iPhone Photography: Use your iPhone Camera to its Full Potential! | John Piteo | Skillshare
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iPhone Photography: Use your iPhone Camera to its Full Potential!

teacher avatar John Piteo, Photography Enthusiast

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      About This Course

      1:27

    • 2.

      Optimize Your iPhone Camera for Photography

      2:49

    • 3.

      iPhone 11-14 Models Camera Controls Part 1

      7:49

    • 4.

      iPhone 11 -14 Models Camera Controls Part 2

      5:01

    • 5.

      iPhone XS & Older Camera Controls

      8:19

    • 6.

      Take Control of Focus & Exposure

      8:27

    • 7.

      Create Amazing Pano & Wide Angle Shots

      6:28

    • 8.

      Get Crystal Clear Action Shots

      4:41

    • 9.

      Candid Shots with Stealth Mode

      5:36

    • 10.

      How & When to Use Live Photo

      7:43

    • 11.

      Portrait Mode & Portrait Lighting Effects

      7:54

    • 12.

      Great Low-Light Photos with New or Old iPhones

      9:45

    • 13.

      Beautiful Night Mode Photos with iPhone 11-14 Models

      5:46

    • 14.

      Working with the Built-in Photo Editor

      6:04

    • 15.

      Extra Tips for the Sharpest Photos

      10:22

    • 16.

      Final Thoughts

      0:47

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About This Class

Technology moves fast.  This course is fresh and new, published in March of 2020.  

Let's face it, we paid a lot of money for our iPhones.

A good chunk of that money goes toward the highly advanced camera system built into it; however, most people are not using their iPhone camera anywhere near its full potential. 

All they do is tap the shutter and take quick snapshots. 

Well, the iPhone camera is capable of so much more than that. 

In this iPhone camera crash course you'll learn how to use all of the features of your iPhone camera to their full potential in different photographic situations.  

You Will Learn...

  • How to setup and optimize your iPhone for photography
    How to use all of the features and controls of your iPhone camera (including the hidden features).
  • How to manually control the focus and exposure for extra-sharp, well exposed photos.
  • How to take advantage of exposure compensation to dramatically increase the quality of your photos.
  • How to create amazing panoramic and wide-angle photos even with older iPhone cameras.
  • How to create exciting action shots with almost unbelievable clarity.
  • How to use what I call "stealth mode".  This is great for candid shots.  No one will know that their photo is being taken.
  • How to add excitement with the "Live Photo" feature.
  • How to take smooth long exposure shots.
  • How to use Portrait Mode & Portrait Lighting Effects for iPhones equipped with that feature.
  • Basic photo editing with the built-in Photos app.
  • Extra, little-known tips for getting super-sharp photos with your iPhone camera.
  • Plus much more!

Unlock the full potential of your iPhone camera.  This training covers cameras from the 5S to the newest iPhone 11 Models. 

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

John Piteo

Photography Enthusiast

Teacher

I'm a 30 year veteran of the advertising and marketing industry both on and offline.  I've traveled a lot and got hooked on photography while traveling as a young man.   While I never really wanted to be a professional photographer, I've been a passionate photography enthusiast for over 40 years.  I also love learning and teaching others how to improve their photography skills and creativity.  The most amazing feeling is watching people progress and improve their photography from my training. 

