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How to shoot on iPhone 7

376 points| waqasaday | 8 years ago |apple.com | reply

200 comments

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[+] swah|8 years ago|reply
I'm an Android user for 10 years now but.. every time one of those websites/ads appears its always from the same company.

Apple is so ahead of the other companies on actually promoting their stuff.

[+] gordon_freeman|8 years ago|reply
I am happy Android user as well and own Nexus 6P. One thing I tell everyone is that N6P takes as good photos as iPhone7/7P but Google is doing so poor job in communicating that through their marketing.
[+] nimchimpsky|8 years ago|reply
No idea what your first line means.
[+] robertwalsh0|8 years ago|reply
These bite-sized video that show the real UI are a great idea. It seems obvious now in retrospect for them to execute something like this - I know so many iPhone shooters that will love this resource.
[+] terrywang|8 years ago|reply
I've been an Android user since Nexus S (Android 2.3), Nexus 4, Nexus 5, all the way up to Nexus 5X (7.1.x).

The LG made Nexus 5X bricked (suddenly rebooted and never boots again) at 13 months old due to a known hardware fault, there is a lawsuit against LG in California https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/lg-bootloop-defe...

My Nexus 5 had power button issue (it automatically switch off, sigh...) Nexus 4 build quality was bad, too.

I lost 3-4 days worth of photos (was travelling and didn't backup). Luckily I was able to boot once (out of 40 attempt) after it bricked by giving it some heat (thermal issue). Backed up the photos before it quickly died again (there are videos on YouTube to fix the problem using heat gun), finally I decided I've had enough with crappy Nexus phones (I am fine with Android though). Pixel / Pixel XL is more expensive than iPhone 7 or plus, really cannot justify.

Finally I've moved to iOS again, after 6-7 years as I decided not to manually flash phone OS and root any more (I have my Arch Linux workstations and MBPs). My requirements for a phone comes down to: - Reliable hardware and high quality finish - Strong hardware based/accelerated encryption - Fingerprint recognition and authentication - Stable and Swift OS (greatly improved with APFS, regained faith in Apple) - Good camera - the best camera is the one with you - Long battery life (ideally support both fast charge and wireless charge)

The iPhone 7 Plus meets all. So far I've been on it for 2 weeks. iOS definitely has better attention to details and better UX at the cost of more control over the OS, a lot of apps on Android that doesn't support fingerprint authentication support that on iOS, I was surprised to find out.

The only complains are that 1. there is no HN client as good as Materialistic (let me know if you know any...) 2. no strongSwan native client (Gboard has introduced more language support so it's no longer a big concern). Other than that I am happy.

[+] koyote|8 years ago|reply
Anecdotally, I have a similar timeline of phones (Nexus 4, 5, 5x) except for the fact that they are all still running fine (the Nexus 4 now runs as a wifi-only portable music player paired to a bluetooth speaker).

My SO, on the other hand, has gone through 4 iPhones in the meantime and all either having to be replaced due to cracks in the glass' front/back or hardware issues.

That being said, I do like the general feeling of an iPhone in my hands, it feels well-built and that is what a lot of people are looking for. But as a hacker I could never own an iPhone. Whenever I've used my SO's phones over the years (iPhone 4s, 5 and now 6s) I've just been extremely frustrated with the piss-poor UX. It has definitely improved in the last 2-4 years due to 'borrowing' a lot from Android in terms of notifications and sharing data between apps but it simply does not even get close to the ease of use of Android (particularly in the 'doing things' department).

As an example of what I mean: a couple of years ago, if you wanted to upload a picture you were viewing to Dropbox (or anywhere really) you had to close the photo viewer, go to the app you wanted to share the picture with, find the picture you were looking at previously by browsing through the gallery again and then share the picture. Things like this have improved but the flow is still often quite cumbersome and I often run into similar hurdles when trying to perform very common tasks, I believe Instagram still opens up any location in Apple Maps without an option to choose an other map app for example. The notification screen, while better than it was before, is also awful compared to Android.

