Take Control of iPhone Photography, 2nd Edition

Take your iPhone's cameras to the next level
Version 2.0, published March 30, 2026

Would you like to unlock the powerful features of your iPhone's cameras and create better photos and videos? This book is the friendly, step-by-step guide to capturing great photos using an iPhone, the camera that’s always with you, taught by an author and professional photographer who has been taking mobile photos on iPhones since the first model.

Apple's iPhone marketing always emphasizes the cameras over most other features. And it's true: iPhones have fantastic cameras, made even better by hardware and software that analyzes and improves your images as you take them. That makes your snapshots look better, but an iPhone can do so much more. Using your iPhone as a camera, you can create professional portraits and landscapes, capture stunning close-ups and remarkable low-light images, and even record cinema-quality video.

Photographer Jeff Carlson has spent decades honing his craft, and he brings his expertise with photography and Apple equipment together in this definitive guide to iPhone photography. Whether you're a casual photographer wanting to get the best-quality photos or someone with lots of photographic experience who wants greater control over the iPhone's cameras, this book has all the information you need.

In this book, you'll learn:

• All the details of Apple's Camera app and the iPhone's numerous options for triggering the shutter
• How to use the new Camera Control on iPhone 16 and newer models
• What Visual Intelligence is and how to use it (on supported iPhone models)
• The best ways to compose your photographs to get the effect you want
• How to take better selfies
• What you can do to control the exposure and change the zoom level
• The differences between optical zoom and digital zoom and how the iPhone cameras handle each
• When and why to capture raw images
• Options for capturing images in low light, such as Night Mode and the built-in LED flash
• What to do when you want an extreme close-up (macro) image
• Approaches to taking better portraits, including Apple's Portrait Mode and Portrait Lighting
• How to create a panoramic photo in either horizontal or vertical orientation
• Why and how to create a Live Photo that features a few seconds of video
• How to use Center Stage on an iPhone 17 or newer for adjusting to the number of people in a selfie shot
• Ways you can alter a photo's appearance with Filters and Photographic Styles, including "latest generation" Photographic Styles on an iPhone 16 or later
• How to use the new Dual Capture mode on some recent iPhone models to record video from front and back cameras simultaneously
• The details of Apple's file formats available for photos and videos, including HEIC, JPEG, ProRAW, HEVC, and H.264
• How aspect ratio, resolution, file format, and (for video) frame rate affect the size and quality of images
• Numerous ways in which you can adjust settings to customize camera behavior
• How to record video with your iPhone in standard, Slo-Mo, Time-Lapse, and Cinematic modes
• What third-party apps and accessories can do to enhance your photography even further

This book covers the iPhone 12 and newer models, including the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and 17e.

This richly illustrated book contains enough details to satisfy the most tech-savvy user, while also making the process of photography simple, accessible, and fun for beginners.