aiming the camera from the window, leaving it still and shooting quickly.
7) Split us in the same photo.
Always thanks to the panoramic photo function, with the help of a friend it is possible to make two different shots to an environment, recovering us in two different positions, to make us appear twice in the same photo.
This and other tricks with panoramic photos are explained in practice in this video.
8) Barcode scanning
Both the Google Play app store and iTunes you can search and find numerous barcode and QR code scanning apps.
This is also very useful when you go to the supermarket or shopping center, to see if a product is available for sale at a lower price on online stores such as Amazon (whose app has a QR code integrated).
9) Instant translator and OCR function
As already seen in other articles, written with the camera with Google Translate can be translated or texts and sheets written in PDF can be scanned in order to save them as digital files, also editable if you use apps with OCR functions such as Google Docs.
10) Solve mathematical calculations
Incredible but true, with the camera of our phone it is possible to frame an exercise, an expression of mathematics or any calculation and see it solved on the screen without having to touch anything.
The app that allows this magic is Photomath for Android and iPhone.
11) Measure your heart rate
This is also a very special function of the mobile phone camera, which thanks to an app like Instant Rate (for Android, Windows Phone and iPhone) allows you to calculate your heart rate accurately (at least according to what is written by the developer of this application) only by placing your finger on the camera lens.
The application checks for small changes in skin color to calculate how it pumps blood through your finger.
Another app to try to measure heart rate is also Cardiio (iOS) which can use the phone's camera by monitoring small changes in face color.
READ ALSO: 8 different ways to use the smartphone camera
