iPhone 16 & 16 Pro (Max) Camera & Photo Settings Beginner Tutorial
There are many useful features hidden behind
the simple interface of the iPhone Camera app. Today I will explain the 20 most
important features and show you how to get the best possible results with your
iPhone 16, 16 Plus or 16 Pro or Pro Max. I will focus on the photo settings. For the
video settings there will be another video. You can open the camera app in different
ways: Of course by tapping the app icon, in the control center you will find it in
the lower right corner, from the lock screen by swiping to the left or by pressing the
camera icon, and of course there is now also the option to open the camera by pressing the
camera control button.
But this button can do much more than just open the camera – I'll
show you all its features a little later. Let's start simple, with the
basic operation of the app. When you start the camera app, you will see the
last image you captured in the lower left corner. In the middle there is the shutter button and
with this little circle of arrows on the right you can switch between the back camera, which
is your main camera, and the selfie camera, which is the front camera.
In the line above you can switch between the different modes. On the right there
are the four photo modes Photo, Portrait, Spatial and Pano. on the left you find the four video
modes Video, Cinematic, Slo-Mo and Time-Lapse. While photo and video are self-explanatory, you
can use Portrait to create a blurred background. Although this actually also works with objects,
the mode is called Portrait, because this effect is especially well suited for portraits.
With
Spatial you can not only take photos but also videos with a spatial 3D effect and then play
them back on the Vision Pro. If you do not have a Vision Pro, this mode is currently useless.
In Panorama mode you can capture images with a field of view that is much wider than the camera
lens would actually allow. This is especially suitable for landscape photography, for example.
The Cinematic Mode is a kind of Portrait Mode for video. In Slo-Mo mode you can capture slow-motion
shots, and in TimeLapse mode the camera captures images at certain intervals, which are then
merged into a video file. The result is a kind of accelerated video. This is an excellent
way to capture passing clouds, for example. But as I said, today we are
talking about the photo modes. Let's first have a look at the different
functions of the shutter button.
If you want to take a simple photo, of course
you tap the shutter button briefly. You can achieve the same result by using the
volume buttons. It makes no difference which of the two buttons you use. If you want
to quickly capture several photos in a row, you can swipe the shutter button to the left. Now
your Iphone will capture photos in an extremely fast sequence until you lift your finger. This
is called the Burst Mode. This feature is often used for photographing action. But it can also
help when taking portraits, for example to avoid closed eyes. You simply take several photos in
quick succession and then select the best one. By the way, in the settings you can also set the
Burst Mode to be activated by using the Volume Up button. This would be especially interesting
if you want to use this mode frequently. If you press and hold the Shutter button,
the Iphone automatically starts to capture a video.
The recording ends as soon as you
release the Shutter button. This way you can quickly capture a video without having to
switch to video mode first. Apple calls this QuickTake. If you want to capture a longer
video then drag the shutter right onto the lock. Now the Iphone will continue recording
even if you release the shutter button. While recording you can also continue to take pictures
by tapping on the shutter button that appears on the right. And here on the left you can pause
and resume the recording. You can also start capturing a QuickTake video by pressing
and holding one of the two volume buttons. Now let's take a look at the zoom and the lenses.
Above the menu bar you can see a small 1x. It is yellow. This means that the main camera is
currently active. By tapping on the 0.5 to the left of it, you activate the ultra-wide camera
and via the 5 the camera with the telephoto lens. However, the latter is only available on the two
Pro models. The 2x does not stand for a fourth camera, it is a digital crop of the main camera.
This is made possible by the high-resolution 48 megapixel sensor of the main camera.
And the
high-resolution sensor also makes another feature possible: if you tap on the 1, you can activate
a focal length of 28mm, that is 1.2x, and 35mm, that is 1.5x. Yes, this is also a digital
crop, but similar to the case of the 2x zoom, there is hardly any loss of quality compared to
the native focal length of 1x, certainly also because the images are digitally processed again.