See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. About This Course: Let's face it, Anyone with an iPhone can take good point and shoot snapshots. But who wants to take just average snapshots like everybody else? If you're ready to unleash the real power of your iPhone camera that this course was created for you, my name is John PDO, and I'm a photography enthusiasts and professional instructor in this course will start with the iPhone camera and how to use it to its full potential in different photographic situations. It doesn't matter if you have the latest and greatest iPhone or an older model. I've got you covered. Here is just some of what you'll learn how to take extra sharp photos even when viewed on larger screens such as ipads, computer monitors or TVs. How to take stunning crystal clear, close up shots. And how about low light photos? Most people get pretty bad low light shots. Well, in this course, you'll learn how to get incredible low light photos, even with older iPhones. I shot this on an iPhone six and as clear and sharp with no pics, elation or fuzziness like in this photo, you'll also learn the best ways to use night mode for the newest iPhone models how to take action shots with almost unbelievable sharpness and clarity. You'll take impressive panorama shots, learn how to use all of the features in portrait mode, including the portrait lighting effects and so much more. So let's get started. 2. Optimize Your iPhone Camera for Photography: all right In this lesson, we're gonna make a few minor changes to the iPhone to make sure that it has the optimal settings for iPhone photography. Now, these changes are optional, so if there's a change that you don't want to make, that's fine. Also, any changes that you make can be reversed simply by watching this video again and reversing what it shows you to do. So if I told you to turn on a switch, you can simply turn that switch off. So first, let's go to settings, then scroll down until you see display and brightness in brightness. Be sure that true tone is turned on. If a switch is green, that means it is turned on. This changes the brightness and white balance of the display based on the surrounding available light. It makes your screen easier to see and bright or dimly, and it makes the colors appear more consistent in different types of light. Okay, now I'll go back to settings. I'll scroll down to the camera app. Now. The first thing I want to do here is turn on the rule of thirds grid for the camera. This is very helpful when you're learning about photographic composition. It also helps you keep the landscape level, which is pretty important. Now let's open the camera app to see what we just did. Now we have these guidelines here to break up the screen into thirds, both horizontally and vertically. We'll talk about how to use this when we get into the composition course. Okay, there's one more thing that we want to do. Now. Let's go to the home screen. Now we're going to move the camera app to the dock. This is so you always know exactly where it is, and you could get to it quickly from any screen. This is important because sometimes photo opportunities come and go very quickly, and you want to be able to open up your camera app as quickly as possible. Now there's only room for four APS in the dock area, so I'll have to move one of these APS out. So the MoveOn icon press your finger on it and hold, then tap. Rearrange APS. They'll all start shaking. I'm gonna tap and hold on this music app so I could drag this out. Now drag it out, then I'll tap and hold on the camera app and then drag that down. When I'm finished, I'll tap done in the upper right hand corner. If you're using an iPhone that has a home button, then you won't see the word done in the upper right hand corner. And in that case, just press the home button one time and this will settle the icons. Now you're good to go. As you can see. If I switch to another page, the camera icon will always be right there in the corner so I can get to it quickly. Whenever a photo opportunity comes up. OK, your phone is set up and you're good to go. If you missed anything in this video, simply watch it again and pause it wherever you need to. I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. iPhone 11-14 Models Camera Controls Part 1 : This lesson is for you if you have one of the iPhone 11 models or any newer iPhone. If you own an older model, you can skip this video. There is a similar lesson after this one that goes over the features and controls of the iPhone ten models and earlier iPhones. On the other hand, if you're considering upgrading to a new model iPhone, then you still may want to watch this video. Apple is redesigned the camera interface, starting with the iPhone 11 models, That's simply means they've moved the controls around a bit and change the way you get to them. They've also added a few features. This video will be a quick overview of the basic features and where to find them. I'll start at the beginning for anyone who is new to the iPhone, we'll get into how to use these features in photographic situations and also how to use the more advanced features in much more detail in other videos. By the time you're finished with this course, you'll be able to use your iPhone's camera to its full potential. First, the camera button here is how to switch to the front-facing camera, also called the FaceTime or selfie camera. The front camera has been upgraded from seven megapixel resolution to 12 megapixels. This should mean a higher-quality photo when viewed on a larger screen or print it out. If I turn the camera to vertical position, it automatically zooms in just a little. For the typical selfie shot, if I switch back to horizontal position, is zooms out a bit to fit more of the scene in the frame. You can also tap these arrows here manually to control the small zoom effect. And this works in either horizontal or vertical position. I'm in front camera. You can also use portrait mode and portrait lighting with several different lighting effects. We'll go much deeper into this in another video. I'll tap the front camera button again to switch to the back cameras. Next below the front camera button, we have the shutter release button. Of course you tap that to snap your photos. But this button also has three other functions. If I press and hold it, the camera will shoot video for as long as I hold the button down. To lock the video button down, you would tap and swipe upward. Or to the right. If you're holding the phone in vertical position, while you're shooting video, you have the ability to snap photos by tapping the white button that appears here. Tap the shutter button again to stop recording. This will put the shutter back into normal camera mode. This is new for the iPhone 11. In previous models, when you held the shutter button down, the camera would go into burst mode and take ten photos per second until you release the shutter. Now to activate burst mode, you tap, swipe the shutter downward and hold for as long as you want the burst to be. We have an entire lesson on why and how you should use burst mode. So let's move on. Below the shutter button is a thumbnail of the last photo you shot. You can tap on it and the photo will open in your photos album. Here you can look at it to see how it turned out. If you tap on the photo, it will remove the bar so you can see the full photo against a black background. Tap the photo again to bring the bars back. Here. You can share it, you can delete it, or you can edit it. You can get back to the camera app by tapping this arrow. Next, we have the different camera modes. The active mode will be highlighted in yellow. You switch to different modes by swiping up or down on the screen, or by tapping the word that you want to switch to. The photo modes are photo, portrait and piano. Short for Panorama. This is for shooting extra wide images. You can have a lot of fun with this one and we'll go over this in detail in another lesson. Then there is portrait mode. One thing that photographers like to do with their DSLR and mirrorless cameras is blur out the background of images, especially in portraits. In an upcoming lesson, will not only learn how to get the best results when blurring out the background, but we'll also learn how to control the amount of blur that appears in the background. We'll also learn about the different portrait lighting effects that are available. If I swipe up, you'll see the video modes, which are video, slow-mo, and time-lapse. Video is beyond the scope of this course, so we'll move on. There are 23 or four optical shooting capabilities available, depending on which iphone model you have. Standard non Pro models such as the iPhone 1414 plus 0.5 ultra-wide, and a one x wide optical shooting capability. Pro models have more. For example, the iPhone Pro has a 0.5 ultra-wide One X Y, and a a3x telephoto shooting capability. And the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max have an additional two optical telephoto capability. To put it simply, these buttons are just used to zoom in and zoom out. To switch the cameras. Just tap on one of the numbers. When you tap on one of the numbers, you're using one of the optical telephoto camera systems. Now, you can also swipe up or down on the numbers to activate the Zoom. We'll, however, if you stop between the numbers and shoot a photo or go beyond your maximum optical camera. That will be 2.523, depending on which iPhone you have, your camera will activate digital zoom. So what's the difference between optical and digital zoom? Optical zoom uses actual lenses and camera optics to achieve the zoom effect. Digital zoom does it by stretching out the pixels. But what you should remember is that optical zoom is really good and digital zoom is pretty bad. Your photos may look good on a small screen of your iPhone, but on a larger screen like your iPad or computer monitor or a TV screen, you can really see the difference. Here's an example. On this first photo, I shot this vintage camera using the zoom. Then I got a lot closer to the vintage camera and shot the second photo with the two, Zoom. As you can see, the first photo is much more blurry and pixelated. It's just not that good. For that reason. I don't use any Zoom beyond to x on my iPhone 11 Pro 99% of the time. Of course there's always at 1%. I just want the photo and I don't really care how good the quality is. For example, I was at the Palm Beach airport hurrying to catch a flight. And I saw the president's plane, Air Force One, sitting out there on the runway. It was pretty far away. So I zoomed in and snapped a quick shot is not a good shot. The letters on the plane are blurry and you can see the pixelation in the clouds. But at least now I have a photo of Air Force One that I shot. Well, it's starting to get dark at this location. So I'll continue to go over the features and controls in the next video, which is part two of this lesson. See you then. 4. iPhone 11 -14 Models Camera Controls Part 2: already. This video is part two of the basic camera features and controls for the iPhone 11 models. The next feature we have is live photo With this feature turned on, the camera will shoot 1.5 seconds of video and sound before and after you snapped The shutter. Life photo comes with a few hidden features, and one of the most powerful ones enables you to take long exposure. Photos like this live photos usually turned on by default, and there are reasons to use it and times when you shouldn't. In fact, I recommend leaving Live photo turned off most of the time, but we'll learn all about this later as I have a complete lesson about live photo in the course below the Life photo button, There's a light gray arrow. If I tap the arrow, a control bar with additional features will be revealed. If I tapped a three circles here, a set of filters will open that you can use to change the look of your photo before you shoot it. If you choose one of the filters and snap a photo, you will see the three circles appear here in color. This is to remind you that you have a filter turned on, and any photos you take will use that filter. You can turn the filter off by selecting original, which is no filter. It will also turn off if you closed the camera app. If I tap the three circles again, it will close the filter control, and now I could see the rest of the controls. The next one is a self timer. You have a three second and a 12th self timer available. You can use this for selfies on the front camera, and it's also good if you want to take a photo of a group of people and have yourself included in the group. Of course, you would need a tripod. Hold your phone while you do this. When used the self timer, your camera will shoot a burst of 10 photos. This is helpful in case someone blanks for perhaps you're waiting for the baby that make that perfect smile. You'll be able to choose which of the 10 photos you want to keep. The self timer will stay on until you turn it off or close the camera app. Next is the aspect ratio or shape of your photo. If I tap on 4 to 3, you'll see that you have a choice of square, which equals a one toe, one aspect ratio for 23 which is a standard photo size for iPhones, and a 16 to 9 ratio, which happens to be the standard size for TVs and most computer monitors. So if