iPhone Photo Tips: Focus and Expose

If you’re used to using your DLSR camera in Auto Mode, you may be doing the same thing with your iPhone camera. Normally when you use your iPhone camera you most likely just point and press the button. Not much thought is going into it I imagine.

Maybe you’re seeing that your images are dark or something isn’t in focus. That’s where tapping comes in!

By default, your iPhone is focusing in the middle – that’s where you see that little box pop up. It’s saying everything should be in focus and the area around that box is where it’s measuring the light – or figuring out how to expose the image.

Excuse my messy living room but for demonstration purposes, let’s look at these three photos. The middle photo shows the default. I just went into camera mode, pointed and pressed the button. The little box was in the middle of the scene meaning it was just going to focus and expose from the center out.

Now look at the photo on the left. Here I tapped on the Panda. Do you see how it made the background darker and not as focused? By doing that, it’s telling the camera to focus and expose on the panda.

In the photo to the right, I tapped in the background. In this case my background is much brighter (and you can see more mess) but unfortunately it also overexposed the panda. Poor guy!

So next time when you use your phone to take a picture, try experimenting with tapping and take more control of your photos.

I know there are lots of apps out there to help with exposure but since I don’t have any experience with them, I can’t really comment on it.

Do you use any apps to help with exposure? Tell us which ones are your favorites.