Ultimate Guide To iPhone Photography

Discover how to master the controls and settings in your iPhone (and Photos app) to capture well-composed, correctly exposed and artefact-free shots

- George Cairns

We all love taking photos on our iPhones – but are we making the best of them? Over the next 12 pages, we’ll show you how to avoid the ‘rubbish in, rubbish out’ syndrome by improving the quality of the images that you shoot, then explaining how you can make them look even better courtesy of the iOS or OS versions of Apple’s Photos (plus we’ll look at some third-party Camera apps along the way).

Newer iPhones give DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) cameras a run for their money. For example, iPhone 11 Pro and 12 Pro users can switch from telephoto to wide to ultra-wide in a few taps (capturing moments that a DSLR user might miss while they manually swap detachable lenses). Thanks to the new Apple ProRAW format iPhone 12 users can capture more information about a subject’s colours and tones, narrowing the image-quality gap between iPhone and DSLR. The iPhone has the edge when it comes to exposure thanks to Smart HDR 3, which uses machine learning to combine multiple exposures that reveal maximum detail in different parts of the scene (even when you capture in ProRAW).

In this feature, we’ll show you tips, tricks and techniques to help improve the composition and quality of your photographs, as well mimicking DSLR looks, such as slow-shutter motion blur.

Camera app options

1 Go Raw Tap here to toggle between capturing compressed quality formats, such as JPEG or higher quality Apple ProRAW format files.

2 Chevron Tap here to toggle between displaying the shooting modes and their additional options, such as Portrait mode’s f-stop slider.