The default field of view of the main camera is relatively wide at 24mm, or 1x. If you prefer
that the main camera is set to 1.2x or 1.5x by default when you start the camera app, you
can set that in the settings of the camera app under FusionCamera and Default Lens. This
is a useful option because, for example, 35mm, which is 1.5x, is considered the
most flexible focal length to use. When choosing a lens, one thing should
be clear to you. Even if it does not look like this on the display, the different
lenses have different technical properties. The main camera produces less distortions
than the ultra-wide camera and it has the largest aperture. It can therefore achieve better
results in low light conditions.
The telephoto lens produces the least amount of distortion and
is therefore best suited for portraits. However, it has the smallest aperture and therefore
achieves the worst results in low light. If you now tap and hold one of the numbers, a
kind of zoom slider appears and you can swipe left and right to zoom in and out more precisely.
For this tutorial I use an iPhone 16 Pro, so you can see 0.5, 1,2, 5 and 25 as numbers.
The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus have only a 10x digital zoom range.These numbers of course stand for
the different cameras of your iPhone. If the quality of your photos is important to you,
you should avoid a zoom factor between the numbers.
And you should also avoid a zoom
factor above 5, because in all these cases it results in a digital crop of the image.
You can also zoom in and out by using two fingers. In this case you can always
read the current zoom factor here. When you capture a picture with your Iphone,
you will of course determine the framing on the display. So what should be on the picture,
how should the picture composition look like. Basically the framing of your picture
will correspond to this outer frame. In many cases you can also see the area outside
this frame.This exceeding part is slightly darkened. It is supposed to help you to find
the right framing, but it is not captured. For the right composition the grid also helps
you. So you can stick to the Rule of Thirds, for example, which is important for a good
composition. And this white line is supposed to help you keep your iPhone straight
when taking a photo and avoid a crooked horizon.
It appears when you rotate your
iPhone. As soon as the line turns yellow, you can be sure that the horizon is straight.
You can activate and deactivate the grid, the level and also the dimmed area
outside the frame in the settings. In addition to the right framing, focus
and exposure are crucial for a good photo. The iPhone's camera sets focus and exposure
automatically and does an excellent job. Faces are recognized perfectly. You can see this by the
yellow frame that appears when the camera detects a face. And actually, with the iphone you can also
get a blurred background or foreground naturally, for example when you capture objects in the near
foreground and the background is far away. So it is quite possible that certain areas of the
image are in focus and others are not.
Therefore it can sometimes be necessary to adjust the
focus manually. You do this by tapping on the object or person in the image that should
be in focus. Now your iPhone also adjusts the exposure to the new focus. You can also correct
the exposure manually. You do this by tapping on the sun next to the focus square and by swiping
up or down. Upwards the image becomes brighter, downwards it becomes darker.
You can also lock
the focus and the exposure. Suppose you set the focus and/or the exposure manually and want them
to stay locked even when you move the phone. You can do this by tapping and holding on the
appropriate area. Now the AE/AF Lock sign appears in yellow at the top. You can now move
your phone without changing focus and exposure. This can be useful for example if you want to
change the framing after setting the focus. The ultra-wide camera of the iPhone 16 & 16 Pro
has a very special feature. It can focus extremely close. Apple calls this Macro Mode, because
by getting very close, you can capture small subjects greatly magnified. You don't need to
have the ultra-wide camera activated for this. The iPhone automatically switches to Macro Mode when
the distance to an object becomes less than 14 cm. So if the ultra-wide camera is not active, the
iPhone automatically switches from the main camera or the telephoto lens to the ultra-wide camera.
You will notice this when there are strange image jumps. This happens automatically. If you
want to have more control over the Macro Mode, you can activate the Macro Control feature in
the settings of the camera app.
Now, whenever the Macro Mode is active, a yellow flower appears
at the bottom left. By tapping on the flower, you can now also deactivate the Macro Mode.
