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Photography and the iPhone by Derald Freeman

iPhone Camera Facts
Tips for iPhone Photography
Basic requirements
Camera Tips
Taking Good Photos
Editing suggestions and ideas
What Are Your Rights as a Photographer?
Recommendations for Camera Apps

A FOREWORD ON IPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY

At first glance you may wonder at taking good photos with an 2 or 3 megapixel iPhone camera. My 2mp 3G iPhone is snapping pics at 1200x1600 resolution which is much higher than I had been shooting with my DSLR camera. The phone camera does not tolerate movement so you have to hold the camera still. There is no stop-action as with a DSLR camera but the quality is good.

A professional photographer, Chase Jarvis, said "The best camera is the one you have with you." and I have to agree. I rarely carry a DSLR camera around with me and thus missed a lot of photo opportunities.

Photography is THE ACT OF STOPPING TIME. Time moves away from us second by second. You just FROZE TIME with the click of the shutter.
The click of the shutter MADE YOU AN ARTIST, A CREATOR of a moment to be kept forever.
When you take a photograph YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING NO ONE ELSE HAS EVER DONE. You have caught that moment, that angle, and that subject which no body else has done.
MEMORIES FADE, PHOTOS DO NOT. You can share memories with other people and they can reflect on them for years to come.

"CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY COMES FROM WITHIN YOU." (See the full treatment below) It does not matter what camera your carry or where you are.
   (1) You have to see it,
   (2) photograph it, and
   (3) learn from the experience.
The genius comes from within you and has to be cultivated.

Angle corrected and lightened

Subject added from a different photo

Removed two subjects and added vase

Creative photographers take hundreds of photos per day and sort them out on the desktop. I rework most everything on Photoshop type programs. Every photo can be improved. Photographers rarely take perfect photos. Remember, with digital photography IT COSTS NOTHING TO TAKE PHOTOS, so snap away.

IPHONE CAMERA FACTS

There have been four generations of iPhone hardware, accompanied by four major releases of IOS.

The iPhone 2G went on sale on June 29, 2007.
On July 11, 2008, Apple released the iPhone 3G.
The iPhone 3GS went on sale on June 8, 2009, bringing a compass, faster processor, and higher resolution camera, including video.
The iPhone 4 was released on June 24, 2010. Approximately 6.4 million iPhones are active in the U.S. alone. The iPhone 4 has two cameras and has 5.0 megapixels (2592 x 1936); 35 mm film camera crop factor: 7.64; and low ISO 80.

The iPhone touchscreen size is a 3.5 inches multi-touch, 320 x 480 pixels.

Tips for iPhone Photography

Introduction

"CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY COMES FROM WITHIN YOU."

You can quote me on that. You already know that? Well, you can quote me anyway. I like the notoriety.

The camera is not the entire solution. You can have a Canon Mark III or a Nikon D300 with a 150 mm lens and the photos will not be much better than those taken with a cell phone camera.

THE CREATIVITY FOR EXCELLENT PHOTOS COMES FROM WITHIN YOU! You have to see and capture the moment. I cannot emphasize this enough and encourage you to take lots of photos, and then put them to the test to see where your creativity shines.

Ansel Adams said, "You don�t take a photograph, you make it".

MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR PHONE CAMERA

Aside from mapping your location, keeping a calendar, connecting to the Internet, and maintaining an always-on connection to your various social networks, your phone takes decent pictures and it�s always in your pocket. Chase Jarvis said, "The best camera is the one that is with you".

Beyond that, it�s getting harder to make the case that a stand-alone DSLR camera is a must-have device for casual snap-shooters. In fact, there are several ways in which a camera phone offers a better overall photography experience than a dedicated snapshot camera.

Here are five ways that smart-phone cameras are beating you at your own game.

