It’s getting harder to take a truly bad photo on a good smartphone. Thanks to better lenses, robust processors and integrated computational photography software to process images under the hood, even scenes in low-light, no-flash situations that used to be hopelessly murky can now turn out nicely.

Your phone’s native camera app makes it simple to grab a picture with just a couple of taps. But if you’ve recently upgraded your device and want to dive deeper into the latest hardware and software, here are a few tips — illustrated by two current models, Apple’s iPhone 11 Pro Max and Google’s Pixel 4 XL.

Zooming Around

Each member of the iPhone 11 family has at least two cameras for ultrawide and wide shots, but the iPhone 11 Pro line adds a third telephoto lens. To quickly jump between the cameras in Photo mode, tap the screen and select the .5x (ultrawide), 1x (wide) or 2x (telephoto) buttons. To zoom up to 10x, pinch the screen or press a zoom option and slide your finger on the dial that appears.