you plan to view most of your photos on TV's or computer monitors or laptops, you might consider shooting Mawr 16 to 9 photos. I'll tap the button again to close it. Next. There are some extra controls for live photo. From here, you could turn live photo on, which would change the button to yellow. You could set it to auto, which would change the button toe white. Or you could turn it off, and then the button would change toe white with a line through it. Then there is the flash on the iPhone 11 models, the flashes brighter than on previous iPhones. In fact, it's 36% brighter. According Toa Apple. In the past, I rarely ever used the flash on an iPhone because I wasn't happy with the results. But I've been experimenting with the flash on my iPhone 11 pro, and I'm finding it to be better than any of the other iPhones that I've had. Now, to get a decent shot, your subject should be between four and six feet away from the camera. The modes that are available are auto on or off. Auto Means of Flash will only be activated when needed. On means of flash will be used all the time and off means it won't be used at all. You'll have the choice to use the flash or night mode, but not both at the same time. Speaking of night mode, it's about time we talk about that. Night mode was a big advancement for the iPhone 11. I'm actually amazed at how well it works, and I've been having a lot of fun with it. This is how it works when there's fairly dim light and the iPhone thinks you might want to use night mode. It shows a white moon button. Here. You can tap that button to manually turn night mode on. If it's so dark that the iPhone knows you need night mode, it will turn it on automatically when night mode is activated, you'll see a yellow button and a certain number of seconds like this. There is a specific way to use night mode for the best results. And, as you've probably guessed, that's coming in another lesson. So this was a quick overview of the basic features of the iPhone 11 camera models and probably the most technical videos in this course. Now let's move beyond the basics and get into some fun stuff. And by the way, since you own one of the iPhone 11 models, you can skip the next video lesson. That's for people with older iPhone models. 5. iPhone XS & Older Camera Controls: this video is for you. If you have an iPhone, 10 s, tennis MAX or any older iPhone in this lesson, we're gonna go over the basic features and controls of the iPhone camera app. If you already know this, just hang in there and uses has a review. I just want to make sure that I have the basics covered for the beginners will get into the really cool, intermediate and advanced stuff. In other lessons, most of the more advanced features have a separate, more detailed video on how to use each specific feature. So this video will be more of a feature overview. All right, here I'm showing the iPhone eight camera app. Most of the iPhone cameras that came before this have similar features all the way back to the iPhone five s. So regardless of which iPhone you have, you shouldn't have any trouble following a law. Also, be talking about some of the additional features in the iPhone seven plus eight plus in the iPhone 10 cameras. First, the front camera button here is how to switch to the front facing camera, also called the face time or selfie camera. The front facing camera is a slightly lower quality camera with a seven megapixel resolution, as opposed to the rear primary camera with 12 megapixels. The rear camera also has a better six element lens system and a better flash unit. The front cameras designed primarily for face time calls and selfie shots, which are usually taken within four feet of the lens. For that reason, it would be kind of a waste to put a more expensive, higher quality camera in the front of the phone. So I recommend you just use your front camera for selfies and face time calls and use your ear camera for the more serious photography below. The camera button, as you probably know, is the shutter release button. And of course you know what that does. Below that is a thumbnail of the last photo that you took. If you tap on it, it will open up the full size photo. If your phone is unlocked, you can see other photos in your camera roll by tapping the all photos link here or by sliding your finger on the thumbnails under the images here. Okay, let's go back to the camera app. In this next section, you'll find the different photography. Moz. The active mode is highlighted in yellow. You can switch to the different modes by swiping up or down anywhere on the screen or by tapping on the word. This is in landscape orientation. If you turn the phone the portrait orientation, of course, you would swipe from left to right the foot tiger. Few modes are photo square and panel. If you have an iPhone seven plus eight plus or iPhone 10 then you'll have an extra mode called portrait. I made a separate lesson for you where I go over portrait mode in detail. So let's move on. If I swipe down, you'll see the video modes, which are video slo mo and time lapse. The video modes are beyond the scope of this course, so we're just going to stick to photography. The photo mode is the one that will be using most of the time. The next mode up is the square mode. This creates a square picture, and it doesn't buy cropping the image. The next mode is Pano, short for Panorama. This is for shooting extra wide images. You can have a lot of fun with this one and we'll go over that in detail in another video. Now let's look at the iPhone eight plus camera app, an iPhone seven plus eight plus and iPhone 10. You have portrait mode. One thing that photographers often like to do is blur the background, especially with Portrait's will. The portrait modes in the plus phones in the iPhone 10 were designed to do just that in the iPhone eight plus in the iPhone 10 there's an additional feature called Portrait lighting. Effects will be covering the portrait mode and portrait lighting effects. In another lesson, SLUss skip over it for now. Another thing that the plus phones in the iPhone 10 have that the other models don't is a dual Lynn system. One of the lenses is a wide angle lens, the same one that's in the iPhone eight, and the other one is a two X telephoto lens. So what does that do? Well, let's take a look in a normal photo mode. This is a normal wide angle view. Now. If I switched to the telephoto view by tapping on the one X, the camera switches to two X, which is a telephoto lens, and now we could take the picture at a two x magnification. This is considered optical zoom because it uses actual lenses for magnification. The camera also has digital zoom that goes all the way up to 10 X on the plus and iPhone 10 cameras and up to five x on the iPhone. Eight. The way that you zoom in is by touching the screen with your forefinger and thumb. Been moving them apart to zoom back out. You just pinch them together on the plus phones and the iPhone. 10. You can also zoom by, placing your finger on the one X and swiping to the left to zoom in and to the right to zoom out. The way that the iPhone creates the digital zoom effect is by cropping the photo inside the camera. This kind of stretches out the pixels. Unfortunately, they haven't perfected it yet. When used digital zoom, the pictures usually end up looking a little blurry or pixelated are just overall not that good. They may look OK on the small screen of your phone, but if you look at them on your computer, a TV screen or you try to print them out, you'll see that they usually don't look that good. For that reason, I don't use digital zoom. If I want to crop the photos to achieve a zoom effect, I'll do it in post production during the editing process. On the other hand, the two X optical zoom produces very good images. So if you want to zoom, either use that or just get closer to your subject. So again, the two X optical zoom is only on the seven plus eight plus or iPhone 10. You won't see on the iPhone eight or any of the earlier phones. If you click on the three circles here, you'll see a set of filters. You can click on any one of them to add that filter effect to the photo you're about to take. The 1st 1 is the original, which is no filter. Next is vivid than vivid, warm than vivid, cool, dramatic, dramatic, warm, dramatic cool mono, which is black and white. Silvertone and War notice. If you select any of the filters, the little circles, Aaron color. This lets you know that one of the filters Aaron use and acts as a reminder to turn off to filter by going back to the original When you're finished, if you go back to the original, the circles go back to gray tones. What I really like about thes filters is you don't have to select them before you take the picture. You can add them later while you're editing your picture. The way I look at it is you already have enough to think about before you take your shot. You shouldn't have to spend time thinking about which filter you want to use. In addition to everything else, just add them after the fact. If you want to use them mix. There is a self timer. You have a three second and a 12th timer. Using either timer will take a burst of 10 pictures, and you could keep the one or more that you like best and discard the rest. Life photos takes a second and 1/2 of video before and after each photo. I've got another video lesson all about this, so I'll skip this for now. HDR, which stands for high dynamic range with this feature turned on the camera, will take three quick photos and blend them together to try to get a good exposure in difficult shooting situations. There will be more on how and why to use this feature in an upcoming video. The next control here is flash. You can use it as fill, flash or use it in a low light situation. But it's not that powerful, so you need to be pretty close to your subject. You can have it set to auto, which lets the camera use it when it thinks it needs it. You can set it toe on, which will fire every time you take a shot where he considered toe off. The flash does work well on occasion, but it does depend on the situation, so you'll have to experiment with it. So again, this was an overview of just the basic features in the iPhone camera will be going through all of the different features and how to use them in different shooting scenarios throughout the rest of this course. 6. Take Control of Focus & Exposure: the iPhone is designed to be an extremely simple point and shoot camera. On the surface, Apple wants people to just be able to point the camera, pat the shutter and bakery photos, and for the most part, it just works. We get the same good point and shoot snapshots that everyone else gets. But when everyone is getting the same quality photos, what does that make our photos? It makes him just average. Nothing stands out. They look like everyone else's photos. Well, lucky for people like you and me who couldn't possibly be satisfied with just average photos. Apple has added lots of features to the iPhone camera that enable us to take more control over our photography and be much more creative. So on the surface, the iPhone camera is super simple for the lazy people. But it's also an amazing creative tool for anyone who wants to go a little deeper and learn the many ways to use its more advanced features. For example, this is a point and shoot snapshot that I took it, my nieces wedding. It's nice, but it's just average now. Here's another photo that I took it the same wedding that's more creative. The point is, you can't take a photo like this with an iPhone unless you know how to use a specific camera feature that I'm gonna tell you about in this lesson. Okay, let's jump into it. I'm actually going to tell you about three camera features in this lesson and their tap focus. Slight exposure. An auto focus auto exposure lock. Okay, it's a lot easier than it sounds. Let's start with tap Focus. I'll open the photo camera app by swiping on the lock screen. Now will tap the number two and zoom in so we can see better. Your phone may or may not have one of these number two telephoto lenses, depending on the model, and I have two items here on the table. There are flowers in the foreground and more flowers in the background. Notice that the camera has chosen to make the flowers in the background in focus while of flowers in the foreground are blurred out Well. In this situation, I don't want the camera to choose what's in focus. I want to choose, and I could do that by simply tapping on the screen anywhere that I want. The focus to be. If a tap on the flowers in the foreground they will be in sharp focus and the flowers in the background will be blurred out. So having control over focus like this will give you lots of creative options. Here's an example. I shot this sunflower in portrait mode, which blurred up the background nicely and again. Your camera may or may not have portrait mode, depending on the model, but since I compose the shot with a flower on the right side of the frame, it wasn't originally in focus. What wasn't focus was thes flowers in the middle of the scene. It didn't look nearly as nice that way, so I simply tapped on the flower that I wanted in focus and ended up with the shot. Here's one more example. I was in Positano, Italy, and I saw these pretty flowers in front of this nice background. So