You can add photo editing apps to fix those photos on the iPhone before they ever leave it.
You have the wireless upload-anywhere, convenience of a 3G or and EDGE connections to email or send the photos to Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
The iPhone 3G and 4 have pinpoint focus on contrast by merely touching the screen.
When you buy a dedicated digital camera you are locked into the features built into the device. With iPhone you can download camera apps with anti-shake, burst shooting, grid bars, horizon, sepia, black and white, and a load of other features that you do not have on a DSLR.
The last one is a given. I can take a perfectly framed, high-quality picture of whatever is on the screen of my iPhone with the iPhone camera. Try that with a DSLR.

I love the iPhone because I always have a camera with me which does not happen with a DSLR camera. I can snap photos anytime, all the time, any where and trash the unacceptable ones. I use half a dozen photography apps on my iPhone. Since the 3G does not have video I use some apps to film video. The other apps have editing and cropping features which I like.
A couple of the absent features of the iPhone camera can still only be righted by using apps that require your iPhone to be jailbroken. If you jailbreak your iPhone, Apple will do its level best to ensure that the next iPhone OS upgrade leaves you up a certain odorous body of turbulent water (without a paddle). So, I have avoided this and found I function quite well with the apps available through Apple.

An easy to remember rule for shooting photos is in the word SHOOT.

S-top taking pictures of your pets and Starbucks cups.
H-old your iPhone steady with both hands and arms braced against your sides.
O-pen your eyes to discover everything what is out there.
O-bserve the foreground and background and decide which you want to shoot.
T-ake lots of photos. It is digital and you have lots of memory.

Basic requirements

Two basic requirements for great photos.

The first requirement for great photos is
THE PHOTOGRAPHER. Yes, it is you; the person who composes the photo, who sees the subject or scene composes, frames, and presses the shutter. I took some great photos when younger using a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye black and white camera without telephoto lens and f-stops.
The other need is THE EQUIPMENT. This is the camera and what you have to work with. Since your camera phone can not be changed you can use apps and desktop software to improve on your pics. One thing you will notice is the depth of field for a DSLR is from a few inches to infinity. There it no area where the subject or background is out-of-focus. When you start shooting pics with the iPhone you will have to get use to this. While the engineers are constantly improving the iPhone camera it still is a long way from the clarity and features of the expensive SLR cameras. The IOS4 firmware upgrade added the zoom option to the 3G camera. Thanks for that.

The last time I looked there were 180 PHOTO apps in the iTunes store for PHOTOS including everything like an app to make the subject look like a zombie, one to apply funny faces, and a photo safe (like you need to lock them up??).

I also counted over 180 CAMERA apps that turn your video handicapped 3G into a video camera and has all the crutches your 3G did not come with.

There are so many astonishing features built into the iPhone that I am blown away with what Apple has accomplished. There are always people who complain about something, but they should be appreciating all the tools they have in their hands.
What makes the iPhone camera so easy to use is its simplicity. The iPhone camera has its limitations: no flash (except in iPhone 4), no autofocus, no macro mode, 2 or 3 megapixels for content.

The majority of the times, stunning photos are taken by people who have a keen eye for composition. For example, give a professional a disposable camera and you will realize that it is not the camera that takes amazing photos; it is the person.

This lays the ground work for the iPhone camera.

Camera Tips

FOCUS AND DEPTH-OF-FIELD - As you know the iPhone does not have depth-of-field adjustments and F-stops. Still you can take fantastic photos using your ingenuity. You do not have to own a Nikon or German made camera. The quality comes from within you.

AUTO-FOCUS - Auto-focus is a feature on the Apple iPhone camera, which focuses it upon a specific area of the screen for both still images and video. The camera will automatically center upon an object or person in a screen shot, which is highlighted by a large white box with a glowing blue outline on the screen. You can choose a different object or person within the screen shot for the iPhone to auto-focus upon by simply tapping the person or object on the screen with your finger.

Auto-focus made its debut with the launch of the iPhone 3GS in 2009 and is a standard camera feature for all iPhone models that officially support video.

