Making the Most of Your iPhone Camera: Settings, Workflow & More (VIDEO)
There’s no doubt that Apple makes cutting-edge products, but when it comes to revealing how they work, well, not so much. That’s why we often turn to experts like Evan Ranft to demonstrate the finer points for taking advantage of the iPhone’s advanced camera features.
An Atlanta-based pro, Ranft has a portfolio full of spectacular landscape and cityscape images, and he’s also a very adept instructor. In this eye-opening episode he demonstrates everything necessary for choosing the best iPhone camera setting for different situations, along with the workflow he recommends.
Ranft is using the powerful iPhone 16 Pro, but much of what you’ll learn in the next 11-minutes is appropriate for other models as well. So if you want to shoot more than just snapshots with your fancy mobile device, pay close attention and jot down a few notes because his tips fly by in a hurry.
This is Ranft’s goal for today: “I’m going to give you a step-by-step breakdown of how to make the most of the iPhone camera to capture the best possible images, including the importance of shooting in Raw.” He begins with configuring the camera, and the first step is scrolling down to Camera in the settings panel, clicking on Formats, and activating ProRaw & Resolution Control.
Then when you click on Pro Defaults, a number of other powerful options are revealed. “This is the stuff Apple talks about in their marketing materials” without detailed information about how the features work. When using the iPhone 16 Pro be sure to enable the setting identified as ProRaw Max (up to 48 MP) so that your images contain the maximum amount of data.
You’ll also learn a quick trick for automatically shrinking these large files when you want to email them as Jpegs.
Ranft then jump to composition settings like Grids and the very helpful Level tool for keeping those horizons straight. Now it’s time to open the camera and learn a variety of shooting aids like Exposure Compensation and other options that you’ll want to understand when using the Raw file format.
We’re now only midday through this comprehensive lesson, and Ranft has much more solid advice to impart for taking mobile photography to the next level. Once he’s done head over to his popular YouTube Channel where you’ll fine instructional videos on a wide range of topics no matter whatever camera you own.
We also recommend watching a tutorial we featured recently with another accomplished pro who demonstrates several simple techniques for composing perfectly exposed outdoor photographs when shooting in harsh and contrasty midday light.
