Master These Basic iPhone Camera Tips in 10 Minutes (VIDEO)

So you’re confident about making photographs with a DSLR or mirrorless camera, but you need some help capturing more than just snapshots with the iPhone in your pocket. Congratulations are in order because you’ve come to the right place thanks to the 10-minute beginners guide below.

Instructor Rich Bowlin has been making photographs ever since his weapon of choice as a kid was a Kodak Instamatic. Since then he’s evolved through 35mm cameras, digital imaging, and mobile photography with an iPhone. In other words, today’s five handy iPhone camera tips are backed up by plenty of experience.

Bowlin says he leaves the complex stuff to other instructors, so there no advanced technique in this lesson: “just easy to follow tips designed to get you up-and-running with Apple tech.” And he usually has some special advice designed specifically for seniors.

The lesson begins with an overview of the various camera modes you’ll find on an iPhone. He describes how each of them work and which option is the best choice for different subjects and situations. Some of these choices work differently on a phone than they do on a conventional camera, while there are others like Cinematic, Panorama, or Video modes that may be totally new to you.

Bowlin’s next tip is a real timesaver than can prevent missing a fleeting moment while fumbling around to find a particular mode or switching from one to another. All you have to do is tap and hold on the iPhone’s camera icon and you’ll immediately see a dropdown menu with all of the available modes at your fingertips.

There’s another helpful “Movie Slide” tip when you want to switch from shooting stills to recording videos, and a few other mode-related issues to explore. Next on the agenda is a quick look at a variety of camera settings that Bolin says are important for beginners to understand.
  

This way you can place a grid on the screen for precise composition, determine whether or not you want to see what’s outside the frame, and discover other basic settings that make iPhone photography easier and more productive.

The lesson concludes with a demonstration of Bowlin’s favorite methods for zooming in and out on the key subject of your scene. You can find more iPhone photography tips and techniques by visiting his instructional YouTube channel.

We also suggest watching an earlier tutorial we posted in which an accomplished pro reveals what he says is the “real truth” about Jpeg and Raw file formats for different types of photographs.