I discovered auto-focus on the 3G with the installation of IOS 4.02. When using the iPhone camera it immediately focuses on an area of the screen. When I move the camera to see different lighting conditions and distances I can see the screen display adjust automatically within one to two seconds.
SATURATION - The iPhone 3GS tends to over-saturate a lot of colors, this is especially the case with many orange/magenta/reds.
The iPhone saturation and color management is much better than with most other cell phone brands. The iPhone camera does not have options to adjust pics, but I use apps to adjust contrast, hue, saturation, or I can use Adobe Photoshop Elements or PaintShop Pro to tweak the pics on the desktop.
DETAIL - The 2 megapixel camera on the 3G takes 1200x1600 photos. That beats the digital camera I bought a few years ago.
You greatest enemy with the iPhone camera is motion. The shutter is slow and images will blur. Hold the phone with two hands with arms braced against your sides.

COMPOSITION - Inevitably, if you are shooting a special event, it will rain, sleet, hail, or fireballs will fall from the sky. Good! Take photos of the rain running down the outside of a window. Take photos of people running across the street that is covered with hail. Fireballs? Well, stay inside.
BURST SHOOTING - Set your camera to burst mode and concentrate on capturing the audience reaction when excitement is around. These reaction shots are priceless and capture the moment.

Taking Good Photos

Lisa Bettany, a Canadian TV personality, professional photographer and iPhone App developer, said "What we all need to remember is making mistakes makes you a better photographer." I like that concept. By exploring techniques and shooting creatively you learn how to use your camera, to perfect exposure and light and how to compose.
My DSLR camera always takes photos too dark and I have to rework them with a Photoshop program.

If photography is your passion, then to be good at it you need to be knowledgeable in tips and techniques.

Let us look at what you can do to take good photos

RULE OF THIRDS - Learn a bit about photo composition. Putting your subject smack-dab in the center of the image is not always the way to get the most compelling photos. The "rule of thirds" dictates that the points of power lie on the intersection of lines of a three-by-three grid on the screen. See Fig 1.
COMPOSE THE SHOT WITH YOUR FINGER ON THE CAMERA BUTTON - The shutter release on this camera goes click when you RELEASE your finger from this button, NOT when you press the button. As such, do all your composing with your finger on the trigger and simply lift your finger when you like what you see in the viewer. This will help you keep from jerking the camera and help with your timing also.
COMPOSITION - Inevitably, if you are shooting a special event, it will rain, sleet, hail, or fireballs will fall from the sky. Good! Take photos of the rain running down the outside of a window. Take photos of people running across the street that is covered with hail. Fireballs? Well, stay inside.
STRONG CENTER OF INTEREST - Try putting the center of your subject in one of those intersections, instead of dead center. Have one strong center of interest, and place the subject slightly off center for the most pleasing composition. Have the subject look or move toward the center of the picture. Select a camera angle that will allow a leading line, such as a road, path, fence, or river, to lead into your picture. See Fig 2.