Personally, I think that the macro mode is a great feature. You should try
it out – the results are amazing. Apart from these basic features there are a few
additional settings and features. To use them you have to open an additional menu. You do this
by using the arrow at the top in the middle or by slightly swiping up with your finger.
Instead of
the different shooting modes, you will now see a series of icons that stand for different features.
The icons at the top of the screen indicate which of these features is currently active.
On the far left you will find the flash. You can set it to automatic, on or off. Notice how
the flash symbol at the top of the screen changes. If it is very dark, the symbol for the night
mode appears right next to it. To show you this, I hold my hand in front of the lens. The Night
Mode will dramatically change the results in low light conditions. Normally the Night Mode will
activate automatically when it is very dark. When the yellow night mode icon appears at the
top, you know that the night mode is now active. In NightMode your IPhone uses longer exposure
times. Depending on how dark it is, your iPhone will need a shorter or longer exposure time to
get a good result. You can see the duration of the automatically set exposure time right next to
the icon, for example 1 or 2 seconds.
During the exposure you should hold your iPhone as still
as possible. Above the Shutter button a timer appears which counts down the remaining time.
If you shake or move the iPhone, the device will recognize this and two crosshairs will appear,
one yellow and one white. You should move the iPhone in a way that the yellow crosshair lies
directly on top of the white one. This helps to reduce movements and you can get a better result.
You can also change the exposure time yourself by tapping on the Night Mode icon and moving
the slider to the left or right. By moving the slider all the way to the left you can also
disable the Night Mode. A longer exposure time will not lead to a brighter result but it could
lead to better image quality. It makes sense to increase the exposure time when your iphone is
on a tripod. There will be no movement and you can achieve optimal results. However, if you
want to adjust the exposure and brightness of the image when the night mode is active, you
can do this by moving the sun icon up or down. By the way, if you are interested in
which MiniTripods or other accessories I use for my iPhone, check out the
links in the video description.
The next icon to the right refers to Live Photos,
one of my favorite iphone photo features. Here, too, the automatic is normally active. You can
also turn LivePhotos on or off permanently here. With LivePhotos your iphone captures a clip
of one and a half seconds before and after the photo was taken. Therefore a short video clip
of three seconds is created. You can watch this miniclip by tapping and holding on the screen
while viewing your photo. You can change the so-called Key Photo within your clip and you
can also add cool effects to your Live Photo. It's very easy to do. To add effects, you open
your Live Photo and tap on the Live icon in the upper left corner. You can add a loop to repeat
your shot continuously or bounce to repeat your shot alternately forwards and backwards.
I
find Long Exposure especially interesting. This simulates a long exposure. It works well
with moving lights or for example with water. If you tap on the settings icon at the bottom and
then on the Live icon you can also change the key photo and shorten the duration of the shot. It
can be extremely useful to change the key photo, for example if your subject has closed his or
her eyes in the previous key photo.
We will take a look at the other editing features later.
You can tell that your iphone is capturing a Live Photo by the yellow Live
icon at the top of the screen. This icon stands for the photographic styles.
This feature has been significantly revised for the iPhone 16 and since it can be an extremely
useful feature, we should take a very close look at it. PAUSE The Photographic Styles are not to
be confused with filters. In its default setting, the iPhone produces a relatively natural look that
is relatively close to reality. Other smartphone manufacturers, for example, prefer a more vivid
look with more saturation or more contrast.
With the Photographic Styles you can now change the
general look of your iPhone photos. Unlike a filter, it does not simply apply a color to
the whole image. Photographic Styles adjust specific colors in certain parts of your photos
to create the exact look you want. And unlike with older iPhone models, the iPhone 16 allows
you to change and customise the photographic style even after the photo has been taken. There
are basically two types of styles: undertones, which mainly influence the undertone of the
skin, and mood styles, which give the whole image a special look.
