iPad: The Missing Manual, 7th Edition

Chapter 8. Taking Photos, Shooting Videos

It’s natural and easy and joyful to take pictures with your phone. But an iPad is a big honker. Holding it up blocks your view of your subject—and, often, the view of anyone behind you. Plenty of people heap ridicule on anyone who takes pictures with a tablet, or at least point and snicker at them.

But Apple pretends not to notice. With each new version of the iPad, Apple keeps making the tablet’s camera better. There’s no optical zoom; there’s no flash; and the iPad’s camera isn’t as good as the iPhone’s. But the photos can look every bit as good as what you’d get from a pocket camera. And the hi-def videos are indistinguishable from what you’d get out of a camcorder.

This chapter is all about the iPad’s ability to display photos, take new ones with its camera, and capture videos.

The Camera App

The little hole on the back of the iPad, in the upper-left corner, is its camera.

On the latest iPads, it’s pretty impressive, at least for a tablet cam. The iPad Air 2, for example, has manual exposure control, can shoot 10 shots a second, and does amazingly well in low light.

The earlier iPad models’ cameras aren’t quite as good, but they’re still fine as long as your subject is still and well lit. Action shots may come out blurry, and dim-light shots may come out grainy.

Now that you know what you’re in for, here’s how it works.

Firing Up the Camera

Photographic opportunities are frequently fleeting; by the time you ...