iPhone: The Missing Manual, 9th Edition

Chapter 8. The Camera

Incredible though it sounds, the iPhone is the number-one most popular camera model in the world. More photos are posted online from this phone than from any other machine in existence.

And no wonder; you’ve probably never seen pictures and movies look this good on a pocket gadget. With each new version of the iPhone, Apple improves its camera—and on the iPhone 6 and 6s models, it’s unbelievably good. There’s no optical zoom, but otherwise, the photos can look every bit as good as what you’d get from a dedicated camera. And the videos look amazing. They’re even auto-stabilized—and the 6s models even shoot in 4K (four times the resolution of high-def video).

This chapter is all about the iPhone’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 iPhone, in the upper-left corner, is its camera.

On the latest iPhones, it’s pretty impressive, at least for a cellphone cam. The iPhone 6 Plus and 6s Plus, for example, have two LED flashes, manual exposure controls, optical stabilization, and phase-detection autofocus (the same kind of very fast refocusing found in professional SLR cameras). These phones can shoot 10 shots a second and do amazingly well in low light.

The earlier iPhone 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 grainier.

Now that you know what you’re ...