Undertones include Cool Rose,
Neutral, Rose Gold or Amber, while under Mood you will find for example Vibrant or Dramatic, Cosy
or Stark Black & White for a very high-contrast black and white photo. You can use the slider at
the bottom to adjust the intensity of the effect, whereby the effect is neutralised, at least as far
as the colour is concerned, if you drag the slider all the way to the left. You can then make further
adjustments using the field in the centre. To put it simply, the further you drag the slider to
the right, the more saturated the effect becomes; if you drag it upwards, parts of the image
are brightened and the contrast is reduced; if you drag it downwards, the image appears
darker and the contrast is increased.
One thing should be clear: the style remains active for
a certain time, but is then reset to default, for example when the iPhone is restarted. So
if some of your photos look a bit strange, this could be due to an unintentionally active
photographic style. And Apple has come up with a guide to help you find your ideal style and
set it as the new standard. When you open the settings in the Camera app, you can select
4 photos under Photographic Styles, ideally photos that have different subjects, and can
now see at a glance what effects the respective photographic style has on your photos.
You can
then select your favourite style, adjust it if necessary and save it as the new default. This
allows you to define your own personal style for your iPhone photos. However, only the undertones
are available here in the settings. And as I said, if you don't like a photo with a certain style,
you can now, in contrast to older iPhones, open the photo and adjust the photographic style later
via the settings and styles. A cool new feature! With the icon to the right of the Photographic
Styles you can change the aspect ratio of your photos. A normal photo sensor delivers a
photo in a 4:3 format. You can also set a square aspect ratio or a 16:9 aspect ratio
which is more typical for video recordings.
You should not forget that you can also change
the aspect ratio when editing your photos. Right next to it there is a very important
feature, the Exposure Slider. With this feature you can make your image brighter
or darker, that means you can overexpose or underexpose your image a little bit in
relation to the settings of the automatic exposure control and this for a maximum of
2 stops. But wait, wasn't there already the sun icon for that? Yes, but with the exposure
slider you can make smaller and more precise adjustments and you have a little more control.
In addition, the exposure correction will be kept and will stay the same if you take more photos.
I have to say that the automatic of the iPhone protects so-called highlights very well and there
are hardly any overexposed areas in the pictures. So for such cases you hardly need any exposure
correction.
It's more that you might want to capture a darker or brighter image to create a
certain mood. For example, many people believe that the iPhone exposes the images too brightly
and prefer a slightly negative value here. The next icon is a timer. This allows you to set
that the image is not taken until three , five or ten seconds after pressing the shutter button.
This can be useful if you want to take a group selfie and place your iPhone on a tripod or in low
light with longer exposures to avoid any shaking. Before we take a look at the portrait mode,
I would just like to point out that basically the same features are available when
using the Selfie camera.
For example, there is also the night mode or the live photo
mode. What there is not, is a real zoom feature. You can only slightly zoom in or out by tapping
the two arrows or by using two fingers. It is also interesting that the Selfie-camera
shows you a mirrored image in the preview, but captures the image without mirroring it. The
picture then looks different from the preview. If this bothers you, you can change this
in the settings. When capturing selfies, remember that you can use the volume buttons
as shutter.
This is especially useful here. If we now switch to portrait mode, we find
the usual settings for flash, eventually the night mode, aspect ratio, photographic
styles, format, exposure correction and timer in the menu. LivePhoto is not available.
However, there are two new settings here, different portrait lighting effects, which
you can select here by swiping to the left and right and the F-Stop or Depth Control as
Apple calls it. As explained in the beginning, in portrait mode your iPhone creates a blurred
background, as if you had taken the picture with a Mirrorless or DSLR and a fast lens. In general,
the smaller the number of the F-stop the stronger the effect will be, that means the blurrier the
background will be. The bigger the number the smaller the effect will be. Just like it would be
on a bigger camera. Basically the feature works incredibly well. Only in very small details,
such as protruding hairs, can you sometimes spot imperfections. As already mentioned the
portrait mode also works with objects. But especially with objects you have to make sure
that there is an appropriate distance between camera and object to activate the feature.
The
camera tells you this at the top of the screen. And Portrait Lighting is also a great feature.