I took this first shot with the background sharp in the foreground, blurred out. Then I tapped, focused on the flowers in the foreground and their splurged out the background for a completely different look. So using tap focus and being able to choose what is in focus gives you lots of options now with the iPhone camera. Unless you have a camera with portrait mode, the ability to blur out the background depends mainly on how close you are to your foreground. Subject. It works well when you could get very close to your subject. If I remember right, I was about 6 to 8 inches in front of these flowers. If you're subject in, the foreground is farther away than everything will be in focus, and you will be able to blur out the background. For example, you couldn't tap on this boat and expect things in the background to be blurred out. This is because there's too much distance between your camera and your subject, so everything will be in focus. Now let's talk about exposure. I saw these nice person mints and in the background were some beautiful mountains. Now I live in Florida, and of course, we have no mountains here. So any mountains, I see your beautiful to May. Anyway, I pointed my camera at this scene, and the persimmons look nice, but the background was completely blown out. You couldn't see the mountains at all. Now, when you tap on the screen. It not only sets the focus, but it also sets the exposure for the area that should tap. So since the mountains were overexposed, I tapped directly on the mountains, and this properly set the exposure for the mountains. The foreground also became a little bit darker, but it's still look nice, and the persimmons were still in focus because I was at least three or four feet away from them. Now the mountains were properly exposed, but I still wanted them a little bit darker. The iPhone gives you the opportunity to fine tune your exposure. The way you do it is first by tapping on the screen to set the focus and exposure. Now you'll see a little yellow box with a sun symbol next to it. You can place your finger on the screen and swipe upto late in the photo or swiped down to darken it. It may take a few swipes to get it just the way you want it. So here's the first shot when I didn't do anything but point the camera and tap the shutter . Here's the second shot, right? Tapped on the mountains, so the exposure would be set for them. And here's the third shot. This is after I find Tune the exposure to make it a little bit darker. So now you know how to set the focus and exposure to get the custom look. That's just right for you. As you practice this, I'm sure you'll find many situations where tap focus and slide exposure will be helpful. Now let's talk about auto focus. Auto exposure lock When you tap on the screen that set the focus and exposure, it only lasts until you move the camera or something in the scene moves. Then everything automatically resets back toe. Auto focus So there will be times when you'll want to lock the focus and exposure. To do this, just press and hold on the screen until you see the yellow. A E. A F banner now won't matter of something in a scene moves or you move the camera to recompose your shop. The focus and exposure will remain locked until you tap the screen again. You can even snapped the shutter, and the A F will still remain locked. One of the situations that I often use a E F lock is during sunsets I shot this photo at the Pure in Naples, Florida. I like to experiment with the exposure as the sun sets and make it a little darker or a little later. But just when I get it right, I happen to move the camera a little, or the lading changes and the exposure reverts back to auto exposure. Auto focus. So to prevent this, I locked the focus and exposure. Now it's important to know that even with the focus and exposure locked, you can still find tune the exposure by sliding the little sun up or down. So after setting the E. A f lock, I can experiment as much as I like with fine tune in the exposure while the lead is rapidly changing during sunset. Another example would be doing a creative ring shot like this. The only way to do this shot is by using a E A F lock. If you try to tap focus, it won't work. With the ring taking up so much of the frame, you won't be able to put the focus on the background. Your shot would end up looking something like this, which is okay if you're doing a ring commercial, but I wanted to be able to see my niece and her new husband, so the way to do it is first locked. The focus on your subjects. Then, while the focus is locked, have someone, preferably a woman, because they have prettier fingers. Holder ring a few inches in front of the camera lens, then snapped the shop so they'll learn the basics of tap. Focus, slight exposure and autofocus. Auto exposure lock. It's good to practice this because we'll be using it a lot in different photographic situations that you'll be learning about. 7. Create Amazing Pano & Wide Angle Shots: Sometimes an amazing viewer subject is just too wide or too tall, a fit in a normal size photo. The solution for this is panoramic. Photos were Pano for short. A panoramic photo is much wider and shorter than a normal photo taken with your iPhone. This enables you to get a lot more scenery in the picture for that amazing panoramic view. Panorama Zehr great for landscape cityscapes, beach scenes, piers, bridges, sunsets, a group of people or a wedding party stadiums, tall buildings or monuments, etcetera. Another great thing about the iPhone camera is that it makes it easy to create a panoramic shot with a big camera, a DSLR. You have to take several shots and you really should use a tripod. Then you need special software to Sichel your shots together. It's really time consuming. Let me show you how easy it is to do it with the iPhone. Okay, I'm in the camera app now, and I'm going to switch to Pano mode by swiping my finger across the mode selector. Now I see that the white arrow points to the right. This indicates that I can paint to the right to take this shot but for this panel, I want to pay into the left. So to do this, I just need to tap the arrow, and that will change a direction that I can pan notice that next to the arrow, there's a preview thumbnail. As I'm painting the camera, this preview will show you what the camera is capturing. Now, before I actually press the shutter to start the pan, I'm gonna make a test run to scan the scene. I'm doing this to make sure that everything that I want to capture will fit in the frame of the picture, especially the tall objects. I see that the tops of the palm trees are out of the scene, so we'll have to tilt the camera up a little bit. Now will scan backwards, and I see that everything fits in the frame now, So we'll go ahead and tap the shutter and start scanning to the left. They want to try to keep the arrow on the yellow line, but I'll show you what happens if you go off the line. I'll tilt the camera down a little bit. A tag comes on the screen telling me to move the camera up, so I'll do that now. When you want to stop panting, you can tap the shutter or simply move the camera in the reverse direction like this. To see the panorama that I just made. I can tap the thumbnail in the lower left corner. All right. Now we'll turn the phone in landscape position. I'll tap the screen to see the entire picture and notice these little bites out of the top and bottom of the picture here. This is where my arrow went below and above the line. Now I could go into editing and crop these out pretty easily, but I'll skip that for now. Now something else he can do is keep the iPhone and landscape position to shoot what's called avert O Rama. You can scan upward to take a shot of tall buildings, lighthouses like I did here. Monuments in nature. You can shoot tall trees or waterfalls, although because the water is moving, I'm not sure how that would turn out. I live in Florida, and we have no waterfalls here anyway. Sometimes when you create a panorama or avert Aram, you'll get strange distortions. For example, this is a straight fence but it looks like it's bending around the curve. I've noticed that the closer yard to a horizontal subject, the more distortion you'll get. Sometimes you could make it work in your favor. I like the way this pure shot came out. I think it's pretty cool, but I did want to see if I could make it appear with less of a curve distortion. So I walked farther away from the pier and did another panel. Now, as you could see, the pier looks much straighter. Also, if you do a long pain, you'll get more of the curved effect. Here's a long pain that I did at the beach. You could see that the curve is pretty strong. This was a shorter pain, and you can see that it's a little taller and there's less of a distortion curve. You'll also need to be aware of movement in your scene. Sometimes it can work out well, like the movement in the waves here, but other times it could do some really strange things like this. Let me zoom in notice. The duck has three heads, and this duck is missing half of his head, so you'll have to experiment a little with your Panos to get a feel of how it works, Panorama is revert around. This can be a short as you want them, or they could be a long as 240 degrees. You can't get a full 360 degree panel with the camera app. Yet at the time of this recording, the longer you make your pan, the more narrow it will be. This is an example of a full length panel. Notice how narrow it is. This one is a little shorter, which makes it wider and more natural looking, this one even shorter. It looks like it was taken with a typical wide angle lens, and this one is just a normal photo with no painting at all. Now, for some reason, Onley very long Panorama is will show up in your panoramic album. All of your shorter pains will go to your photos album. I don't really know why they don't all go to the Panorama is album, but that's just the way it is for now, in the native camera APP software. If you have an iPhone seven plus eight plus or iPhone 10 you can use either the one X wide angle or the two x telephoto lens to shoot panoramas. And with the iPhone 11 models, you can even use the ultra wide camera in Panama. The last thing that I want to do for this lesson is to tell you how to do a fun little trick that I see a lot of people doing with panoramas. It's called panoramic cloning. It's where the same subject can appear in the photo two or more times. It's really easy to do. Start the panel with the person standing still in the shot. Stop painting when you're past the person and he's out of the frame. Now hold still than have your subject run around back of you and staying still just outside the frame on the right. Now start painting again. It keeps telling me to slow down because I'm trying to scan this off from my computer screen, and that's really not the best way to do it. Manual. See your subject appear in the photo a second time. Finish your pan as usual. Keep going. Okay. Go have some fun with this and I'll see you in the next lesson. 8. Get Crystal Clear Action Shots: when you want to stop the action of a moving subject. One of the best ways to do it with an iPhone is by using burst mode. This feature is available on iPhone cameras from the iPhone five s and newer. The way it works is you can hold the Cameron either horizontal or vertical position and choose either photo or square mode. Then you just hold down the shutter button and the camera will take 10 images per second. When you're finished, you can review all of the images in that burst. Then select the ones you want to keep and discard the rest. In the iPhone 11 models, they've changed how we activate burst mode. Now, if you tap and hold a shutter down, the iPhone camera will record video for as long as you keep your finger pressed on the shutter. Activate burst mode in now have to tap on the shutter and quickly slight downward and hold . Of course, in vertical position, you would tap and swipe to the left and hold. Now let's take a look at how to choose the photos that we like from this burst first all tap on the photos icon I'll click on albums. Now let's scroll down and I see that there's an album called Burst. As long as you have at least one burst, the phone will go ahead and make an album for you, for all of your bursts. Okay, The one on one is right here, so I'll go ahead and tap it. I'm gonna turn the phone toe horizontal position because that's the way I shot the burst. And it also gives me the largest view now to see all the photos in the burst, I'll tap the select link here. Now I could scroll through the photos and look for the ones that I like best. Another way I can scroll is by swiping across the filmstrip in the bottom right here. This is very helpful if you have a lot of photos, sometimes when you shoot a burst you could take 30 40 50 photos and you could go through him real quickly. Here on the filmstrip. Also notice on the bottom of the filmstrip, you'll see grey dots. These are the photos that the camera thinks are best based on clarity and exposure and a few other things. The camera doesn't always get it right, though, so you'll still have to look over him and choose the ones that you like the best. As you scroll through the filmstrip, you'll notice that when you go over one of the grey dots, you'll feel a thump. It's