How to get started with iPhone photography

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How to get started with iPhone photography

Everything you need to know about using your iPhone Camera to take great, memorable photos

With the new iPhone photography -- or iPhoneography -- series we're running on iMore, we have a lot of new iPhones users, and burgeoning photographers joining us. So, Leanna and I thought it would be a good idea to team up, take a moment, and go over the basics so that everyone gets up to speed just as quickly as possible. If you're new to the iPhone or new to taking pictures, here's everything you need to know to get started. Bookmark it. If you're already an expert, save the link for a friend, and jump right into our iPhoneography Forum and share your work!

The iPhone 4S camera

The iPhone 4S has an 8 megapixel camera. A megapixel is 1 million pixels, so that means the iPhone 4S camera captures images that are 3264x2448 pixels in size. That's enough to print an 8x10 picture at 300 dots per inch (dpi), or fairly high quality. (Low quality color images print at 150-300dpi, high quality at 300-600+ dpi)

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can be let in so you can get better pictures in a wider range of settings. For example, combined with the iPhone's macro abilities, you can be obtain a shallow depth-of-field (where the subject is in focus, and elements in front of and behind the subject are blurred). The iPhone 4S also has 5 elements in the lens, helping to keep photos sharp.

An infrared (IR) filter helps produce more accurate color, and combines with soft-ware that optimizes dynamic range and white balance. So, you basically have a cam-era that could previously only be found on a dedicated point-and-shoot, built right into your phone.

iPhone 4S camera hands-on

Quick Camera access

With iOS 5, Apple's made it easier and faster than ever to access your camera when you need it, even when your iPhone is locked, and even if you have a passcode set.

Wake up your iPhone by using the On/Off" button on the top, or the **Home button right under the screen

Touch and hold the Camera icon Slide up to reveal the Camera app

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Yes, this does leave you open to pranks

The Camera app

Tap the Camera icon on your iPhone Home screen to launch the Camera app. The Camera app is the built-in, default way to take photos on your iPhone. Even in other apps, like Messages, if you tap the camera button to take a pho-to, you'll be taken into the Camera app.

The Camera app opens to a live-view screen, similar to the LCD display you see on a point-and-shoot or DSLR camera. Controls are available right on the screen to take a photo, set the flash, access advanced options, and switch to the front-facing camera. Other controls are also available, including a hardware shutter and digital zoom. We'll walk you through all of them.

Geo-tagging

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be great for keeping track of vacation shots, but not so great if you're posting pictures online and don't want the entire internet to know your address.

Whether you choose to enable geo-tagging for now or not, you can always change your mind later.

How to to geolocation on or off for your iPhone Camara

Taking a photo

There are two ways to take a photo with the Camera app. Both of them will fire the shutter and save a picture to your Camera Roll library.

1. Tap the Camera button on the live view screen

2. Click the volume up hardware button on the side of your iPhone

Bonus tip: If your iPhone headset has a volume up button, you can use it to take pic-tures remotely!

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The iPhone has a mediocre digital zoom but if you absolutely have to zoom in, it can be very slightly better than nothing.

Touch your thumb and forefinger to the screen and pinch them together to zoom in.

Spread them apart to zoom back out.

Once you've activated the zoom feature, a slider will appear giving you linear con-trol, if you prefer it.

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The iPhone will automatically adjust for macro photos. Just bring the camera close to the object you want to shoot and take the picture.

Note: There appears to be a glitch in iOS 5 that causes problems focusing extremely close for macro photos. It locks for a moment, then blurs again. Hopefully Apple is fixing this for the next update.

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The iPhone camera has automatic focus, exposure, and facial recognition. It will al-ways try to take the best possible photo it can, but it may not alal-ways know which area of the photo you want to target.

Changing the target is simple.

Tap the screen

That's it. Any area you tap will be surrounded by a white square and your iPhone will automatically refocus and re-balance the exposure for that area.

If your iPhone detects a face -- or up to 10 faces -- it will put a green square around it and automatically refocus and optimize the image around the face.

Locking auto-focus/auto-exposure

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you want to take is exceptionally bright or dark. When that happens, you can lock both the auto-focus and auto-white balance so that, when you move the camera around, they no longer change.