MOVE IN - Get close to people you are photographing. This will help with the above and create more interest in the result.
GET DOWN TO EYE LEVEL - Shooting pics of animals? Do not shoot down from above. Eye-to-eye contact is as engaging with a pet as with a person. So get down on the level of your pet to create warm and intimate pictures.
PEOPLE AND CROWDS - Move against the crowd. For street photography, you want to be facing the crowd, so that they are looking at you. You do not want the back of their heads.
Shooting a photo of a person? A step to the left or right can change the entire background in your photo.
The eye likes variation, so get some people sitting, some kneeling, and some standing. Use props like a staircase to stagger height.
Have the group close their eyes until you say, open! And take the photo as you say it. Otherwise you will have one in a group of six with eyes closed.
Take photos of your friends and relatives and attach them to their name in your contact list. Cell phones will show the pic of the caller when they call you.
PERMISSION AND ETIQUETTE - Cell phone etiquette includes being mindful of your use of the camera. Ask permission when taking photos of people.
Places like airports, courthouses, art galleries, concerts, and military facilities do not allow cameras. Abide by their rules.
Do not use the camera in health spas, gyms, clubs or theatres.
ORIENTATION - Switch to landscape orientation. Actually, that is how you would take pictures most of the time with a dedicated camera, and it makes sense for anything other than formal portraits.
BEST ANGLE - Look at your subject from several angles and then select the best one. Move in close to fill your picture area with the subject.
NATURAL FRAMES - Add a natural frame to your scene by including a foreground object such as a tree or an overhanging branch, and include people in the scene for a center of interest. See Fig 5.
INTEREST - Whenever you take scenic pictures or pictures of buildings or monuments, try to include something in the foreground to add interest and dimension. Also include people for a size comparison. See Fig 4.
BACKGROUND - Mind the background. Busy backgrounds can steal attention from your subject. Since the iPhone camera does not have variable focus, objects in the background will be just as in focus as your subject. Avoid signs, power lines, vehicles, and the like if you want the subject to stand out. Place the horizon line high or low in your picture, and check to make sure the horizon is straight before you squeeze the shutter release.
AVOID FAST MOVING OBJECTS � Face it; your camera does not have a fast lens with 1/1000 stop action. Do not expect it to act like one. If you shoot a moving car or runner and want the blur, great. Otherwise, hold the camera as steady as possible and do not pan with it.
SHOOT IN COLOR - Want nice Black and whites? Then shoot in color. When you convert the color to black and white you can later selectively adjust each of the colors and not just brightness and contrast. A yellow line on a road may be tonally similar (the same level of grayness) as the concrete but in color we remember yellow as being brighter so when converting to black and white, you can make the yellow stand out more with adjustment.
EVEN AND ODD RULE - And remember, even is boring, odd is interesting, so try to have an odd number of whatever your taking in your composition.
LIGHTING - Do not take pictures in direct sunlight. A little shade can soften hard shadows. Shooting on cloudy days can actually make for better portraits than sunny ones. Get the light right. The iPhone auto-exposure metering is very sensitive. If you frame your picture so that there is a lot of bright sky behind your subject, the result will often be a picture in which the sky looks great and the subject is completely dark. Reduce sky in your photos unless you are shooting the sky. Light from the sky darkens your subjects. Put the sun behind you are at the side, never behind the subject unless it is twilight. See Fig 3. Also look at Fig 7.
LENS - Check that the lens is unobstructed and clean. Some iPhone cases block the camera, even if they are designed with a hole or windows for it. Use a lens-cleaning tissue to clean the lens, not your finger.
HOLD STILL - Hold the iPhone still with two hands. Do not take the picture until your grip feels steady. Two hands are far steadier than one, and less camera shake means fewer blurry pictures.

COLOR BALANCE � Watch for and manipulate color balance. Sometimes colors can clash and ruin the shot. You learn this as you go through old photos and wonder why something just does not work together. See Fig 6.
LOTS OF PICS - Take several pictures of your subject, varying the angles and poses. One picture uses only about 400K, so even with a bunch of apps loaded the iPhone has enough memory to hold a couple hundred. Wait till you see how they look on the PC before you delete.
BURST MODE - Avoid panning or shooting objects in motion unless you are using burst mode. You do not have the luxury of a fast shutter and the photos will blur.

Fig 1. In this illustration the highest and foremost object catches your eye first so it needs to appear in the lead in quadrant. The next photo draws your attention from them to the fish in the water which balances the picture.

Fig 2. The first photo has cropped the building to eliminate all surrounding area. The following photo includes the water and uses the path to draw you into the structure. This is a much better choice.

Fig 3. This sunset photo was taken looking over a house which draws your interest. After cropping the cars and structure out of the photo and you can enjoy the sunset.

Fig 4. The vase and small trees are included in this photo to provide size reference.

Fig 5. This illustrates how you can frame an object with another object. I could easily have had a person sitting in the chair and have changed the angle. Since the iPhone has no depth of field adjustment nothing was out of focus.

Fig 6. Watch your color balance. In this photo I picked up the color in the clock and plates with the rose that I placed under the paw of the cat. The Maine Coon breed cat has rose colored fur which flowed right into the surrounding objects.

Fig 7. Here, the background is unimportant and literally washed it out. We framed the two cats with the window and in this case drew the focus to a vertical line formed by their frames.