sort of like going over a speed bump, and that just lets you know where the dots are. So now I'll choose the photos that I like the best, like this one, and you'll notice when you choose a photo, you'll see a check mark in a blue circle appear. I like this one, and I like this one. Okay, when you're finished, click done. Now you'll have the opportunity to keep all of the photos in the burst. Or you could keep only or three favorites, so I'll go ahead and kept on my three favorites. Now, the photos that I didn't select will be discarded, and the three that I did select will be moved to my camera roll as individual photos. You could see how they came out here. We have a lot of horse activity in the town where I live. Burst motors, also great for photographing young Children and animals since they're constantly moving. It gives you the ability to capture those special, spontaneous moments that may only last a second or two before burst mode. I miss many amazing shots because it was trying to find the exact right second to snap the shutter. But now I can shoot a bunch of shots quickly, and I stand a much better chance of getting a photo that I really like Now. The trick to getting the absolute sharpest action shots with burst mode is to make sure that you have enough light for action shots. The more light, the better, the bread or late closes your iPhone use a faster shutter speed, and this helps stop the action. So, for example, you'll get sharper action shots and bright sunlight than on a cloudy or overcast day. Now, for other photographic situations, such as for portrait's, you usually wouldn't want bright, harsh sunlight. But for action shops, it can work well also for action shots. As the photographer, it works well. If the sun is behind your back instead of directly overhead or shining on your face, some morning or late afternoon should result in the best action shots. Burst mode is also good for taking a group shot because chances are someone will blink or be looking away. It gives you the ability to capture a range of different movements and expressions. I'm sure you'll find lots of ways to use burst mode in your own iPhone photography. 9. Candid Shots with Stealth Mode: Let's talk about some different ways to release the camera shutter and why you should even care about that. I mean, everyone knows how to tap the shutter, right? Yes, for normal pose shots. But there are different ways to release the shutter for other purposes, and eventually you may want to go into stealth mode. What I mean by stealth mode is just taking candid shots of people. This could be people, you know, like family or friends or people you don't know in public places. People who don't know that their picture is being taken. This is also called street photography. Now, before I go on, I should make this disclaimer. I'm not an attorney. I don't know the laws where you live. So I recommend that before you take pictures of strangers in public places, you check the laws regarding this issue for your own country and state. Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's move on. People tend to be in a more relaxed, comfortable state when they don't know they're being photographed. The iPhone cameras great for this. First of all, it doesn't look like a big, bulky camera and lens pointed at someone. The iPhone is very inconspicuous. I mean, it's a phone, right? Of course, everyone knows they take pictures, but you can do other things with it, like talk on the phone or text people. So in this video lesson, I'm gonna show you some inconspicuous and slightly sneaky ways to take some candid shots. The first thing that you should do when you go into stealth mode is silence your phone. You don't want your subjects to hear that camera clicking sound. One way to silence this is by turning off your ringer switch. But then you won't hear your phone ring if someone calls you. So another way to do it is go to your control panel by swiping up from the bottom of your phone. If you have an iPhone 10 or later model, you swiped downward from the top right corner of the phone. Then, in the control panel swiped the volume control all the way down. Now your phone will still ring of someone calls, but your camera sound will be silenced. Don't forget to turn the volume back up when you're finished taking pictures. Otherwise you won't hear the other sounds that your phone makes such as text message alerts , etcetera. All right, The first way to release your shutter, as you know, is by tapping the normal shutter button. The second way is to use the volume buttons on the side of the phone. Hold the phone in your right or left hand in landscape or portrait mode. It is in your right hand. Place your forefinger on the volume down button. If it's in your left hand, you compress the volume button with your stuff. Now something to consider is if you hold your phone in your left hand with the volume buttons on top your pictures maybe upside down when you transfer them to your computer. Of course, you could always fix this later. Now keep your phone as level as you can and frame your shot. This may be a little tricky, since you're not looking at the phone screen, but with a little practice, you'll get good at it. Now. Press the button down for a second or two to get a burst of photos. Now, if you have an iPhone 11 you won't get a burst of photos. You'll just get one photo, but more on that in a minute. Another way you can do it is by holding the phone up to your ear in landscape position like you're talking to someone. Try to keep the phone as level as you can. It may help the practice in front of a mirror at first frame. Your shot impressed the volume button for a burst of photos or one photo with the iPhone 11 . You can also use the apple earbuds volume up and down buttons to release the shutter. This is another way to take pictures without being noticed. Another cool stealth way to release the shutter is with one of these Bluetooth shudder remotes. You can keep it in your pocket or in your hand, and as long as your camera app is open, you can snap pictures by pressing the button. It also works in burst mode if you hold the button down, but again, not on the iPhone 11. You will need the period device with your phone, but it comes with some very simple instructions on how to do that. The only problem with the remote is that it's something else you have to carry around with you, so that is a consideration all right. So what's different about the iPhone 11? Well, it came with lots of changes. As far as the camera is concerned, One of those changes involves the shutter release that is now, when you hold down the shutter, release button volume buttons or shut a remote control button, your camera will not take a burst of several photos. Instead, if you hold on any of these buttons, the camera will start shooting video. So if you want to use the method you've learned in this lesson on the iPhone 11 just quickly press and release any of these buttons. Unfortunately, using these methods, you can only take one shot at a time. Of course, you can still activate burst mode, but it only works with the original shutter release button. To do that, you tap on the button and swipe to the left while holding your finger on the button. As I've demonstrated in the burst mode, lesson swiped down in landscape position, street photography and candid photography or more advanced techniques. And if you happen to be a beginner, you may feel a little intimidated by it. That's completely understandable. The reason that I'm even telling you about street photography now is because I just want you to know what the iPhone camera is capable of and how the controls work. I'll see in the next lesson. 10. How & When to Use Live Photo: So what is life photo? Well, the best way I could describe it is it's a still image that comes with a little bit of sound and motion that was recorded at the scene. It's intended to bring your image toe life when you take a picture and life photo mode, the camera shoots a still photo called a key photo, along with a second and 1/2 of video before and after that. Key photo. Life Photos A feature that's available on iPhone six and later. Here's an example of a live photo life Photos are great for shooting water or waterfalls, cats, dogs and other animals. People, Children just spent anything that moves. It's a way to capture a little motion and even sound without shooting a full video. It's sort of in between a still shot and video with life photos. You could really enhance the pictures and memories that you create. It is very easy to take live photos. All you have to do is turn it on by tapping this white, but the life photo button will be yellow when it's on and white when it's off. I'm pretty sure it's on by default when you first get your phone so you probably already have lots of life photos on your phone. If you have an iPhone 11 you can still turn life photo off and on by tapping the icon in the upper corner. But it won't turn yellow when it's off. It will be white with a line through it, and when it's on, it will still be white with no line through it. Also, if I tap the gray arrow, then topped a life photo icon here, additional controls will open. If I tap on, then the icon will turn yellow. However, at this time, I can't find any difference between setting it to the on position or the auto live position . Either way, it will remain on for all photos. Perhaps Apple plans to add another feature. Do this in a future software update. And another feature that's exclusive to the iPhone 11 models is that live photo will automatically switch off temporarily. If the camera goes into night mode, we'll talk more about night mode. In another lesson. Live photos consume or battery power and take up quite a bit more space on your phone than regular photos. So these air. Good reasons not to leave it on all the time. I usually leave mine off until those times when I think it would really add something to the photo if you turn it off. But then it automatically turns on again the next time you open your camera app, you can fix this and settings. Here's how. Go to your settings. Scroll down to the camera app, tap on it. Next tap on preserve settings. Then for a live photo slide. This switch on you can do more with life photos than most people know about. I'll show you what you can do with them in this video. After you take a live photo, you can view it by clicking the thumbnail in the camera app, or you can go to your photos and in albums you'll find your pictures in the camera roll. But if you scroll down, you'll see another album just for live photos. This album will appear as long as you have at least one life photo. I'll open another one of my life photos. Notice the live banner in the top left side of the screen. This just lets you know that you're looking at a live photo. If you swiped toe another life photo, you'll notice a small bit of movement in the picture. This burger looks a little surprised by the camera anyway. This also lets you know that it's a live photo, and it's kind of fun to look at. If you tap and hold your finger on the screen, you'll see three seconds of video with sound that was recorded on the scene. If you don't want the sound, you can turn it off. The way you do that is by tapping the screen, then clicking the edit link, then looking for the yellow speaker and tapping on it to mute the sound. While you're in the editing mode, you can also see the filmstrip and all of the frames in your life. Photo. You can scroll through the pictures by swiping on a little white box. You'll see a white dot somewhere in the middle of the filmstrip. This is your key photo. Your key photo is the one that will show up in your camera roll. You can make any one of these photos your key photo by clicking the Maki photo button. I keep on saying clicking because I'm so used to the computer, but I do mean tapping. If you select another photo to be your key photo, you'll see a white not appear over that photo. The not over the original key photo will turn grey so you can go back and make that the original key photo again if you want to. While you're in this edit mode, you can also trim your video on either end by sliding these arrows. This way, if you have something that you don't want at the beginning or the end of your video, you can trim it off. Let's say you move the camera away immediately after you snapped the shutter. You may end up with a few frames of the ground. Well, you can easily trim that off here. There are lots of other things you could do in editing mode, but editing is a big topic, so we'll get to that in other videos and courses. Just tap the done button when you're finished. There are three additional motion effects that you could add toe live photos after you take the picture. To get to those effects, go to one of your life photos, then swipe up, and now you'll notice that the effects that are available to you, our loop bounce and long exposure you'll see a preview of each effect here And to apply one of the effects to the life photo, just tap on it like this. With this affect, the life photo will just keep looping over and over. Now, even after an effect has been applied, you can swipe up and remove the effect just by clicking back on July photo. Now let's try bounce. It kind of looks like the bird has to go to the bathroom there. I'll sweep up again now. Long exposure wouldn't be good for a picture like this. That would be better for something like a waterfall or moving water. Something like that. So let's look for a moving water. Live photo. Go back to my albums. Here's one here. Now I'll swipe up on it. Let's add the loop effect to this to see what that looks like. Okay, now we'll have the bounce effect. Okay? The water goes back and forth there. That doesn't look too natural. Now, let's take a look at what the long exposure effect looks like. Okay. Just makes a still photo. It makes the water look really silky, and the rock is still very crystal clear. Typically, you would need a tripod to do a long exposure like this, but the iPhone makes it easy to do, and you could do with a hand held camera. Now, this is probably a better example. This is a fountain just outside of my neighborhood, and the iPhone did a really good job of stopping the action. And here it is, with long exposure effect applied. And as you could see, not only is the fountain water silky and smooth, but so is the water in the lake. Okay, let's go back now, Assets said. All these effects are reversible. And to reverse them, all you have to do is go back to the live photo effect and click on that, and you'll have your original life photo back again. 