IOS photography techniques

Six top tips to help you take even better photos with your iOS device

Your iPhone or iPad has a camera that’s just as good as many compact digital cameras on the market. We’ll be the first to admit that there are phones out there with cameras that boast more megapixels but, as any photographer will tell you, it’s not all about megapixels – your iOS device’s camera has great colour accuracy, sharp optics and negligible shutter lag. Like any camera, though, it will give you best results if you really know how to get the best from it. Here then, are our six essential tips for better iOS photos. Follow these, and you’ll be snapping on the go like a pro in no time at all.

Master the shutter

In iOS 7, Apple has changed the way the camera behaves. In iOS 6 and earlier, when you tap to take a shot, the shutter is actually triggered when you lift your finger off the glass, not when you press down. So when you’ve composed your shot, you can tap and hold the shutter icon, then release only when you’re steady and everyone’s smiling, which also helps reduce the risk of jarring the device as you shoot.

In iOS 7, however, if you tap and hold, the camera will keep taking shots until you release. This will work on any iOS 7 device, but it’s only on an iPhone 5s that you get the much-touted “burst mode” – 10 shots per second, with the sharpest selected for you and the rest automatically stacked. Continuous shooting on other devices captures two to five shots per second, depending on the device, and these are saved as separate shots in your Camera Roll, which you’ll need to sort through manually. Note that this change also means you may now experience a tiny shutter lag when taking a single shot.

Lock focus/exposure

You probably know you can tap on the screen to set the focus and exposure to suit the area you tap on. (You can’t set the two separately in the Camera app, but other apps such as Camera+ can add this option.) To lock the focus and exposure, though, so that you can recompose the shot without the settings ‘hunting around’, tap and hold instead of just tapping: the yellow rectangle will pulse to confirm; in iOS 6, ‘AE/AF Lock’ also appears when you lift your finger.

Clean the lens

Our iPhones spend a lot of time in lint-strewn pockets, and just handling your iPad can leave it smeared with finger oils. Before snapping your special moment, take a second to check that the lens is clean.

Zoom using your feet

Try to avoid the ‘zoom’ on your iOS device where possible – it’s a digital and not optical zoom, so all this is doing is blowing up a small part of your photo before you take it rather than actually getting closer. You might as well shoot at full-quality and crop more carefully afterwards. Instead, if at all possible, just get closer to your subject.

Hold still!

Unless you want arty effects, aim to minimise blurring in your photos. Don’t jab at the shutter icon. Avoid shooting while walking – come to a halt first. Tuck your elbows in against your body; take a deep breath, then exhale gently and steadily as you tap the shutter icon. If you’re shaky or shooting in low light, brace yourself against a solid object such as a tree or wall, or use a tripod. Try attaching a set of headphones with inline controls and using its volume up button as a remote shutter release. You can even trigger a shot wirelessly with the volume up button on some Bluetooth headsets and keyboards.

Watch the horizon

It’s all too easy to take off-kilter shots, especially if you’re shooting from the hip to capture the moment. If you have time to compose your shot, keep an eye on the horizon, and turn on the grid to help you keep things level – in iOS 6 and earlier, you can tap Options in the Camera app to do this shot-by-shot; in iOS 7, you have to go to Settings > Photos & Camera and switch the Grid on or off, which is a definite backward step. You can level a tilted shot after taking it, but doing this crops off little slivers at the sides, so it’s often a good precaution to leave some space around your subject to allow for this.

With objects at varying distances like this, autofocus might latch onto the wrong area. To lock the focus and exposure where you want, tap-and-hold on an area until the yellow rectangle pulses.

Autoexposure has left the horses and carriage in this shot too dark. Tap on them to expose for that area (see right) – but other areas, such as the sky and distant hills, are now blown-out.