Shooting Awesome Photos With Your IPhone

Hey 'iblers, this is my first instructable and I will be entering it in the photography contest. If your like me, you don't have the money to spend on a DSLR, but you do have a phone with a decent camera (I have an iPhone 4s). The iPhone can take some awesome pictures and with the help of some apps, they can become even better.

*Please vote for me!*

Step 1: Getting to Know Your IPhone's Camera

I'm not going to get into the megapixels and the statistics, I'm just going to show you your options.
So, on my iPhone i have iOS6, and if you go into the camera, at the top of your screen you will see three icons, the first is for flash, the second is options, and the third is to switch between the forward and rear facing cameras. I usually leave the flash off, unless i am in a dark place and absolutely need it, because otherwise it just produces too much light focused in one point of your picture and it doesn't look very good. If you go into the options tab it has three options, grid, HDR, and panorama. Over the next three steps I will explain what each of them are.

Step 2: Grid

A main part of photography is how you hoot the picture, in terms of location and angle. A simple way to make most of your pictures better is to turn on your grid in settings and align the main aspect of the photo with one of the intersecting points. This is also called using the rule of thirds, and again, is very useful, however sometimes it just doesn't look very good.

*Some examples of rule of thirds/grid (taken with iPhone 4s)*

Step 3: HDR

"High dynamic range imaging (HDRI or HDR) is a set of methods used in imaging and photography to allow a greater dynamic range between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging methods or photographic methods. HDR images can represent more accurately the range of intensity levels found in real scenes, from direct sunlight to faint starlight, and is often captured by way of a plurality of differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter."

I always use it when taking landscape photos, and it works well with many other types of photos as well.

*Pics of HDR photos (taken with iPhone 4s)*

Step 4: Panorama

Panorama is a type of photo that has a very wide angle. On the iPhone you have to hold the phone steady while moving slowly to the right (it will tell you to slow down or speed up). It's sort of hard to explain what a panorama is so I'll just show you.

*Pics of panorama (with iPhone 4s)*

Step 5: Auto-Enhance

A cool feature within the photos app is "Auto-Enhance" . Basically your phone decides whether or not the photo needs more brightness, contrast, focus, whatever. I have no clue how it does this but I always see how the photo looks with a-e, sometimes it takes away but usually it works nicely.

*Pics with Auto-Enhance*

Step 6: Apps

There are countless apps for iOS that allow you to edit photos, my favourites are Vintique, Instagram and Camera+. All are great apps, easy to use, and free or relatively vheap. I'd suggest checking them and other apps out and seeing what you like. Most photo editting apps include presets as well as options to edit brightness, contrast, etc, I usually use a preset and modify it to my liking.

*A couple Vintique pics*