It is designed to simulate professional lighting techniques. If you've been into photography,
you'll know that good lighting often makes a bigger difference than the actual camera. You can
select different lighting effects by swiping to the left and right. You can also see the effect
in the preview. With Studio Light the face is well exposed by a soft light. It reminds you of
a beauty filter, with Contour Light the external areas of the face or the object are darkened
a bit. This gives the picture a little more depth and drama. With Stage Light the subject
is isolated in the spotlight. The outer area is completely darkened. Stage Light Mono creates
the same effect in black and white and High-Key Light Mono does not darken but lightens the outer
area, for example like a portrait against a white background.
If you find the effect exaggerated
or too weak, you can adjust the intensity. In the menu tap on the Portrait Lighting icon and
now you can adjust the effect by dragging the slider to the left or right. Also note that you
can change and adjust the Portrait Lighting and F-Stop when editing your portrait. And not only
that – when you edit your portrait, you can even move the focus point using the yellow frame.
Here on the left, you can also switch between the main camera, the 2x Crop and the telephoto
lens on the 16 Pro and Pro Max. For best results of close-ups of faces, I recommend using
the telephoto lens. And there's something else you should know. If you are in the normal
photo mode and your iPhone recognizes a face, an F icon appears at the bottom left.
This means
you can activate the portrait feature in normal photo mode with a simple tap and don't have
to switch to portrait mode. And you can even activate the portrait feature when editing the
photo – it's only important that your iPhone has detected a face when taking the picture. By
the way, this also works with dogs and cats. With the Panorama mode you can capture an
extremely wide field of view. As the name suggests, this is great for capturing
landscapes or cityscapes. Because of the ultra wide lens this feature may have
lost some of its importance. Nevertheless, it still produces results that would not
be possible with a simple shot.
Basically, several images are combined. To do this, start
recording and move your camera along the arrow from left to right. If you tap on the arrow
you can also change the direction and capture the panorama from right to left. Make sure that
the arrow is moving along the yellow line during the recording. If you do not succeed, you will
see unsightly waves in the image. Apart from that there are hardly any settings in this
mode. You can change the lens and that's it. Now that we've learnt about most of the features
of the camera app, it's time to take a closer look at the camera control button. And the button
has some very interesting features. PAUSE As mentioned at the beginning, you can use it to open
the camera app. When the camera app is open, you can take a photo or start and stop a video with a
single press.
If you press and hold the button in photo mode, you can record a QuickCapture video,
similar to the Capture button of the app. But that's not all. The brilliant thing is that if you
swipe with light pressure up or down on the button or to the left or right, depending on how you
hold the iPhone, you can change various settings. As you can see, I change the exposure by swiping
up and down, just like with the Exposure Control feature. You can also change other settings with
the camera control button. To do this, lightly press the button twice and a menu will appear. You
can now select the feature you want to adjust by swiping.
In addition to the exposure, you can
change the F-Stop for portrait shots, the zoom factor, whereby the zoom for all values between
the various cameras leads to a digital crop and a reduction in image quality. This is why it is
also possible to switch only between the cameras, which is clearly the better option. At the bottom
you can change the styles and even adjust the tone of your style. And with new updates, Apple is sure
to add even more features to the Camera Control Button.The button is a cool new feature, but in my
opinion it has one disadvantage. It has happened to me several times that I have unintentionally
changed settings by holding the iPhone with my thumb. Especially when the exposure control
is active, this can unintentionally ruin your photos. I therefore usually leave the button on
Camera as the default setting. And another thing: when you change settings with the camera control
button, all other information disappears from the screen – so you can better assess the
effects on your photo. Apple calls this Clean Preview – you can deactivate this feature in the
settings of the camera app.
As you can see here, you can also use the camera control button to open
other apps – apps that have access to the camera. You can set it to open Instagram, for example, if
you frequently take photos with the Instagram app. Now let's have a quick look at the editing tools.
If you tap on the small image of your last shot in the lower left corner, you will see your
last image in full size and can edit it in many different ways.
