10 iPhone Camera App Tips

Here are some quick tips to help you get the most from Apple's iPhone Camera app. Learn how to use the grid and level, take burst photos, vertical panos, portrait mode photos and more.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are ten quick tips to take better photos and videos with your iPhone's camera app. 
Here are a bunch of different tips for the iPhone's camera app. Keep in mind that not everybody sees the same features in the iPhone camera app. It depends on which model of iPhone you've got. Most of these should work on the most recent models of the iPhone but if something isn't there for you it's probably because it's not available with your particular model. 
First let's start with Grid and Level. It can be hard to get your iPhone perfectly level with the ground especially since the ground isn't always level. But you can go into the Settings App and then into Camera. You'll find two settings there. Turn Grid and Level on. I don't see any reason to have those off. Now you'll get this Grid that you can see there when you take photos. Also you get this level, just bunch of lines in the middle, and when you hold the phone perfectly level it turns yellow and it is a solid line. So you know you're taking a good level photo. Also the grid is useful because they say you should put interesting things at the intersections of the grid lines and I always try to do that with subjects in photos when I can. This isn't a particularly good example but I'm always thinking about what's at those intersection points when I take photos. 
Another setting is called View Outside the Frame. So normally when you take a photo you can see the left and right sides there are completely black. But if you go into Settings and you look a little further down you'll see View Outside the Frame. Turn that On and now notice you can see instead of blackness there you can just see what is outside the frame of the photo. This is useful when you're taking so many photos that you're looking basically at the screen of your iPhone not whatever is you're taking a photo of. You might be missing something that is just outside the frame so this gives you a wider view. Note that as you change the different lenses you'll find that the widest lens does not have this because it is using that widest lens to show you what is outside of the frame. 
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So hopefully you've experimented with taking panos on your iPhone. It's great for taking wide landscapes that can't fit into a single frame. But you could also use this vertically. All you need to do is turn your iPhone horizontal and now you can go up or down to take a pano that captures something from bottom to top or top to bottom and you end up with a tall photo rather than a wide one. 
Now in addition to Photo Mode you've also got Portrait Mode. So Portrait mode will capture the background  and the foreground separately. So here taking a picture of me and notice how the background is blurry. But if I go into Edit the photo I can tap on Portrait here and I can see it is Portrait Mode, and if I Edit it then I can adjust the depth there. You can see the meter at the bottom and I can make the background sharp or the background even more blurry if I want. Also there is a setting where it is basically going to automatically go from Photo to Portrait Mode whenever it detects a subject in the photo. So you may actually be getting portrait mode photos where you can adjust them like this even if you didn't switch to Portrait Mode. 
Now another option that you should remember is the Timer. So to switch to the Timer, tap the button that brings up all the controls. Then tap the Timer button and you can set it 3, 5, or 10 second timer and then it will wait that long before it takes photos. This is useful if you need to set your camera down so you can get in the shot yourself, like this, and it will not just take one photo but a burst photo and I'll be talking more about burst photos later. 
Now just because you're in Photo Mode or Video Mode doesn't mean you can only take photos or videos. In fact in Photo Mode you can tap and hold the button and it will actually switch into a quick video mode and release the button and it stops taking a video. So it is real handy to stay in Photo Mode and take videos. In addition you can tap and then drag to the top in horizontal mode or to the right if it is vertical and it locks it into Video Mode. You can even then tap on that button there on the top to take some photos while in Video Mode. In addition in Video Mode when you start with a video you can tap that white button there, you can see it at the top right, and take a few photos while recording video. So you can decide to record video and then grab some snapshots  while you're doing that. 
Now in addition to taking a video while in Photo Mode you can also take a Burst Photo, which is a bunch of photos very quickly. So all you need to do is drag to the other side down in Horizontal Mode, to the left in Vertical Mode, and it will take a whole bunch of photos very quickly and you can see me doing it here again how it works. Then basically when you're done you go to Edit, and you can see it says Burst there at the top, you can go in and flip through all of these photos and select which ones you want to keep. Tap Done and you can keep everything or only the favorites you've selected. This is very useful when things are moving very quickly when you're taking a picture of somebody playing sports.
Now if it is you that is moving quickly there's a mode you should know about taking videos. It's called Action Mode. So normally you would take video called Action Mode. So normally you would take video like this but if you look carefully before you start you'll see this Action button here. Tap that to turn on Action Mode. Now it is basically going to do some stabilization for all the bouncing you're doing while you're running or if you're in a moving vehicle or something will be smoothed out.  
One of my new favorite features in iOS 18 that I've talked about before is you can now Pause while recording a video. So you can start recording a video and you'll see there's a Pause button there. So you can pause and move your iPhone to point at something else and then continue and continue doing that. So here I'm going to do some panning to the left and to the right and then to the left again and to the right, (watch demonstration), so when I'm done I've got a video that will look like this when I play it back which actually creates a little interesting bit of video. You can see me zooming in here on one of these and I get a nice view of the spot I'm in but it is not as boring as if it is just one continuous spot. 
Finally, let's look at Focus Lock. So here if I focus in on this branch hanging down you can see the building in the background is blurry but if I move the building becomes in focus but the branch is blurry. Instead I can tap on the branch and it will lock focus to that point and now if I move over it won't go in Focus on the building but keep the branch in focus. A better example would be if there was a subject there that you wanted off to the side of the photo but you wanted them to be in focus, not within the center. You can also just frame everything and then tap on the subject that you want to be in focus, like this. 
So, there are some many different useful features in the Camera App. You should definitely take the time to explore all the different buttons and options and play around with it. Take some sample photos that you'll just delete but you're using them to learn and also checkout the camera settings in the Settings App as well. 
I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 2 Responses to “10 iPhone Camera App Tips”

Mark Enyart

2 days ago

Hi Gary. Just a note. My phone wouldn't show the Action button when filming a video. I went into settings and I think by switching to 4k it toggled it on.... Im not certain what I did to turn it on but it wasn't until I changed something in settings.

Christopher Griggs

12 hours ago

Hi Gary, You looked good without your cap on in the photo shoot. I don't know why people have caps on indoors.

10 iPhone Camera App Tips

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