In this guide, we will review tips, tricks, and hidden iPhone camera features for novice and intermediate photographers. There’s something on this list for each and every kind of photographer, whether you only use your phone for fast and easy access or whether you are a content creator looking to spice up your images and videos. This is a snippet of the data and tools we supply from our newest class, Creative Photography 101, where all the pictures in the workshop were made using only an iPhone and edited in Lightroom Mobile.
For the majority of these tutorials, you will want a cell phone that has attributes like night mode, portrait style, and wide-angle lenses, which are typically incorporated in newer versions. The examples shown in this article were taken on an iPhone 11 Pro Max, but the fundamentals that we’re teaching extend beyond just your mobile phone and to any camera you have available.
1- Adjust Exposure
Just like a DSLR or Mirrorless camera, phone programs, and built-in camera functions allow for one to decrease or increase your exposure settings. If you are using the built-in iPhone camera you will have the ability to tap and hold any portion of your landscape and drag your finger down and up (using the sunlight icon) to dial in your desired exposure. You will find cellular phone photography apps that allow you to dial in manual camera settings such as Aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. Our favorite phone camera app is Pro Camera by Moment which we’ll be seeing a whole lot in this report.
2- Lock Focus on Subjects
Comparable to the previous tip, as soon as you hold and press back on an area a little AE/AF Lock graphic will pop up just above the area you chose. This helps to ensure your subject will remain in focus if you inadvertently shake your camera move across the scene. Once you’ve locked focus in your topic you can rotate the camera to your liking to get the exact angle you were searching for or incorporate foreground items like in the picture example above without having the camera re-focus or have difficulty finding focus.
3- Use the Compositional Grid
Launch the Settings program from the Home screen of your iPhone and tap on Photos & Camera. If you click on the Grid change it will enable a compositional grid to look in your camera display when you’re using the native camera program. This is a superb tool to have while shooting so as to easily visualize whether or not your topic is on the rule of thirds lines or not. It’s also excellent practice for better understanding compositional concept like the gold rule or major lines.
4- Experiment with Portrait Mode
5- Use Burst Mode for Action Shots
When shooting motion, try holding down the camera to capture 10 frames at 1 go. This wilI yield far better outcomes when it comes to shooting the action at the ideal time and you can pick which pictures you need to keep and delete. This works great for jumping, dancing, or sports photography.
6- Understand The Effects of Wide Angle vs. Standard Lens
The iPhone 11 introduced Apple’s second additional camera lens: the wide-angle lens. This allows users to capture a wider range of the frame as opposed to the overall lens that gives you standard focal length. The key wide-angle camera has an f1. 8 aperture and an equal focal length of 26mm.
7- Produce Long Exposures
There are several strategies to generate longer exposures together with your iPhone camera, some are determined by what model you have while others may be accomplished using an attachment created for all models.
- Tripod: Let us start off with the most accessible method. You are able to use a tripod and a third-party program to create long exposures by manually setting your shutter speed to a slower setting and then using the tripod for insertion. Our current favorite for cellular photography is the Peak Design Travel Tripod.
- Live Photo Long Exposure: After you’ve captured a photograph using Apple’s Live Photo manner you can swipe up on that picture and select among three options, two of which we’ll discuss in our next stage. Long Exposure allows the camera to compute more exposure dependent on the little length where the live photograph was captured. It is important to note that you must hold your hands while capturing this photograph, especially in low-light situations so that the live photograph has a solid chunk of stable footage to make from.
- Nighttime Mode: This is a feature exclusive to iPhone 11 and up and it had been introduced to boast about the new low-light capabilities of the enhanced camera. Night mode utilizes the new sensor together with machine learning and also the Neural Engine in the A13 processor to create Night mode shots. While iPhone detectors are still not anywhere near as successful as DSLR or mirrorless sensors, you can use any of the above-mentioned methods to create light trails, water movement, picture in darker locations, or capture unique movement.
8- Use Live Photo Loop and Bounce
IPhone’s Live Photo style gives you three choices to morphe your own photo. Loop turns out a Live Photo you love to a video loop. Bounce makes your Live Photo rock back and forth. They are quite similar in impact, however, a Loop doesn’t have the same smooth transition for a Bounce.
9- Choose Your Frame with Live Photos
The fourth choice you’ve got with Live Photos is being able to choose one picture in the bit of footage it has captured. Together with Live Photos, your iPhone records exactly what occurs 1.5 seconds before and after you shoot a picture. If you are photographing kids or perhaps taking a self-timed photograph, this is a great tool to get so you may take a few Live Photos and select an integral photograph, basically like culling.