11. Portrait Mode & Portrait Lighting Effects: in this lesson, we're gonna talk about portrait mode. Portrait mode is available in the iPhone seven plus eight plus in all iPhone 10 and 11 models. If you don't have one of these models, you still may want to watch this video just in case you decide to upgrade at some point instead of having just one camera. Like other iPhones, thes phones have a two or three camera system. All except the iPhone. 10 are, which does have portrait mode, but it manages to do it with just one camera. IPhones with portrait mode are capable of creating a depth effect. In other words, it can blur out the background while keeping the subject in the foreground in focus. This creates depth in your photo, and it also helps take the focus off distractions in the background. In the iPhone, this feature is called Portrait Mode may, maybe thinking Well, wait a minute. You showed us in an earlier lesson that if you tap focus on a subject in the foreground, the subject in the background is blurred out. What's the difference with portrait mode? With the normal iPhone camera lens, you need to be very close to your subject in the foreground, I would say within 12 inches or about 30 centimeters to get a good blur effect in the background with portrait mode, your subject should be between four and eight feet of the camera to give you a really good blurred background effect. This is pretty amazing, because before this came out, you needed to have a big expense of DSLR camera with an expensive lens to get this type effect. Not only that, but you would also need to know aperture setting shutter speed settings, I S O settings. The iPhone makes it all incredibly easy. Here's all you have to do. Switched a portrait mode. Make sure your subject is within eight feet of the camera, and the background is a least three feet behind her for a good blur effect, then snapped the shot. Now you can pull up the photo and tap edit here. I can show you the photo with the portrait effect on, and I could also turn it off by tapping this yellow banner. Now you could see the difference of the portrait effect makes. With the effect turned off, it looks like the palm fronds are growing out of her head, but with the effect turned on, it creates a sense of depth in the photo. She kind of pops out of the background. This effect works amazingly well, but it's not perfect yet. If I zoom in, you will see that a chunk of her hair is missing. Now, if I turn the portrait effect off, you'll see that there was a very bright spot of light that was shining through the tree, and you could see it through her hair. This is really easy to fix with certain editing APS, and we'll get into that later in other future trainings. But I wanted you to be aware that you might notice some flaws in your portrait photos. Now let's talk about the portrait lighting effects feature. IPhone seven plus does have a portrait mode, but to see these additional lighting effects, you need to have an iPhone eight plus or iPhone. 10. If you do have one of these phones, you can use his future in the camera mode. Why you're taking your portrait photos or you can add it to your photos later in the editing mode. Personally, I like to add this effect in the editing mode. This is because you already have enough to think about why you're taking your photos, for example, what the background looks like. How far away is the subject from the background and how you want oppose your subject, etcetera, especially for photographing Children or pets, because they tend to be all over the place, so you have to take your shot quickly when you could get it. So since I could have the lighting effect in editing, I'd rather think about it. Then let's go over each of the lighting effects to see what they do. You move to the different effects by swiping your finger across them. First, there's natural light. This is a default lighting effect for the portrait mode. It will blur the background, but it doesn't change the lighting. Next is studio light. This moon tries to even out the light on the subject and remove some of the shadows as though you were in a studio with controlled lighting. Next is contour light this mode at shadows to the contours of the subject's face for a more dramatic effect, maybe to accentuate the cheekbones or jawbone, for example, then there is stage light. This mode simulates theater or stage relating against the dark background, sort of like a spotlight. It's a cool effect. It works pretty good sometimes, but not always. So you have to experiment with it and see what you think. Then stage late mono. This works the same a stage light, except that removes the color to make the photo black and white. If you have an iPhone 10 or later, you can use the portrait mode with lighting effects on the front camera for selfies. Also with the newer iPhones, they've added an additional lighting effect called High He light Mono. This is similar to stage light, except you get a white background instead of a black background. Now, if you have the iPhone, 10 are you'll have three lighting effects that will be natural studio and contour, and these will be on the rear camera. The Stage Lee and Stage Lee Modulating effects aren't available on the iPhone. 10 are here a couple of tips for shooting in portrait mode. If your subject is very close to the background, like right next to a wall or a hedge, you'll get much less of a depth effect or blurred background. So for best results, you should have your subject the least three feet or more from the background. Also, if you want a stronger depth effect or background blur, it helps to get closer to your subject. The last thing I want to say about portrait mode for now is when you use portrait mode. The iPhone takes two photos, one will have the depth effect and the other will be a normal photo. You won't see both photos on your iPhone in your albums, but if you transfer the photos to your computer, you will see both photos. Then also, when you take your first photo in portrait mode, the iPhone operating system creates a portrait's folder for you. Your portrait will be stored in that folder so you can easily find them. Ah, copy will also be sword in your camera roll. Now on the iPhone 10 and later models, you can adjust adept, a feel toe, add more or less blur to the background. I find this fascinating. I can't believe how fast iPhone camera technology is moving compared to DSLR camera technology. Anyway, here's how to do it in the camera app switched to portrait mode, then press the F here in the corner, you'll see the word depth here with some lines and numbers. These numbers air called F stops the lower the F stop number. The more blur will be added to the background. When I slide to ah higher number, you'll see the background start to become more clear and sharp as I go. When you have the background where you want it, you can go ahead and snap the shop. Now what's really exciting is you can adjust adept effect or blur after the photos taken in photo editing. So if you decide that there's not enough blur in the background, you can add more blurred by sliding to a lower number. If there's too much, you can slide to a higher number. This feature is available on IOS 12.1 or later, and you'll also need an iPhone 10 s or later. 01 more thing about the iPhone 10 are the portrait mode only works well when you're photographing people, not objects. This is because the iPhone 10 are only has one lens, so the depth effect works based on facial recognition. 12. Great Low-Light Photos with New or Old iPhones: Contrary to popular belief, you can get good low light or NYTPhotos with just about any iPhone camera as long as you follow the seven tips in this lesson. So these tips should be used with any iPhone, including the iPhone 11 models, which have the night mode feature. By the end of this video, you'll know exactly how to get good, sharp, low light or NYTPhotos. If you do own one of the iPhone 11 models, there will be one more video that specifically goes over using night mode in addition to the low light photography tips in this video. Okay, let's get started. Tip number one. Look for an illuminated subject. If your subject is well illuminated, it makes it easier to get bright colors, low noise in the dark areas and a sharper photo. I shot these guys at a Chinese lantern festival here in South Florida. I was using an iPhone six, and it was handheld. The iPhone six didn't even have image stabilization, so I must have been holding the camera extremely still. But what really helped me get a sharp photo was the fact that the subjects were well illuminated. I did edit this photo just a bit by bringing the shadows down. This is so the dark areas would be a little darker and less Corini. As you can see the subject, alligator in the front is clear and sharp, and there's very little picks, elation or noise in the photo. In case you don't really know what noise and picks, elation and a photo looks like. Here's a shot where I got it Wrong noise and picks Elation are the little dots that you see in a photo where you either try to go beyond the capabilities of your camera or you just don't have your camera set correctly. This was shot with my iPhone 11 pro, by the way, which goes to show that it's not the camera that's responsible for a good shot. It's how the photographer uses it. Here's another example of a well illuminated subject. I also use my phone 11 pro for this shot. The statue was illuminated, so I was able to get a clear shot. Even without using night mode, you probably can't tell how clear and sharp this photo really is because the video uses compression so it doesn't look as good as it does on my monitor, but it is really sharp tip number to adjust your exposure to be darker. They may be thinking what it's already dark. Shouldn't I make the exposure lighter? Well, it's actually the opposite. Making the exposure darker makes a big difference. And not getting grainy photos or getting blown out. Highlights. Here's an example in this photo. I just pointed my camera and snapped the shutter. Noticed the brightest areas of the photo, which are called The highlights, are too light, and most, if not all, of the detail is gone in these areas by reducing the exposure or making the image darker. Before you snapped the shot, the highlights will have much more detail, and the photo will be sharper and the shadows of dark areas will be darker. So I suggest you try this out just happened. Hold on the screen where you want the focus to be until the A E. A F lock activates, then swiped downward on the screen to darken the image. Then snap your shots. You'll have to experiment with it a little to get an exposure you like. Take three or four photos with different exposure settings, then look at him on a bigger screen, like an iPad laptop or your computer monitor. Tip number three have little or no movement in the scene movement and low light photography is not a good mix in most situations. As you could see in this blurred photo, this is even more true. If you have an iPhone 11 and night mode is activated, we'll talk more about night mode in the next video for phones without night mode or with night mode turned off, your iPhone can handle a slight bit of movement in the scene and still shoot a pretty good photo. This is as long as it's not too dark. The darker the scene, the less movement the iPhone camera will tolerate without giving you a blurred photo. For example, I shot this photo at a local concert using an iPhone 10 s. It was nighttime, but the band was fairly well illuminated. It came up pretty good, considering all the guys were moving a little as they played their instruments. I can notice a little blur in the guitarist right hand from picking the guitar, but the rest of the photos pretty sharp. So if you want the sharpest photos. Try to avoid having any movement in your scene. What exception is when there is water involved. Moving water can sometimes produce a nice effect in some low, late situations. I shot this fountain in front