How to take the best travel photos with your iPhone
Most people think you have to have a professional-grade camera or have a certain knack for photography to capture photos worth sharing. But, now-a-days, the camera on your iPhone is advanced enough to deliver high quality photos…as long as you remember these tips and tricks:
In order to get the most out of your iPhone on your next adventure, make sure to clear-up some storage on your phone before you leave home. This can be done by connecting your iPhone to a computer and offloading photos and videos from your phone to your computer. This can also be done by deleting unnecessary applications from your iPhone or deleting accidental photos or irrelevant videos.
First things first, ensure your phone has full (or close to full) charge on the battery. You will find that more so than simply making calls or checking texts, taking photographs and videos will use up battery life fast. If your iPhone is already quick to lose battery charge, consider investing in a small portable external battery. These are powerful batteries that you charge in addition to your iPhone at home base and bring with you during your outings.
Next, take some time to get familiar with iPhone camera settings and options.
1. Traveling alone or don’t trust a partner/stranger to take a good photo? Switch the camera to selfie-mode simply by tapping the switch camera icon in the corner of your iPhone camera screen.
2. HDR: When the HDR is turned on, your iPhone will take 2 photos in rapid succession; one photo will be a low-light photo, and the other a high-light photo.
The two photos are combined automatically and produce amazingly well-lit and vibrant photos.
TIPS FOR TRYING: use the HDR setting when taking a photo where there is not much movement going on in the frame. Test HDR out during a sunrise or sunset where the light is especially amazing!
3. In iPhone settings, you can switch-on the photo grid. After you have switched it on, you will see a grid superimposed on the camera screen that will divide the photo into 9 small squares.
The lines are there to help you to take photos that are beautifully composed (meaning objects are centered and horizons are flat). The grid doesn’t show-up in the final photograph, it is only a guide when taking photos.
4. Try taking a burst of photos. iPhone allows you to take photos in immediate succession simply by holding down the circular take photo button on the iPhone screen.
The number of photos captured is a direct result of how long you hold-down the take photo button (a word to the wise: photos are taken at very high speed rates, so if you hold the button down for more than a few seconds, you might end up with 10-20+ photos!).
When you take a burst of photos, not all of the photos show up in your camera roll; only what the iPhone determines is the best, least-blurry version, will be shown. However, the beauty of burst photos is that you can pick the best of many.
In order to look through each of the many photos taken in that burst, open the photo iPhone displayed in your camera roll, and click ‘select’.
Here you will be able to scroll through all of the photos in the burst and select the one or more photos you wish to keep.
TIPS FOR TRYING: use the burst method when taking group photos– with so many pictures taken in a second, the is bound to be a photo where everyone’s eyes are open! Also, take a burst of photos when trying to capture something in action; this feature can be used instead of video.
5. On newer iPhones, you can use the self-timer setting. This will direct the camera to count down from 1s, 5s, or 10s before taking a photo.
A helpful numeric countdown flashes on the screen to inform you how much time you have to get in position before the photo is taken. Also, the flash flashes every second during the countdown and then flashes rapidly right before it takes the photo– this is to let you know when the photo going to be taken if you can’t see the iPhone screen countdown.
To make things even better, the camera not only takes one photo, but automatically takes a 10-photo burst when the countdown is up so that you can select the best one!
6. Last but not least, one of the best little known tricks for capturing photos on your iPhone is this: when the camera app is open on your screen, the increase-volume button on the side of your phone, when pushed, acts as secondary take photo button!
Like with the circular take photo button on the screen, you can take a burst of photos by holding down the volume-up button!
TIPS FOR TRYING: Sometimes, while in selfie-mode it is hard to hold the phone and take a good photo of yourself, that’s when you can use the increase-volume button on the side of your iPhone instead!
Written by Luray Joy. Republished with permission of MyDiscoveries.