Consider yourself to be an expert on the camera on your iPhone? That may be the case, though, if you’re a professional photographer who enjoys experimenting with camera settings. For the rest of us, there’s always more to discover about photography.
So continue reading if you want to learn how to use your iPhone like a pro. We’re going to walk you through a few iPhone camera settings that you can use to take the greatest pictures.
1. Preserve Your iPhone’s Camera Settings
Which custom filter or camera mode is your favorite? If so, having to choose it again each time you launch the Camera app is annoying. The fleeting moment you wanted to capture might have passed away by the time you get your camera ready. Thankfully, you can set your iPhone up to save its camera settings and prevent this from happening.
Navigate to Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings to configure it. Camera Mode, Creative Controls, Exposure Adjustment, Night Mode, and Live Photo are among your available options.
2. Enable Grid Lines
The majority of individuals who appreciate photography are aware of how to use the rule of thirds. It’s one of the guidelines and procedures for photography that you should adhere to when framing an image. In other words, it says that the subject of a shot must be placed in one of the four line intersections on a 3 x 3 grid.
You must, however, enable an on-screen grid in your iPhone camera settings in order to see the four intersections and fully benefit from this rule. Gridlines are also helpful for other compositional concerns, like maintaining a level horizon or ensuring that buildings and walls are precisely 90 degrees apart.
3. Use Burst Mode
Have you ever attempted to use your iPhone to take a photo of something moving quickly? Frequently, before your phone can process the picture, the object in question has already vanished. Furthermore, even if you succeed in getting the picture, your subject will frequently be distorted and hazy.
Using Burst Mode is the solution. This takes a quick succession of pictures so you have a good selection to pick from. The best can be kept, and the rest thrown away.
Go to Settings > Camera and select Use Volume Up for Burst to activate the Burst Mode. Then, as you take a shot, keep your finger on the Volume Up button.
4. Turn On Live Photo
You can also use Live Photo to assist you in aiming for the ideal shot. When you long-press a Live Photo, it becomes alive, even though it appears to be an ordinary picture in the Photo Library. To activate Live Photo, just tap the circular icon located on the upper right corner of the Camera app.
If you don’t want your photo albums to be overtaken by hundreds of identical photos, this is a good substitute for burst photos. This is due to Live Photo’s ability to capture the 1.5 seconds just prior to and following a snapshot. Later on, you can alter your Live Photo to a still image.
5. Lock the Focus and Exposure
You should start playing around with focus and exposure if you want to get better at taking pictures with your smartphone. You cannot regularly take photos of a professional caliber without having a basic understanding of these two functions. If you don’t know these crucial iPhone camera settings, your smartphone photos will be terrible.
Simply put, focus determines a photo’s sharpness, whereas exposure refers to how much light reaches the phone’s electronic image sensor.
It is possible to manually lock both values on the camera on your iPhone. As a result, you can alter your shots more skillfully and won’t have to worry about the app taking over.
To manually lock focus and exposure, launch the Camera app, then press and hold the center of your image. The AE/AF Lock banner will appear at the top of the screen in a few seconds. Tap anywhere on the screen to unlock it once more.
6. Adjust the Exposure Bias
To stop your device from automatically overriding the exposure, we described how to manually lock it. However, how can the exposure bias be altered to make an image brighter or darker?
It’s simple. Start by launching the Camera app and bringing up the focus point by tapping anywhere on the screen.
You will notice an icon of the sun next to the focus point. You can slide the Sun icon up and down to change the bias however you’d like by tapping and holding on it. You can adjust the f-stop range on your iPhone camera to anything between -8 and +8.
7. Change the Aspect Ratio
Aspect ratio generally refers to the width and height of your photo. The iPhone Camera app offers three different aspect ratios: 4:3, Square, and 16:9.
Square would be ideal, for instance, if you were taking photos to share on social media platforms like Instagram or product shots to post on some e-commerce websites. You can avoid wasting time cropping photos later by taking them in the aspect ratio you want to use or publish.
8. Take Advantage of Your iPhone’s Camera Timer
Possibly one of the most underutilized iPhone camera settings is the timer. It’s the ideal tool if you enjoy taking selfies. Using a nearby ledge, you can line up the photo and still have plenty of time to position yourself, rather than trying to perform arm acrobatics to fit everyone in the shot.
Press the Arrow icon in the top bar of the camera window, then press the Timer icon that shows at the bottom to start the timer. You can set a timer for three or ten seconds. Choose your subject and arrange your shot. You must press the shutter button in order for the timer to begin.
9. Mirror Your Front Camera
Even though many of us won’t admit it, finding the perfect angle to capture our best side takes time and effort when taking a good selfie. Besides, not everyone has a natural knack for photography. Smiling naturally and still looking good for a photo can be difficult.
After all that, it’s quite annoying to see a mirror image of yourself staring back at you; mirrored selfies tend to look less appealing.
10. Mute the Camera Noise
Why phone manufacturers believe that we want to hear a phony shutter sound every time we snap a picture is unclear. More than anything, it irritates me.
Regretfully, there isn’t an iPhone camera setting that allows you to permanently disable the noise. Alternatively, there are two ways to stop the noise. To fully turn off the volume, you can either use the Ring/Silent switch located on the side of your device or the Volume buttons.
