For the grease-monkeys amongst us who love fiddling with their phone settings, trying out all the features and functions, the camera is that dungeon that’s full of treasures. Even if you are a newbie to photography, mobile cameras are simple enough to learn. In this article, we demystify the jargon around mobile cameras – modes and apertures, frames per second and aspect ratios – and share tips to taking good photos anytime, anywhere on your iPhone 6!
Modes
Launch the camera app and the options you see at the bottom are time-lapse, slo mo and video, followed by the ones for Photos, which is what we’re looking at today:
- Photo – for normal photos
- Square – You won’t have to crop the normal photo if your primary platform is Instagram. Just use this option to click square photos
- Pano – Try out the panorama feature from a rooftop, at the beach, at the corner of your street – panoramas turn out really well with a steady hand.
Burst
Press the shutter button and keep it held down to launch the burst mode, which will take multiple photos (10 frames per second) using the high speed camera on the iPhone. Perfect for capturing movement, gestures and sports – minus any blur!
High Dynamic Range: Auto
Take the highest quality photo you can with the HDR option. ‘High dynamic range’ utilises the power of the camera’s sensors to capture crisp, detailed and realistic clicks. The camera adjusts the exposure of both the lightest and darkest parts of the photo automatically to bring out all the details. Set it to Auto to let the magic happen!
Flash? No, Thanks!
Keep this turned off, unless you’re taking a pic in the night without any other light.
Flash tends to bring out the ‘red eye’ effect that makes us all look like Satan’s henchmen. The reason flash doesn’t complement the subject of a photograph is because it directly shines light onto it – in comparison, if you bounce light off a wall or the ceiling, you get a softer illumination without dark shadows surrounding the subject.
Timer
An under-used functionality, the timer on a mobile camera makes it easy to take a photo. Pick one of the options – 3 seconds and 10 seconds – and tap the shutter button once to get the timer started and then ready your pose and let the camera countdown to the snap.
Zoom
See that cat sitting on the sill of the building opposite? If you want a closer look, use the zoom but any photos taken with the zoom will not do it justice. That’s because most mobile phones use something called a ‘digital zoom’ which only crops the existing photo layout without actually rendering the zoomed-in part. Avoid.
Camera Specs
It would be remiss if you didnt know all the dope on the camera of the iPhone 6. Here’s a quick rundown: it’s an 8 megapixel camera with 1.5 micron pixels and a large f/2.2 aperture, where f stands for focal ratio. What these terms mean is that there’s more light getting into the camera, letting you click great photos even when it’s dark.