Editing suggestions and ideas

Making your iPhone pictures look great doesn't end when you snap the shutter. Any great photographer will tell you that a creative technique and a good eye for composition are only half the battle. The rest of the work is done in the lab; with me, on the desktop graphics editor program. At the very least, most photos can benefit from brightness and contrast adjustments, and the usual tweaks like rotating and cropping. I always edit the "keepers" on the desktop using PhotoShop, Paint Shop, PhotoScape, or other favorites.

Okay, stop laughing: I know that virtually no one edits their cell-phone pics on a PC or on Apple. The photos go to friends and facebook just as they are; bad or good. There are apps that do basic image-fixes right on your iPhone and offer Black and White and sepia changes, framing, and color adjustments.

When you start editing your photos you discover the new world of color terminology. Here is what some of the terms mean.

COLOR BALANCE - Watch for and manipulate color balance. Sometimes colors can clash and ruin the shot. You learn this as you go through old photos and wonder why something just does not work together. See Fig 6.

CONTRAST - This adjusts the light in the photo by creating dark areas at one extreme or highlights at the other. It is the overall adjustment of all RGB colors, not just a single color.

EXPOSURE - The amount of light on the subject is called exposure. Under-exposed shots have the subject appearing dark. Over-exposed shots have so much light that the subjects are washed out. Incorrect exposure ruins a photo beyond use. This is common for cameras with f-stops and shutter speed, but it can happen with the iPhone camera also.

GAIN - The gain adjustment controls the overall tint of white and bright content in the photo.

GAMMA - A gamma correction imposes the complement of the tone curve of RGB in order to flatten the line and bring the gamma closer to the ideal 1.0. Basically it is a way to adjust the CONTRAST on colors in a photo, but you can do it by Red, Green, and Blue and not just the whole image as you would with a contrast adjustment on the entire photo.

HUE - For Hue, enter a value or adjust the slider until the colors appear the way you need it to be. The values reflect the number of degrees of rotation around the color wheel from the pixel original color. A positive value indicates clockwise rotation, a negative value counterclockwise rotation.

SATURATION - The iPhone 3GS tends to over-saturate a lot of colors, this is especially the case with many orange/magenta/reds. The iPhone saturation and color management is much better than with most other cell phone brands. Saturation brings in gray scale if you go negative. Use the Saturation adjustment to make colors more vivid or more muted. A good use of this adjustment would be to add a color punch to a landscape by adding saturation to all the colors, or to tone down a distracting color, such as a vivid red or yellow sweater in a portrait.
Colorfulness, chroma, and saturation are related but distinct concepts referring to the perceived intensity of a specific color. Saturation is the colorfulness of a color relative to its own brightness. A highly colorful stimulus is vivid and intense, while a less colorful stimulus appears more muted, closer to gray.
The iPhone camera does not have options to adjust pics, but I use apps to adjust contrast, hue, saturation, or I can use Adobe Photoshop Elements or PaintShop Pro to tweak the pics on the desktop.

What are Your Rights as a
Videographer or Photographer?

Here is a photo of two people in an art gallery. I found it on public domain on the web. It has good interest and focus, however these people might object to the photo being on the web if they were facing the camera. I intentionally blurred the face of the person in profile.

Scenario #1 - You are invited to a party and you are taking photos and videos. Do you have the right to post them on YouTube? Think about that. People and the host may think you are going to share this with the people there, but not put the pics on the Internet. Will you lose friends and not get invited back?"#003399" Scenario #2 - You are taking pics of people on a street in front of a building. An employee or security person comes out of the building and tells you to stop taking photos of the building. What do you do? Do you argue with him? Do you stop? You are in the street on public property.
Scenario #3 - You are taking pics of a sporting event or celebrities, write up a news clip, and get paid for it by the local newspaper. You are not employed by the paper.

RULES - Photographs and videos should have the same rules.