of the Palm Beach Breakers Hotel here in Florida. I use an iPhone 10 s and there is a little motion blur in the water, which looks nice, but the rest of the fountain is clear and sharp. Tip number four Keep your camera steady. You probably know this one. If you don't hold your iPhone steady in low light situations, you will get blurry photos. Let's talk about a few different ways to keep your phone steady for your more serious, low light photography. The best way is to use a tripod. It doesn't have to be a bigger, expensive tripod. You can even use one of these many tabletop tripods. They're much easier to carry around and less expensive than a big tripod. I got this one on Amazon for about $12 it even comes with a camera shutter remote. If you use the remote, you don't even have to touch your camera to snap the shop If you don't have a tripod, the next best thing would be to lean against or hold your phone against a solid object. You could lean against a wall or a light pole, or you could rest your phone on a table or a park bench, for example. Lastly, you can still get great shots by hand holding your phone, but concentrate on keeping it as steady as possible. I like to use what I call my steady grip. Not only does it make it easier to hold my iPhone steady, but it also makes it feel more secure in my hand. I figured this out when I was on a cruise and always shooting photos from the balcony. I was so afraid I would drop my phone in the water that I figured out this more secure way to hold it. Now, if you have an iPhone six s, plus or newer than these phones have optical image stabilization, which does help with handheld shots. Tip number five shoot during blew. Our This is the hour right after the sun sets its one, The sky is still a shade of blue before it turns black is the perfect setting for most nighttime photos. I shot this church in San Antonio, Texas, during blew our using an iPhone 10 s and it was a handheld shot. The church was nicely illuminated, so I held my phone is still is possible and snapped the shop. The yellow orange lighting against the deep blue background made for a beautiful shot. One of the things that I love about night photography is that it has a way of making things look beautiful. Things that just don't look nearly as nice during the day and you'll see what I mean in this next photo. It's a picture of that same church during daylight hours. It still looks really interesting with its Gothic style, but it's not nearly as beautiful as it is at night. Captured during blew our Here's another photo that I shot during Blew Our This one was immediately after the sunset so the sky hadn't turned to that dark blue color yet. It still makes a nice shot, though. Here's one more that I shot during blew our This one had lots of interesting clouds in the sky. I shot it from the deck of a cruise ship, so I was up pretty high. The shot was taken at a port and Sicily, Italy, and I use my iPhone 11 pro. So the last three photos were all taking during blew our and they all produce different results. This is because the sky and lighting conditions are constantly changing during blew our tip number six avoid using the built in flash. Generally speaking with the iPhone camera, I avoid using the built in flash. I find the light from the flash is too harsh. This first photo was shot on my iPhone 11 pro using the flash. The second photo was shot with natural light from the window. To me, the first photo looks to unnatural, and I like to flash even less when photographing people. I don't think it's flattering at all. I shot a few photos of my wife using Flash, and she won't even let me show them for this lesson. So I shot a quick photo of myself using the flash, and she's right. I don't like the way it makes me look at all. The lead is way too harsh. So for comparison, I shot another photo of myself with natural light from the window when you see these two photos side by side, you can really see how bad the flashes. Now, if you run into a situation where you really think you need to use the flash, the next tip will give you an alternative. Tip number seven. Use an external light source for night portrait's. It's much better than using the built in flash. This could be a light pole like I used here. It could be a light from a store window, a street lane, etcetera. Use portrait mode on your camera if you have it, and you may want to avoid having the light directly over the head of your subject, as is compared. Newsome Unwanted shadows. On the other hand, if you're going for a certain artistic look, then go for it. So that's it. Using practice thes seven tips, and I'm sure you'll find that they immediately start to improve your low late photography 13. Beautiful Night Mode Photos with iPhone 11-14 Models: this video is for you if you have one of the iPhone 11 models, otherwise you can skip this video. This lesson is about the night mode feature in those cameras. Night mode enables you to take nice quality photos and lower light than has ever been possible before in an iPhone. And it works even if you don't have a well illuminated subject like a dimly lit restaurant . For example, this is due to enhancements in the hardware and apples improvements in computational photography. Even though night mode brightens the photos, it doesn't make them look like fake daylight. It still gives you that night time feeling, and you could even find Tune it to get that specific look or exposure that you want. Okay, here's how night mode works. The camera will take a Siris of photos during a set amount of time, such as one second three seconds or five seconds from or and these images are blended together to create one clear, sharp, well exposed photo for simplicity and casual photography. Night mode is automatic. It simply turns on when the camera detects that there is not enough light for a good exposure. Without it, the only thing that you need to know is that you must hold the camera still for a few seconds after you snapped the shutter. But like other features in the iPhone camera, for those who are willing, toe learn night mode gives you some manual options to be more creative. Let's look at those options first, when the latest dim but not really dark and the camera thinks that you might want to use night mode. Ah, little weight Moon will appear here. You have the option that snapped that shot without using night mode. Or he can tap on the white moon button, which will activate night mode. Then you will see a yellow moon button up here with a number of seconds at night mode needs for a good exposure. Sometimes your photo will turn out better when you don't use night mode. Other times you may like the results better. When you use it, you should experiment with it both ways. When the camera knows that there's not enough light for a good shot, then late mode will be activated automatically. You'll just see the yellow moon button and a number of seconds needed just snapped the shot and hold the phone still, until you hear the second shutter click. First click will be when you tap the shutter. Then, for a few seconds, the camera will be capturing several photos to blend together. You'll hear a second camera click when it's finished on a DSLR camera. During a long exposure photo, the shutter would click open. Then you would hear a second shutter click when the shutter closes. Well, the iPhone is just pretending to do this with the two clicks, but in reality, the cameras taking several very quick shots and the shutter is not really making any noise . As it opens and closes, I hope it and spoil and hit the magic for you next. If you see the yellow button that indicates that night mode is activated and you could tap on that button for a manual setting, you'll see the night mode slider appear. If you swiped downward on that slider, you may be able to give the camera more time to capture additional exposures to blend together. This could result in a photo with even more detail and less noise, and again, the extra time is determined by the amount of light available and how still the cameras being held. Your iPhone can detect of slightest movement and, depending on camera shake and available light, you'll have more or less exposure time available to use. If you're holding your iPhone, you'll usually be able to adjust the exposure somewhere between one and five seconds, and sometimes you'll have as much as 10 seconds available. If you place your iPhone on a tripod or hold it very still against or on a solid object, you can get exposure times up to 30 seconds. Using a tripod will give you the highest quality photos possible. Even a mini tabletop tripod is helpful. Just remember, though the longer the exposure time you give your camera, the more likely it will be to detect any movement in your scene. So even if tree branches air moving slightly from a gentle breeze, they could appear blurry in your photo now night mode. As with any low light photos you confined to near exposure, the way I do it is by tapping and holding on the photo to set the auto exposure autofocus lock. Then a usually dragged the exposure down to darken it. This often helps reduce the grain even further, so you get black or blacks. It also helps you avoid overexposing the bright areas on the photo. If your camera automatically turns night load on, but you would rather turn it off for a particular photo. You can do that. The way it turned it off is by tapping on the yellow moon button toe. Open the night mode slider, then swiped upward until you see the word off appear. You can't turn it off permanently, but you can turn it off on a photo by photo basis. Also, night mode does not work on the ultra wide angle camera or in portrait mode or on the front facing camera. It works on Lee on the normal wide angle camera and on the iPhone 11 pro models. It also works on the two X telephoto camera, although from my testing night mode, photos turn out better when I used the standard wide angle camera. And lastly, night mode doesn't work in combination with the flash. You can use either night mode or the flash, but not both at the same time, 14. Working with the Built-in Photo Editor: This is a very basic lesson in iPhone photo editing. Using the built in editing app, it's designed to help you just get started improving and enhancing some of your photos. IPhone photo editing Czar Really big and amazing topic. So we're going to start at the very beginning and just go over the basics. For now, the seeder is not Onley corrective editing, but there's also creative editing. You won't even believe what you'll be able to do with that, and we're going to get there very soon. We have a complete course on editing that will be getting to as part of the iPhone photography club. Three pillar iPhone Ah, graffiti system already chose this photo to work on. So to open it in the native iPhone editing app, I'll tap at it. The first thing that I try on every photo I want to edit is the Magic Wand, which is an auto enhancement tool. Sometimes it makes a big difference, and you'll see a big improvement. Other times there's almost no change at all. So here it made a small change in the photo got a little brighter in the highlights. I Cantat grill it on and off by tapping the one so you could see the difference. I do like the small change, so I'll go ahead and leave it. When you use this tool, the background circle turns light grey toe let you know it's being used on your photo. Next, I'll tap the crop and rotate tool. You might have noticed that the image automatically straightened If I tap auto, this toggles the effect off and the image reverts back to its original position. If you look at the horizon line here, you'll see that it's not straight. If I tap on auto, it will auto straighten again. Like with most things in the iPhone camera. Sometimes it gets it right, and other times it doesn't if it doesn't look the way you want it, you can always drag the slider here and rotate the image writer left manually. If you need to rotate the image and 90 degree increments, you can do that by tapping on the arrow and box here, not a crop. This image. You can just slide these little corner brackets anywhere you want them, but that will change the aspect ratio of the photo. That just means it will change the proportions of the rectangle. So instead of looking like this, it might end up looking like this, which is totally different proportions and a different aspect ratio. If you want to keep the original proportions or aspect ratio when you crop your image, you can tap on the little aspect ratio box right here. You can choose any one of these, so I'll go ahead and choose original. Now, when I crop, it will only resize to the original aspect ratio. I can't change the proportions now for this photo. The bridge is the main subject, someone, a crop from the left bottom corner. Okay, I'm like that now I'm done with cropping. So next I'll tap on these three circles toe open the preset filters. These filters are based on what the camera thinks might look good for this photo. One filter may look terrible on one photo, but great on another. So in the beginning there's a lot of try and error until you get used to how the filters affect different photos. So first I'll try the vivid filter. To me, it looks a little flat, with the highlights blown out a bit. I'll try the vivid, warm I do