10- Utilize Portrait Lighting Modes
In order to better your Portrait mode photos, you can utilize the iPhone’s Portrait Lighting Modes. There are 5 light modes in total that are designed to help create stage or studio lighting wherever you are. While we recommend manually picking your exposure using suggestion #1, this is a fantastic way to play light only using the camera you have on your cell phone.
11- Take Silly Shots
This is most likely one of the old tricks from the book but our reason for mentioning this is to hopefully ignite some creativity working with the Panoramic feature. You can pan the camera slowly pan as you have your topic start on one end and run to another side (below the eye line of the lens) and appear on both sides of the panoramic picture. Another interesting way to use the Panoramic feature on the iPhone would be to use it vertically rather than horizontally to show huge buildings or clouds and sky.
12- Create Slow-Mo Videos
Another fun technique to try out with the built-in features of your iPhone camera is your Slow-mo video function. It’s a fun method to use for record videos of movement like water or jumping/action-associated material. We’ve got a whole article devoted to helping you shoot better slow-mo videos on your own iPhone here.
13- Never Miss a Moment — Access Camera Out Of Home Screen
A fast tip to gain easy access to a cellphone would be to modify your settings to allow for your camera to be one swipe away from the lock screen.
14- Try Light Painting
Whether you’re shooting in a studio or your home, find a dark space where you can cut off the majority of the ambient lighting. A tripod is crucial for this method because we want to prevent camera shake since our shutter speed is really slow. Begin with a shutter speed of 1-2 minutes and then dial your Aperture and ISO to blackout the area. We discussed earlier in the article which ways it is possible to achieve manual camera configurations and slower shutter speeds so once you’ve got your preferred technique, begin to twirl a pair of series lights or perhaps move another phone at a figure 8 movement to create light paint behind the subject.
15- Experiment with Length of Field
The introduction of the iPhone XS brought us the ability to change the depth of field, or aperture, of the picture. This is a game-changer when it comes to using your telephone to make portraits, concentrate on a singular object, or capture more detail in landscapes. The slider provides an f-stop range from f/1.4 to f/16. So it allows you to adjust your photos to have a strong bokeh impact or keep everything in focus. The key is Apple’s image signal processor and software. Besides the depth of field, the iPhone XS camera can automatically handle exposure, balance, facial recognition, focus, sound reduction, and local tone mapping.
16- Rotate the Camera
Change your perspective by, quite literally, changing your camera’s perspective. The lenses are in the top right corner of the back of your iPhone meaning even when you attract the height of down the angle, it is not quite at its lowest vantage point. Consider rotating the camera to get fun
17- Experiment with Foreground Things
The tricky part of having an iPhone for these types of foreground shots is that the camera isn’t always strong enough to feel what you’re trying to concentrate on. It will instead just pick the object closest to the lens. This will take some exercise and maybe multiple shots for the camera to begin working with you, but as soon as you nail it, the foreground components add something of interest for your photo.
18- Try Underwater Photography
Both the iPhone X and also the iPhone 8 are only water-resistant and this caused a completely different level of photography capabilities when users started taking photographs underwater. However, with the new iPhone 11 Guru camera, now you can submerge your phone for as much as 30 minutes in 4 meters (approximately 13 feet). The technology will only get better over the years and we are bound to see some interesting upgrades as soon as it comes to underwater recording and catch in the future.
19- Don’t Be Scared to Move in
Employing the Telephoto Lens (the 2x button alongside 1.0x in the center of the display ) allows you to zoom in two times the standard lens quickly. On older iPhone models, this lens does not exist, and users might need to zoom in manually, which will probably cause a lack of detail and a superior gap. This was why Apple chose to create the Telephoto lens, to help give people more access to different angles, like swapping lenses on. Your own DSLR or mirrorless. You can use the Telephoto lens for tight portraits,
20- Find or Create Reflections
Among the easiest methods to impress would be to use a window or glass door to make a manifestation of your subject or view. You’ll get better results if you lean the phone against a window to the left of you since the camera on an iPhone is at the upper right corner of the rear of the telephone. Another fantastic way to produce a reflection on the move is to use somebody else’s phone or invest in an ND filter. It’s possible to hold either of these objects near the lens of your iPhone and make a reflection.
If you enjoyed this tutorial, be sure that you check our Tik Tok where we’ve been sharing fun mobile photography tutorials like this one! Be sure to register to be the first to know when our Creative Photography 101 course releases to find out more interesting tips & tricks to accelerate your creativity game.
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