Now let’s start by learning more about shutter speed. The camera’s shutter speed determines the length of time that your camera’s sensor is exposed to light. The shorter the shutter speed, the less light reaches the sensor, and vice versa. Where creative use of shutter speed comes in handy is controlling how motion appears in your photos.
Using a fast shutter speed helps you create crisp images of moving subjects because it freezes any motion in the scene. This photo is a great example of using a fast shutter speed to capture the person in mid-jump. Fast shutter speeds also help you avoid blurry photos that result from camera shake. So if you’re hand-holding the camera, especially in low light, a faster shutter speed might eliminate the camera shake.
The iPhone shutter speed can’t be adjusted in the native camera app, but you can easily adjust it using an app like Camera+.
Just tap the middle icon above the shutter release button (or to the left if you’re holding your phone horizontally) to access the manual shutter speed and ISO control sliders.Shutter speed is measured in seconds, and most speeds are expressed as a fraction of a second (e.g. 1/60, 1/500).If you’re not familiar with shutter speed measurements, the exposure triangle diagram above will help you quickly understand which numbers are faster and which are slower. Using a slower shutter speed allows you to do long exposure photography at night and blur moving subjects such as flowing water. To avoid camera shake you should use a tripod.
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4. ISO
ISO affects how sensitive your camera’s sensor is to light. The higher the ISO setting, the more sensitive your camera is to light.
The main benefit of this is that you can use faster shutter speeds in low light conditions which helps to avoid camera shake when hand-holding the camera.However, one thing to keep in mind is that higher ISO settings can result in images with more digital “noise.” Noise makes your photos appear grainy which can reduce the overall image quality.
Conversely, the lower the ISO setting, the lower the light sensitivity will be. This means that the camera needs to use a slower shutter speed to let enough light in to expose the image correctly, but you’ll also experience less noise resulting in a “cleaner” imageIn Camera+, the iPhone ISO setting can be accessed via the same button as the shutter speed control just above or to the side of the shutter release button. This side-by-side placement of shutter speed and ISO is very convenient as the two need to be balanced in order to capture a well-exposed image.
For example, if you want to use a very fast shutter speed, you’ll likely need to use a higher ISO setting to capture more light and balance the faster shutter setting.
5. Depth Of Field
The third element in the exposure triangle is the aperture of the lens, which equates to the size of the lens opening. As you can likely imagine, the bigger the opening, the more light reaches the camera’s sensor.The other thing that aperture affects is depth of field. This is the range of focus/sharpness in front of and behind your subject.
The smaller the aperture, the deeper your depth of field, which results in more of your photo being in focus. A large aperture creates a very shallow depth of field, where only a small portion of the image is in focus. Shallow depth of field is often used to great effect by portrait photographers to isolate the main subject and blur the background, but it’s great for isolating any kind of subject, especially against a busy background. The one drawback to the iPhone camera is that the aperture of the lens is fixed. This means that unlike a DSLR camera, you can’t manually change the aperture setting to control the depth of field.
However, there are certainly other ways that you can manipulate the depth of field in your iPhone photos. If you’re familiar with aperture settings from using a DSLR, you may be interested to know that the iPhone camera aperture on the latest iPhone 7 models is f/1.8. While this is a fairly wide aperture, you also have to be aware that when combined with a very small, wide angle lens like that on the iPhone, it still provides relatively deep depth of field in most photos.
This deep depth of field is great for casual photography, and it’s especially good for landscape and architectural photography where you want every element to be in sharp focus.
While aperture is important for controlling depth of field, the other factor that affects it is the distance between the camera’s lens and the subject.
The closer the lens is to the subject, the shallower the depth of field will be. So to create a shallow depth of field with the iPhone, just get nice and close to your subject, and make sure you set the focus point on the subject.
You can either tap to set focus, or use the manual focus slider in Camera+ to fine tune the focus to get it exactly where you want. This shallow depth of field will be even more pronounced if you use an add-on macro lens designed specifically for shooting extreme close-ups.
Popular macro lenses include those from Moment and olloclip, and they allow you to shoot at very close distances to the subject.If you have the iPhone 7 Plus, you’ll also be able to take advantage of the Portrait shooting mode in the native camera app to create a shallow depth of field.
6. Zoom
The close-up zoomed image is clearly grainy and lower quality than the full frame image.
For this reason, most photographers (including myself) will recommend that you never use the zoom control on your iPhone camera.
It’s better to take the full frame image and then crop it later in editing. That way, you always have the full image to revert back to if you don’t like the lower resolution image that results from the cropping. On the iPhone 7 Plus, ensure the shooting mode in the camera app is set to Photo, then tap the 1x option on the screen to switch to 2x mode. You’ll now be taking photos with the telephoto lens.
If you don’t have the iPhone 7 Plus, you might want to consider purchasing one of the many add-on telephoto lenses for iPhone. On the iPhone 7 Plus, ensure the shooting mode in the camera app is set to Photo, then tap the 1x option on the screen to switch to 2x mode. You’ll now be taking photos with the telephoto lens.
Two of the best lenses that I’ve used are the Moment Telephoto and the Ztylus Telephoto. Both options are considered 2x telephoto lenses because they both bring you twice as close to your subject as the native camera lens. The Moment Telephoto is available on its own for $89, while the Ztylus Telephoto is available as part of a kit along with a wide angle lens and other accessories for $149.
Conclusion
The manual controls of your iPhone camera are far easier to use than those on a DSLR, yet they give you almost the same level of control and creativity. And the best thing about the iPhone camera is that it’s always with you, so you’ll never miss out on great photos when you’re not carrying your bulky DSLR. Once you master the manual camera settings on your iPhone, you’ll soon discover that your iPhone camera is the only camera you need.