like this filter. I think it's a bit overdone, but I like the colors, the contrast and how the light is working. In this mode. Let's try vivid cool. Nope. To Blue. Dramatic Dramatic isn't too bad Now if I tap on the photo, it will show the cropped original. And here that is than dramatic again, it looks like it's just higher contrast. I still like the vivid warm. Better. If I could tone it down just a bit, I'll try. Dramatic warm. That's not too bad, either. Here's the original, then dramatic warm again, but I still like the vibrance of vivid. Warm better. Okay, dramatic cool. Nope. To blue again now mono for monochrome or black and white. It looks okay and black and white, but I think it's much prettier in color. Silvertone, that's interesting and new are okay. I did find a filter that I like vivid, warm. I think it needs a little tweaking, but I like it. If I didn't like any of the filters, I could tap back on the original, Then I would try to adjust it manually, but we'll learn how to do that in the editing course, so I'm gonna keep vivid warm and try to tweak it a little. I can use the slider here on the right to reduce the intensity of the filter. I'll take it down to maybe 50. I like a little stronger to maybe 75. Okay, Now will tap it to see the before and the after. Okay. I like how this looks now. A tap. I'm done to save all of the changes. Now, let's see what it looks like even before we cropped it. Okay. And again, the finish photo. One nice thing about this editing app that's built in your iPhone camera is that if you don't like your edits for any reason, you could take them all away and revert back to your original photo as long as your photos on IOS device the way it works is you just open up your photo tap, edit, then tap Revert, then revert to original. Now I have my original photo the way it was before any edits were made. This is called nondestructive editing. With the iPhone editing app, you can make a many and it says you like and you can always revert back to the original photo. So once again, this was a very basic lesson in editing with the built in iPhone photo editing app. 15. Extra Tips for the Sharpest Photos: There are three things that you should consider when trying to get a clear, sharp photo with your iPhone camera. There is focus, movement and light. Get these three things right, and you'll always have a clear, sharp photo. In this lesson, Ashley is several different ways to get it right and create photos that look justus clear and sharp is ones created with expensive DSLR cameras. Let's start by talking about light and movement. It's important know that the more light you have in a scene, the more movement the iPhone camera can tolerate without giving you a blurry picture. For example, if you're on the beach on a bright, sunny day or on the snow, this is about as bright as it gets in nature. You can move and shake your camera, and your subject can be moving all around and you'll still get a clear shot. But in lower light situations like shade or ah, cloudy day or indoors, your camera will need to use a slower shutter speed. This could cause you to have a blurry photo from the slightest camera shake or movement by your subject. So, for the clearest pictures on a regular basis, is best to practice ways of keeping your iPhone cameras still a possible in most lighting situations. Let's talk about several different ways to do this. First, hold your camera properly. There are a couple different ways toe. Hold your iPhone that will help you prevent camera shake. One way is to hold it with both hands like you would a camera, but don't hold it with your arms fully extended like this. For the most stability, hold your elbows closer to your body. This will give you more support. I've also seen a lot of people holding iPhone with one hand and then tap the shutter button with the other hand. Don't do this. Instead, support your phone with both hands and uses soft touch toe lightly pat the shutter with your forefinger. Another way to release the shutter would be by pressing one of the Valjean buttons with your thumb and even more stable way to hold your iPhone would be like this. First, she would turn your phone over so you don't hide your camera with your hand. Next, place your little finger on the bottom, your thumb on the top and the three middle fingers in the back. Of course, if you're left handed, just reverse everything I just showed you. Then you would support your left hand with your right hand and press the shutter with your thumb. Another suggestion to prevent camera shake is use a tripod when you can. A tripod will almost always give you a sharper photo than hand holding your iPhone. You don't need a big heavy expense or tripod. The iPhone is very light, so just about any tripod will do now. I do understand that one of the biggest benefits of using an iPhone camera is that you don't have to carry around a lot of photo equipment. But I just want you to know that using a tripod will give you the sharpest photo in most lighting situations. You can even use a small one like this. In many situations, it's less cumbersome than a bigger tripod, and he could place it on a table, a low wall or even the ground for some shots. If you have a tripod like this or any tripod, it's a good idea to get a Bluetooth remote shutter release. With this, you don't even have to touch your phone to take the picture. Any touch can cause movement, especially if you're trying to do a low light or night photography shot. This tripod happens to come with a Bluetooth remote. Now, if you're willing to carry a larger tripod like this one, it's a selfie stick, a tripod and a remote shutter release all in one for a reasonable price. They're available at amazon dot com. Well, at least they're available at the time of this recording. When you watch this video, they may no longer be available. And if that's the case, just look for something similar. Another way to release your shutter without camera shake would be to use the self timer built in your iPhones camera. It has a three second and a 12th timer. The three second timers good for selfies or still tripod shots, and the 12th timer is good for group shots. You still have to touch your camera shutter button, but the camera will wait three seconds or 10 seconds before it snaps the shot. This gives a camera on the tripod a few seconds to stop shaking after you press the shutter . You could also use the self timer with a remote shutter release. If you have an iPhone 11 you'll find the self timer by tapping the little arrow in the top center of the screen. And here it is. When you use a self timer, your camera will automatically take 10 pictures in burst mode. This is to increase the likelihood that you get a good shot. Let's say you're taking a group photo and someone blinks or moves or you're shooting your dog and he looks away right when you take the shot. Well, if you have 10 photos to choose from, chances are that at least one will be good. This doesn't have to take up extra space on your phone, because you could simply delete the photos that you don't want. We went over how to delete photos from burst mode in an earlier video, so if you don't remember how to do it, just review the burst mode. Lesson in module to the self timer also works with the front facing camera, so it's good for taking selfies if you have a tripod, but you don't have a remote shutter release. You can also use the apple earbuds as a remote shutter release just press the volume up or down button to release the shutter. This works really well when you're trying to take candid shots. People don't realize you're taking pictures. They think you're talking on the phone or listening to music. All right, so the methods we just talked about will help you keep your camera stable and prevent camera shake. Now let's talk about what to do. If your subject is moving or you want to take an action shot first, make sure there's plenty of light like we talked about before. The more light you have in the scene, the more movement the iPhone camera can tolerate without giving you a blurry picture. So if you're trying to photograph your dog running the catcher Frisbee on a cloudy or rainy day, you'll probably end up with a blurry picture. One thing they can try doing with a moving object would be to pan with the movement of the object. So, for example, if you're trying to capture a motorcycle writing across your path, move the camera in the same direction and at the same speed as the biker, then snapped the shot somewhere along the way. It's also a good idea to use burst mode where you're snapping several shots. If everything works out right, then you should end up with a shot like this. If not, it may end up looking like this. Don't worry, though. A little practice and you'll be getting great shots. Now. If you can't get enough light on your subject to create a clear photo without too much grain, you'll need to work with what you have. Consider making it a silhouette. Instead of trying to light up your subject, position your subject in front of the light. This will create a nice silhouette of your subject, and shooting into the light should make your photo a lot less grainy. Now, if you have enough light and movement is under control, the next thing to look at is the cameras. Focus. Auto focus works really well in most situations in the iPhone camera, but it doesn't always get it right because it doesn't know exactly where you want the focus . For example, the flower petals upfront in this scene are not in focus, and the trees in the far background are not really in focus. What isn't focus is this bud right here in the middle of the screen. Now, let's say the subject that I did want to be in focused are the flower petals upfront. The simple solution for this is tapped to focus by tapping the screen specifically where you want the focus. It should result in a clear, sharp photo that you'll be happy with if you tap focus, also called manual focus. After you take the shot, the focus returns to auto focus, but sometimes you'll want the focus to stay where you put it for more than one shot for this used auto exposure. Auto focus lock or E. A F lock. This keeps the exposure and focus where you put it until you tap the screen again to activate the autofocus lock function, just press and hold your finger on the area of the screen that you wanted. Focus. You'll see the yellow A e, a F lock banner appear at the top of the screen. Now you could take many photos as you like in your exposure, and focus will be locked until you tap the screen again. The next tip for getting a clear, sharp photo is don't use the digital zoom feature. This is where you put two fingers on the screen, then spread them apart to zoom in. There are two types of zoom for cameras. Optical in digital optical Zoom uses physical elements in the lens to create Zoom along with some computational photography going on inside the camera to enhance the photo. The iPhone seven plus eight plus and newer models have a two X optical zoom. Don't hesitate to use this assume because it will produce nice, clear pictures. On the other hand, digital zoom is created by the camera software. Unfortunately, they haven't quite perfected that yet. What it does is crops the image inside the camera. But then, to make up for the size of the image and make what's in the image appear larger, the software stretches and expands the size of the pixels. This cannon usually does increase blurriness and picks elation. I can't tell you the amount of times I thought I was getting a great zoomed in shot Onley to get home on a bigger screen and realize that the shot look terrible. So unless you have one of the phones with the two x optical zoom, I recommend avoiding the zoom and instead just try to get closer to your subject. The last tip for this lesson is to clean your camera lens. You would be surprised how easily fingerprints and other smudges get on your lens. This can reduce the clarity and sharpness of your photos. Be sure to use a soft cloth to clean your lens, like the one you would use to clean your eyeglasses or sunglasses. If you're in a warm or ah, hot location, don't use your shirt. The soft from your sweat could scratch the lens coding. Now, if you're just looking at your photos on your iPhone, they don't have to be perfectly clear, because with that small screen, you probably wouldn't notice if they're not. But sleight blurriness does become very noticeable when you transfer your photos to a computer or make prints from them. Just something to be aware off 16. Final Thoughts: Well, you've made it to the end of the course. Congratulations. I sincerely hope you get a lot out of this training. I hope your photography has already improved. And now that you know how to use all of the features of your iPhone camera, it's important to practice because it's really easy to fall back into just pointing the camera and snapping the shutter. Instead, take your time. Really? Look at the scene. Think about if that scene may look good as a panel or ah, wide angle shot. Or maybe a long exposure come back is often as you like to review the course so it stays fresh in your memory. And don't forget the project in this course. I'd love to see some of your photos also plan to create more iPhone photography courses here on skill share. So keep an eye out for me.