"The best camera is the one that's with you.”
-Chase Jarvis
You’re not always going to have a high-quality camera on you, but chances are you’ll have your phone. Make the most out of your iPhone camera so that you can capture those incredible moments in life without losing out on quality. Here are eight tips and tricks from the pros to get you started.
iPhone Photography: Essential Tips
1. Clean your iPhone Lens
Clean your phone camera lens before shooting. Just do it.
You can buy lens cleaner kits with spray and a microfibre cloth, but a quick wipe with the corner of a soft t-shirt will do in a pinch!
2. Tap to Focus
Tap to focus! Your eye does a better job than your phone at finding your subject.
3. Tap, then Swipe up or Down to Adjust Exposure
You can adjust the exposure mid-shot by tapping the screen to focus, then just swiping up or down to increase or decrease the exposure. (Up = increase, down = decrease).
4. Lock Manual Focus and Exposure Settings
Tap and hold on your focus area until you see “AE/AF Lock” (AE=Automatic Exposure; AF=Automatic Focus). Once you see this message, the exposure and focus won’t automatically change when you move your phone.
5. Portrait Mode works for Landscapes as well with iPhone Photography
Use portrait mode to fake a shallow depth of field/ wider aperture when taking landscape photos to get that dreamy blurry background. Your iPhone photography will improve!
6. Take Advantage of HDR mode
For high contrast scenes (e.g landscapes with a bright sky and dark foreground), set your phone on HDR mode. HDR stands for high dynamic range and it will properly expose the entire image. To enable HDR on iPhone:
Open the Camera App on your iPhone.
Tap on the HDR option located in top-menu bar.
Next, tap on either Auto or On.
Open Settings > scroll down and tap on Cameras.
On the next screen, disable Keep Normal Photo option by moving the toggle to OFF position.
7. Stay Away from Using Zoom
Don’t use zoom- you can always crop it later. The zoom on your iPhone is not a true optical zoom (when the lens moves), but a digital one. That means that when you use the zoom function on your phone, all you’re doing is increasing the size of the image and cropping it. Cropping your image in post will give you more to edit with later on.
8. Use the Grid Option
Use the grid mode to make sure you have great composition in-camera: Line up your horizon, use the rule of thirds, all that good stuff. To enable grid lines on your iPhone, go to Settings, tap Camera, and then enable the Grid option. That’s it!
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