The iPhone Photography Book

How to Focus on an iPhone

When you aim your iPhone’s camera at something, it will focus on what it thinks you want to be in focus. But, it doesn’t always pick the right thing and, sometimes, you wind up with what we call “soft” photos—they’re not super-blurry, but they’re not super-sharp either. One way to nail that sharp focus every time is to tap your finger onscreen, right over what you want in focus. When you do this, a thin yellow focus square appears onscreen (as seen above) to let you know the area where you tapped is now where it’s going to focus, so you can go ahead and take your shot knowing whatever you tapped on will be in nice, sharp ...