PRIVACY - If a property owner or representative of the property tells you to stop filming the building or contents inside or filming from on the property, you must comply and stop immediately. It is their privilege. Everything filmed up to that point is yours unless they specifically say you cannot use it; then comply.
LIMITATIONS - The owner of a property might give you permission to take photos only for personal use so it is might be best to always have an informed consent.
FOR HIRE - When money is involved from ads or being paid for your work, avoid signs, brand names, and trademarks if at all possible. If you film embarrassing moments of someone and make money from it you could be in trouble.
NEWS OR NOT NEWS - If filming for a news story, shots of people and celebrities, even in undesirable moments, is simply news and is filmed all the time.
THEY ARE YOURS - If you were allowed to take the photos, and there were no restriction, they are yours, and so you can do what you want with them even selling them� so rules should not change when money is involved.
COMPLIANCE - And finally, if someone requests you to take down the photos/video, then comply if at all possible. Why have someone unhappy with you?

What We Recommend
for a Camera App

Whether you are a seasoned photographer or someone who is barely touched a camera, you will love taking photos. Pics seldom come out just as you wanted so you need an app on your camera or photo program on your desktop/laptop to edit the photos. I use both. The camera on the iPhone is great, but I like other camera apps for the extra features. For the phone you need an app that will do the following.

Anti-shake option says goodbye to blurry shots - Use the anti-shake feature to steady your iPhone and get the sharpest photos you can.
Grid to avoid crooked pics - I like to use the grid to line up your shots and eliminate tilted shots and fit the subject in the proper quadrant.
Digital zoom to get up close - The iPhone has a slow shutter causing occasional blurred images. Digital zoom magnifies not only the image, but possibilities of getting blurred subjects.
Editing options - You need to easily import your old photos and tweak those you just took.
Sharing - You need to share your photos on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr or email them from within the app.
Cropping - If you did not line up your shot perfectly when you took it, you can easily fix that with helpful apps.

Here is a list of the best photo and video apps I have found. These are a life-saver considering the handicap I have with the 3G camera.

Camera Genius - This is both a video and camera app. I like this app because of the simplicity. Does great video and photography. It has video mode, zoom, sound capture, anti-shake, grid lines, timer, burst shooting and the manual. It can add time/date to pics.

Price $1.99.

Camera Plus Pro - This is both a video and camera app. It has video mode, zoom, anti-shake, grid lines, timer, burst shooting, tags, and geotags. You can apply photo filters. Files can be sent to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and via email. I love this app. It is really a strong competitor with Camera Genius.
Price $1.99.

Genius Scan - You can take a photo of documents and append the pages together, hotel and restaurant receipts or anything else, crop it, then save it to the Camera Roll, append it to an existing document, or email it as a JPG file to your desktop computer.
Price $FREE.

Legend Camera - I have used this often and always go back to it. The app has zoom, sound capture, anti-shake, grid lines, timer, burst shooting, B&W, tilt, pix resolution, night mode, and brightness adjustment. Saves to Facebook, Twitter, prints with printer app, and supports Wifi and Bluetooth and email.
Price $FREE or $0.99 to buy it.

ProCamera - This app takes the perfect shot providing you frame the perfect shot. It has video mode, zoom, anti-shake, virtual horizon, grid lines, timer, brightness and contrast, B&W and sepia, high resolution. It does more than my DSLR camera could hope for.
Price $2.99.

Qik Video Pro Camera - Primarily a video app, it can take a photo while recording. Has apps for special effects, mirroring, B&W, sepia. Files can be sent to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, SMS text and via email. Maintains a gallery.
Price $0.99.

a Pocket Scanner - Documents on the Go - This scans documents and turns them into PDF files. It is a good companion to use with the PDF Reader app. Crop, convert to B&W, adjust exposure, and email it. It is really a good app.
Price $0.99.

Mill Colour - This photo management program is a color grading program that edits the photos lift, gamma, gain, hue, saturation, contrast, and exposure. It is able to handle photo resolution up to 2048x1536 with a recent upgrade to a default setting on 1280x960. What it will not do I can finish off with Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop Element.
Price $FREE.

Last updated July 2010
email: grreatideas at sbcglobal.net