Today I will only give you a brief
overview and point out a few important things. If you swipe through your last photos, you can see in
the upper left corner if your photo is a portrait photo or a live photo. If not, this area remains
blank. This is important because portrait photos and live photos allow different editing steps.
Generally, the editing menu opens by pressing the settings button here below. As already explained,
here you can subsequently change or customise the style used.
With the adjust icon you can make
basic adjustments to the photo. You can adjust the colors, exposure, white balance, saturation,
sharpness and so on. And by clicking the icon on the right you can rotate, crop or adjust the
aspect ratio of the photo. Via the pen icon you can add markups, sticker, text, and so on. What
is missing in my case is the Clean Up feature, which allows you to remove objects from
a picture with a few taps using AI. Well, that's because the feature is not yet
available here in Italy, so in the EU. If your shot is a portrait, as mentioned
before, you can use the editing tools to change the portrait lighting and the
depth of field, that is, the F-stop. Now let's have a look at the most important
settings of the Camera App. With preserve settings you can for example set the camera
to remember certain settings. For example, you always want to use the same photographic
style, the same exposure correction or you always want to start the app in video mode. Then you can
enable here that the app remembers your settings.
The camera of your iPhone can automatically
detect text and you can then copy and edit this text. You don't even have to take a photo
for that. When your iPhone detects a text, you can see this by the yellow borders and the small
text icon. If you tap on the text icon, you can select parts of the detected text, copy it, use
it for a search, translate it or even share it. This feature can be very useful. If you don't need
it, you can deactivate it here in the settings. The ultra-wide lens and the front camera
create unattractive distortions. They are automatically corrected and removed.
You can also disable this feature here. Now a few very important settings. Under Formats
you can choose between High Efficiency and Most Compatible. If High Efficiency is activated, your
iPhone saves the photos in the HEIF format. This saves a lot of storage space and the quality
is said to be even better than that of a JPEG file. However, older computers and operating
systems cannot handle this format.
In this case, your iPhone will convert the files into a JPEG
file when you transfer them. If you want to save the photos in the JPEG format already on
your iPhone, then choose most compatible. The main camera of your iPhone has a
sensor with 48 megapixels. Nevertheless, to save storage space, in the default settings
the photos are saved in a resolution of 12 megapixels. If you often want to view your
photos on a larger screen, you can set a higher default resolution of 24 megapixels
here. I would definitely recommend this. And you can also save your photos in the full
resolution of 48 megapixels. To do this, activate ProRAW & Resolution Control. HEIF is used as the
standard format here as well.
But be careful – according to Apple itself, the 48 megapixel
photos have more resolution, but they also lose dynamic range. So for a better dynamic range
you should better take photos with 24 megapixels. If, on the other hand, you want to edit your
photo heavily and therefore want to save as much information as possible in the photo
file, then you should activate Apple Pro Raw. The photos require considerably more storage
space, but contain more information for editing. If you use ProRaw, you have the choice between
JPEG Lossless, JPEG-XL Lossless and JPEG XL Lossy. JPEG Lossless generates the largest files,
but is supported by more devices and platforms, JPEG-XL on the other hand generates smaller
files, whereby JPEG XL Lossy in particular results in significantly smaller files
but also in a slightly reduced quality. This feature is only available on the
Pro models. Whether in Pro RAW or HEIF, high-resolution 48MP photos can only be
taken with the 1x main camera and the 0.5 ultrawide camera.
In addition You always have to
activate the feature in the camera app as well. And with this I want to say goodbye for today.
If the video was interesting or helpful for you, give me a Like as feedback. If you want
to support this channel you can use the link in the video description to buy me a coffee. If you want to learn even more about how to
get the best results with your iPhone camera, check out my tutorials on iPhone photography
or editing photos on the iPhone. You can also find a list of my best iPhone Camera
Tutorials in the video description.
There will be more videos about the IPhone 16
and 16 Pro. So stay tuned and see you next time!.
