10 Hidden iPhone Camera Tips To Help You Take Better Photos

While we all use our iPhone cameras to take pictures all the time, there is a lot of functionality hidden in the Camera app that many people don't know about. You can take long exposure photos, use a grid and level, get in the shot with a timer, take vertical panos and more.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. On this episode let's take a look at some hidden iPhone camera tips.
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So we use the iPhone camera all the time. But there are lots of little hidden tricks that you could use to take better photos. When taking a scenic photo with an object in the foreground you may have heard of the rule of thirds. That is to put the object one-third of the way from the left or the right and top and bottom of the photo. Not to center it exactly. Now what really helps you with this is using grids. You can turn grids on by going to Settings, Camera and then switching on Grid. With that on you're going to see this grid that will easily allow you to set something at one-third. You just put it in one of the crosshairs there and take the photo and you'll know that you have that object one-third of the way over from one edge or the top or the bottom. So you can try it in different areas there and get a better photo than if you just took the photo with the object right in the center.
Now having Grids turned on also gives you a level. So if you point your iPhone straight down you're going to see a white and a yellow crosshair and you want to line those up as closely as you can to you know that you're pointing straight down at something.
You can take a long exposure shot with your iPhone. You could even do it while holding the phone with your hand. You don't need a tripod or anything like that. What you need to do is turn Live Photos on. So checkout the Live Photos icon and make sure you switch that on. Now take a live photo. You get a photo and a few seconds of video as well. The video is actually recording the changes from frame to frame from the photo. So now when you go into Edit you can scroll up. When you scroll up you'll see the Live Photo's effects and one of them is Long Exposure. Select that and when you do it's going to take all the frames and combine them there and hold things steady. So even though your hand was shaking a little bit it's still going to have the steady parts of the photo being steady and the moving parts, like in this case the water, showing movement. It works great for waterfalls and things like that. It's an interesting effect for waves but probably the best use of long exposure.
HDR or high dynamic range allows you to take photos that have some dark areas and some light areas and it combines them to create a great photo. But it's on by default and you may not want to have it on in all situations. If you ever want to turn HDR off you can do that here in Settings. Now once you've turned it off it doesn't mean that it's not available at all. You just need to swipe to the left or  up depending upon the orientation of the phone to get the extra controls. Once you get those extra controls you can switch to turn HDR on and off manually.
Now you probably know that you can apply filters to photos after you take the photo. But you can actually do it before you take the photo. You just need to bring up those same extra tools by sliding over a little bit there and then you can tap the Filters button. Select a filter and then you'll be viewing the scene with that filter applied. Just because you took that photo with that filter on doesn't mean that you can't switch it later. You can back into Editing and switch to any filter you want or original to get rid of the filter. 
The iPhone 11Pro and 11Pro Max have the ultra wide angle lens. You can use the .5 magnification to switch to that lens. But even if you forget to do it you may still be able to go back and grab that image later on. The iPhone is going to take an additional photo with the ultra wide angle lens and then when you go to Edit the photo you'll see the additional data as kind of this fuzzy color around the image. Now you can actually go to Cropping tools and zoom out and get back the data that you lost by taking it with the standard wide angle lens and not the ultra wide angle lens. The data is only kept on the iPhone and only for a limited time so it's something that you can use to Undo the mistake right away but can't count on having that data later on.
Now if you like taking photos that are non-standard sizes, so instead of 4x3 say a square 1x1, you can swipe to the left to  bring up additional tools and then tap the ratio there. Then switch to 1x1 or 16x9. 1x1 could be useful taking pictures online or if you just like that ratio. 16x9 is very useful if you plan on using the photo in a video later on. However do note that you're not actually getting anymore data. As a matter of fact you're cropping data out of your photo. So you may want to consider just taking a 4x3 photo all the time and then cropping it later on if you want a different ratio.
You can also use a Timer which is useful for getting in your own shot. So bring up the Tools and then tap the Timer button. Then you can set it to 3 seconds or 10 seconds. Then it will countdown on the screen but you also see the flash light blink so you could see it while you're standing there. Take your photo. Using this for Live Photos allows you to have leeway so you can adjust the photo later on if it didn't take the perfect shot you have a few seconds on either side to adjust. The 3 second timer is useful for taking selfies so then you can extend your arm completely without having to worry about tapping the button.
Your iPhone will automatically figure out focus and exposure based on what it sees. But you can set it to something more specific by tapping on a part of the image. It will use that for focus and exposure. Then you can adjust a little bit more by swiping up and down on the little sun icon there to adjust the exposure. You can also fix the focus and exposure by double tapping on a part of the image that you see. Then you can move the camera around and it will stick with that focus and exposure even though you're changing what you're pointing at. So you can fix the focus on an image that won't be at the center of the screen.
Here's one last tip. Now you may know that taking a Pano is great for taking a wide image and it's pretty easy to do. But what a lot of people don't know is you can also use a Pano vertically. So here is a horizontal one. But if I simply turn my phone and I want to get more vertically you can take a Pano going up or going down. Just tap on the arrow to change direction. This can make some very difficult shots easy to get.

