Anticipation. Letting Great Photos Come To You.
Prepping your Camera App for great photos this holiday season
The winter holidays are the best time of the year to unleash your inner photographer. Outrageous Christmas light displays. Decorated street scenes. Family. Friends. Celebrations and get-togethers of all kinds. Anything that brings a smile is a great subject for a picture or two. Even a quick video clip. Capturing a moment that you can revisit and share in the new year.
And to get the very best photos, take a tip from professional photographers and let the photos come to you. With just a bit of preparation, and thinking ahead of the activity, you can get engaging and memorable pictures of the moment that you’ll treasure for years.
Anticipation is your best friend.
You don’t want to be fumbling with camera settings when that shot appears in front of you.
We’ve all had that moment when the surprise present popped out of the box and surprised the child. Or a fleeting street scene with lovely decorations and falling snow. If your iPhone is deep in a pocket and on the wrong settings, moments like that are lost.
So here are some tips to up your game with candid holiday photography by setting up your Camera App ahead of time. You don’t want to be fumbling with camera settings when that shot appears in front of you.
SET UP YOUR CAMERA APP
By default, your iPhone Camera app is set to switch back to LIVE PHOTO whenever you launch the app. For certain shots - children’s activities, group photos, falling snow, etc. - LIVE PHOTO is great. But for most pictures it’s unnecessary. You can just tap the LIVE PHOTO icon on the camera screen to turn it off, but a better option is to turn ON everything in the Settings \> Camera \> Preserve Settings menu and your Camera App will stay the way you set it last time you took a photo or video.
Next, turn off the FLASH. You can just tap the FLASH icon and you’ll see a slash through it to indicate it’s off. I’ve found that the FLASH rarely improves a picture and only use it when I’m taking a photo so someone or something when it’s really, really dark and the subject is less than 8 feet away.
Now that you have your Camera App set to stay the way you want it, what do you want?
Using PHOTO
It’s no big surprise that the PHOTO setting is your universal “go-to” setting in the Camera App. Left to its own devices, the iPhone does a stellar job of getting nicely exposed, in-focus pictures. PHOTO the natural choice, but in most cases I turn LIVE PHOTO off by tapping the LIVE PHOTO icon. Since we just went to Settings and told the iPhone to preserve whatever settings we choose, we can be confident that no matter how many times we take out our iPhone and launch the CAMERA APP, it will stay set to PHOTO (or whatever) with LIVE PHOTO off.
PHOTO offers a couple settings worth noting. You may have the option of RAW photos - large, high quality images suitable for wall prints - and STYLES which apply variations of color effects and image contrast. For more detail see THIS POST.
The nifty thing about the PHOTO setting is that if the moment deserves a video, you can press and hold the shutter button and the camera will take a video for as long as you hold it.
Using PORTRAIT
If you want to get a nice photo of Uncle Bud or little Stella then PORTRAIT mode is a great choice. It’s designed for exactly what it says - portrait photography - and blurs the background so that your subject stands out. The great thing about PORTRAIT mode is that you can adjust it after the fact in EDIT to add more or less background blur and lighting effects. PORTRAIT shots are generally coordinated with the subject, but can be candid if you are close enough and the person isn’t moving.
Using PANO
Panoramas are fun. They take a small bit of prep, but make a statement and fill the bill when your wide angle lens just isn’t wide enough.
A couple tips.
Just because you are using the PANO setting, don’t think you have to go wide - wide - wide. Many times a room or scene is just a bit wider than your lens is able to capture. You can stop the sweep whenever you want.
Also, a PANO works just as well for going up instead of wide. Turn the camera horizontal and pan vertically to get tall buildings, trees, and rocket ships.
Remember to switch back to PHOTO when you’re done.
Using VIDEO
Of course, the holidays are full of performances, whether a game of charades at home, a New Year’s light show, or a concert that you want to capture with sound and motion.
A couple more tips.
Unless you are only planning to go on social media, turn your phone horizontal to video. If you don’t believe me, read about it HERE.
Also, while you’re videoing your child in the choir you can tap the white button and get a photo of the moment too.
Also, also, you’ll see a pause button underneath the video Button that lets you pause the video if you have to move, or just take a short break. Tap again to keep recording. Then when you play it back you’ll have one video with sections instead of having to edit several clips together.
Using SELF-TIMER
Back in the day cameras were way too heavy and awkward to hold for selfies.
Selfies were all done with self-timers. And, frankly, they’re still better that way. Take a few extra seconds and use the self-timer feature that comes with the camera app. It’s fun and it takes a short burst of images so that the friend who always has their eyes closed doesn’t. Read about setting up a self-timer selfie HERE.
Using LIVE PHOTOS
Okay, okay. Yes, I think that LIVE PHOTOS are unnecessary for most of the pictures we take, but they have a place. An important one. Or two.
The first is when things are unpredictable and happening quickly. I’m thinking kids caught in the throes of Christmas gift discovery or play. In this case, using LIVE PHOTO is your chance to catch moments that you might otherwise miss. That’s because LIVE PHOTO records about 1.5 seconds before and after you tap the shutter button. Often, by the time you see the shot it’s gone. But LIVE PHOTO can save your bacon. When you go to edit the photo you’ll see that there are some frames before the one you took that may be better.
The other trick with LIVE PHOTO is when you are photographing a scene with people or passing cars. Most times by shooting with LIVE PHOTO you can choose the Long Exposure effect and the moving people/cars disappear. Have some fun with it. See details HERE.
That’s it! Those are the basic tools of holiday picture taking. Be ready when those great moments come to you.
Happy Holidays from 5 Minute Photos!