10 Tips for better family photos with your iPhone
As much as I love a “real” camera you just don’t see too many modern families carrying them for their day to day memories so I decided over the last year or so to really get into learning the ins and outs of mobile photography and how it can compliment or even do the heavy lifting for some types of images when documenting my family.
To that end here are my 10 favorite tips for how to improve your iPhone photography for parent photography. Many of these tips are built in features of the native camera app but since not everyone knows how to use them, this could dramatically improve results for a lot of parents. If you have further questions hit me up in the comments and I’ll do my best to help.
1. Change the brightness of your images my tapping your subject and then swiping up or down on the sun icon.
Ever wish you could get your phone to stop making images too dark, especially when the light in your picture is coming from behind your subject? This is the fix. Tap on the face, touch and hold on the sun icon and push it up and down to change the brightness. Awesome right?
2. Use the volume rocker as your shutter instead of the screen
OK there are two main reasons this really helps -
One - if you’re trying to take a selfie by tapping on the screen it can be really awkward for your hand and If you’re like me, you’ll mess up the framing as you attempt to trigger the camera. By using the volume rocker to make a photo you can keep a better grip on your phone and get a better framed image.
Two - if you’re into using the night mode using the volume rocker will help keep your photos more steady and you’ll get less blur. If you’re into images with stars, city-scapes at night or landscapes also remember your phone has a self timer so you can set it down somewhere and have it trigger after a countdown to keep things ultra steady.
3. Your iPhone has up to three dedicated camera lenses (depending on the model year) and using any zoom level other than those native to your lens(s) are fake and therefore drops the quality of the image.
Ok so the sharpness of the photos coming from your phone are good but it’s still important not to throw away sharpness by using the wrong zoom setting.
My iPhone 11 Pro has three cameras (.5 ultra wide | 1x normal | 2x telephoto) and using any of those offers the best sharpness the camera can offer but at ANY other zoom setting the app is digitally faking the settings which is dropping the sharpness from your final result.
So think about your phone having three different cameras for different framing but not a zoom lens. If you push the zoom feature it too far in fact you’ll eventually get and image so un-sharp you can’t even get a high quality 4x6 inch print.
4. If you want to soften the background focus use the 2x in portrait mode
Portrait mode has been around for a couple of years but don’t forget to use it to make the background of your images go beautifully soft and out of focus. to use it just turn on portrait mode just above the trigger This will typically force you into your 2x camera, You’ll also need to not be reasonably good light, and you will also need to be at least a couple of feet away from your subject. I know it's just another thing to remember BUT if pays off big when the conditions are right. This is for when you want a portrait not a candid at a birthday party.
5. If you’re in the camera app a swipe left on the shutter button will take a very fast sequence of photos, swiping right will start a video even if you’re not in video mode
This tip I really love. OK so let’s say you’re taking pictures and you suddenly also want to capture some video OR you want to take a super fast sequence of images like during a sporting event. From the camera app if you take the on screen shutter button and pull to the left your camera will take a burst of images for as long as you hold it. This allows you to capture the perfect part of a swing, kick or shot and pick the best of the best afterward. If you swipe right you’ll begin recording a video clip, no buttons to remember in the heat of the moment just pull and hold.
6. If you buy one accessory for your phone in terms of taking photos pick a phone holder and mini tripod so you can set up your camera and be in the image/take a time-lapse/video with you in it etc.
OK so nobody likes to carry accessories but if you want to solve a couple of typical problems I would really recommend a cage or phone holder that has a mounting point on it for a tripod or for balancing the phone on a tabletop/surface. This will allow you to be in a family photo my using the self timer, take steady video, use the time-lapse function etc. I’ll have a couple of recommendations below for the holder, mini tripod that I like.
7. If you want better video buy a small mic – the audio improvement is the best thing you can do for video
The only other accessory you might want to consider for your phone is an external microphone. This will vastly improve your videos by making the audio sound so much better. I’d only use it for more video dedicated projects but let’s say your daughter has a recital and you want to record it to send to family. This is how you can get that done and create something you really enjoy. I’ll have a recommendation for a mic below.
8. If you want to more easily share your images change the default format from HEIF to JPG
One of the improvements Apple made by default on newer iPhone’s is the switch from using the file format JPEG to HEIF. This will save space on your phone since the HEIF has better compression but it comes at the expense of being far less compatible with the rest of the world. So if you like to share your images via email, cloud storage etc. you might want to switch it back. Go to Settings/Camera/Formats/Most Compatible to switch it back to the JPEG standard which all phones and computers can use.
9. My favorite app for editing images is SnapSeed video is Lumafusion or Adobe Premiere Rush
Editing on your phone has gotten so good over the years that there isn’t hardly anything you can’t do in terms of editing. I really love the app SnapSeed which allows me to do 99% of what I do on a dedicated computer with Photoshop. I can change the brightness, color, crop, contrast etc. right on my phone. I’m going to be doing some tutorials about the app in the future but suffice to say it’s a great and inexpensive tool.
10. Back up your images to icloud/dropbox or amazon photos so if you lose your iphone your images and videos are backed up.
The importance of backup really can’t be understated these days. You can use iCloud, Dropbox, Amazon or a dozen other services but whatever you do it will be worth whatever the price to make sure you don’t lose all of your memories. Choose one and go with it. I use Dropbox but that’s just because I use the service for other work related projects and I already have the account. iCloud is standard and it gets the job done.