Place your camera one the area that has the focus and exposure you want to lock onto to

Tap the square to make sure the focus and white balance are set.

Hold the square with your finger until it turns blue and pulsates.

The words AE/AF Lock will appear at the bottom the screen to confirm you've done it correctly. Move the camera and take your photos without worrying about the auto-focus or auto-exposure balance any more.

To remove the AR/AF Lock, just tap the screen outside the square.

More on how to use the iPhone AE/AF camera lock

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Your iPhone has an LED Flash that can be set to off, auto, and on. It's not a great flash and as will any point-and-shoot camera, light is your friend -- especially lot of day-light. If you're in a really dark place, however, and really want or need a picture, it's easy to turn the flash on.

Tap the Flash button_{at the top left of the live view screen.}

Tap the On button_{to turn the flash on, or the **Auto button* to put it into}

auto-matic mode.

Taking HDR photos

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and involves taking a series of pictures, one right after the other, both slightly overexposed and slightly underexposed, and com-bining them together to reveal more light and shadow information than a standard single-exposure photo would allow. So basically, you can see detail in the bright sky and in the shadow under the tree, rather than having one blown out or the other lost to black.

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The bottom of the screen will show HDR so you'll know it's enabled.

Note: The multiple exposures take a short amount of time to combine, so after you take an HDR photo you'll see a your iPhone say "Saving HDR". If you need to take a lot of photos quickly, you'll want to make sure HDR is set to Off.

Displaying the grid

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Tap the Options button at the top center of the live view screen. Slide the Grid toggle to On_.

Two sets of vertical crossed by two sets of horizontal lines will divide your screen, and you'll be ready to compose your shot.

How to use the "rule of thirds" to better compose your iPhone photos

Camera Roll and Photo Stream

Once you've taken a photo, it gets stores in your Camera Roll, and optionally your Photo Stream.

To access the Camera Roll from inside the Camera App:

Tap the Thumbnail button next to the camera button.

To access the Camera Roll from the Home screen:

Launch the built-in Photos app

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Photo Stream is part of iCloud and keeps the most recent photos from your Camera Roll, up to 1000 of them and for up to 1 month, in a special album that's stored up to Apple's servers and pushed down to your other iOS 5 devices. It can also stream pho-tos to an Apple TV 2 without keeping any local copies, and will store all your phopho-tos, without limit of number and time, in iPhoto or Aperture on Mac, and on a Windows PC.

Think of it as a photo only (no video) duplicate of all the Camera Rolls of all your iOS devices including photos you've saved to the Camera Roll from email and the web -- all in one place.

Unlike Camera Roll, however, you currently can't delete photos from Photo Stream (that will change with iOS 5.1 later this spring). That means if you take any risqué photos you don't want store online, you'll have to reset your entire Photo Stream via iCloud.com in order to get rid of them.

Photo management and editing

You can manage your photos, including emailing, tweeting, iMessaging, deleting, creating and filing into folders, and even basic editing like red-eye removal, rotation,

cropping, and auto-ehance, right in the built-in Photos app. There are also several ex-cellent photo editing apps in the App Store.

We'll cover more on that in a future article. For now, we just want you to focus on taking photos.

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While the basic, built-in iPhone Camera app is all you really need to get started, there are several other well regarded Camera apps in the App Store. They typically provide more or better features than the built in app. Here are two of our current favorites.

Instagram is a popular, free iPhone app for applying distinctive filters to your photos, squaring them, and quickly sharing them to the Instagram network, as well as via Twitter and Facebook. You can also see some amazing examples of other people's iPhoneography. Read more - Download now

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How to get more help with iPhone photography

How to get started with iPhone photography

How to make your iPhone photography more striking with the “rule of thirds” How to make your iPhone photographs more powerful with negative space How to take amazing macros with your iPhone

How to take stunning panoramas with your iPhone How to take awesome HDR photos with your iPhone

How to take great looking portraits with your iPhone camera How to take fantastic photos of your kids with your iPhone How to take dreamy iPhone photos of your newborn baby How to take irresistible photos of your pets with your iPhone How to take spectacular photos of your car with your iPhone

How to use iPhoto to darken and add drama to your iPhone photography How to use iPhoto to polish and perfect your iPhone portraits