Comments: 15 Responses to “10 Hidden iPhone Camera Tips To Help You Take Better Photos”

Sheila Goldberg

5 years ago

This video was very helpful as I'm gravitating from using my DSLR to using my 11 Pro. The piece that seems to be missing is using raw files which is how I shoot.

Gary Rosenzweig

Sheila: You can shoot RAW on your iPhone. But you need to use a pro camera app for that. I did a video on it a while back (https://macmost.com/taking-raw-photos-with-your-iphone.html). I currently use Halide as my RAW camera app.

Rohit

Hi I could not get the iPhone X (IOS 13.x) camera to show the "Extra Controls" as in your video. Do you need to enable some option to see these? Thanks

Rohit: No option, it should come up when you swipe.

Patrik

Great tips as always, I really liked the last one with vertical panorama didn't know that. Keep up your great videos Gary. You have an audience even here in Sweden. I sell Apple computers and iPads to schools and I always tell both the teachers and students about you and your site.

Kind regards

Michelle

Once again, easy to understand and great tips. The level feature is fantastic for me; I am often taking photos of photos and suffering when I had to evenly crop them because they were distorted from not being level. I wish that feature worked when you point straight up as well, because there are many ceilings here (I'm visiting Italy) that I'd like to get a nice level shot.
Thank you for the tips!

Irene

Hi Gary, same issue as Rohit. iPhone XS Max doesn’t show the extra controls when swiping. Is it perhaps an iPhone 11 feature only?

Irene: No, it isn't just for the iPhone 11. Which version of iOS are you using?

Paul

Hi, I am using an iPhone8 and finding this tutorial excellent, one small issue however is that I cannot seem to locate the effects via the Live image in retaltion to long exposure. I have taken a number of water based shots and would love to be able to do the long exposure. But swiping up does not locate the effects menu. Is this due to the age of my iPhone ??? or something else

Paul: It should work on an iPhone 8. Are these new photos or old ones? Try taking a new shot right now with Live Photos turned on and see if you can access the Live Photos effects like I show in the video.

Hi Gary, in answer to your question re iOS version: 13.2

Irene: Do you see those same controls at the top (or opposite side) of the screen? If so, I guess it just behaves a little differently for your screen. But the result is the same.

Donald Keys

Gary, I have the same problem as Irene and Rohit. I have an iPhone X and we do not have the option to change ratio in our photos like the example you show in your video starting at 4m18s. Maybe this is only an iPhone 11 and 11 Pro feature?

Donald: I don't have an older iPhone to test at the moment, but I'd be surprised if the option isn't there on the X too. Maybe it fits on the screen in a slightly different. Look at the other side of the screen rather than near the shutter button.

Marian

Same problem - no extra tools.

Comments Closed.

10 Hidden iPhone Camera Tips To Help You Take Better Photos

Comments: 15 Responses to “10 Hidden iPhone Camera Tips To Help You Take Better Photos”

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