[+] Mister_Snuggles|8 years ago|reply
I use the built in VPN client to connect to StrongSwan servers on a regular basis. It works just fine.
[+] h1d|8 years ago|reply
I like minihack better than materialistic.
[+] internet2000|8 years ago|reply
iOS supports IKEv2 VPNs natively, no need for an app.
[+] efrafa|8 years ago|reply
Minihack is great hn client
[+] Markoff|8 years ago|reply
anecdotally i had in Malaysia noname Spice smartphone, never had hardware issue, then i had in China Amoi smartphone, never had hardware issue, then I had Lenovo, never had hardware issue, now I have more than year Xiaomi, no hardware issue

what exactly have these anecdotes to do with quality of Android smartphone and switching to iPhone?

also for that matter i use mobile phones 20 years, must have more than 20 of them (in 00s i used to have two phones at same time and switch them every year), guess how many got broken? zero

[+] darkstar999|8 years ago|reply
So _that's_ why they replaced my 5X out of warranty at no charge.
[+] hprotagonist|8 years ago|reply
Huh. I did _not_ know that you could force touch and slide to manually adjust exposure.
[+] rubatuga|8 years ago|reply
Wow, these are really great tips for anybody thinking that their photography is a bit stagnant. Thumbs up to Apple for providing a simple, creative, and 60fps <3 videos that could be generalized to any camera.
[+] lflux|8 years ago|reply
I'm missing the "How to shoot one-handed at a concert"[0]. I'd love to have zoom not be a pinch only

[0] since my other hand is holding my drink

[+] darkstar999|8 years ago|reply
I believe the answer is "don't record at a concert because it annoys everyone else and the video is garbage anyway".
[+] tekism|8 years ago|reply
I believe the answer is just search on Instagram or facebook for the event, a lot of other people posting the same crappy concert.
[+] comex|8 years ago|reply
One possibility: shoot without zooming, go back afterward and crop, which is the same thing anyway.
[+] djrogers|8 years ago|reply
I believe the answer is "don't use digital zoom". If you've got a 7+ then you dot have either problem - there's a zoom button on the screen you can tap or drag, and there's a second camera with a zoomed view.
[+] pvg|8 years ago|reply
This may be one of the very few situations in which a perfectly practical, safe and sensible solution begins with 'Hold my beer'.
[+] grimgrin|8 years ago|reply
In jokingly cynical about a few of my friends using a pop socket and maybe they would help one handed shooting. Seems like how they function you could use one hand to hold and still pinch to zoom. Maybe?

https://www.popsockets.com

The Amazon reviews are surprisingly good.

[+] almostarockstar|8 years ago|reply
Genuine question, assuming your not trolling, when was the last time you watched a concert video that you took?
[+] cyberferret|8 years ago|reply
Maybe not on the native photo app, but one that I regularly use (Camera+) has a slider next to the shutter button that can be used to zoom in out with one finger.
[+] pbhjpbhj|8 years ago|reply
I have a cheap Android on which you can set the volume buttons to control zoom, seems like an iPhone would be able to do that too?
[+] ricw|8 years ago|reply
On the 7 plus you can zoom in and out with one hand by dragging the zoom icon left and right.
[+] bobbyi_settv|8 years ago|reply
Maybe they'll follow that up with a series on how to text while driving
[+] nsxwolf|8 years ago|reply
I love Portrait mode and have taken some photos with it that I am happy with, but really, it would be nice if they also showed us how they professionally lit that cafe, because you are never, ever going to take a photo that looks like that in the real world.
[+] custos|8 years ago|reply
The title made me think it was someone shooting an iPhone with a firearm...
[+] sundvor|8 years ago|reply
Likewise, my scan was like this: "How to shoot [an] Iphone" -> (Apple.com) -> "ON!" (doh).
[+] philipjoubert|8 years ago|reply
In case anyone is curious - these videos were shot in and around Cape Town, South Africa.
[+] sideproject|8 years ago|reply
Is there a technology to.... say.... zoom-out more? For example, when you take a selfie, sometimes things are too close.. I wish I could 'somehow' zoom-out, but I wouldn't have a starting clue how that would be achieved.
[+] lifeformed|8 years ago|reply
Nothing happens when I click on any of the play buttons. Is anyone else having this problem? This isn't the first time an apple.com site didn't work correctly for me at all...

Do I have to be on a Mac or iPhone to view it or something?

[+] throwanem|8 years ago|reply
It took a while to load on my phone (crowded spectrum, frequently crappy bandwidth) and nothing appeared to be happening until it did. Might be the same thing you're seeing.
[+] comex|8 years ago|reply
Are you using a browser that doesn't support H.264, perhaps?
[+] Comkid|8 years ago|reply
Running Chrome on Linux, videos play fine for me, they're just MP4 videos with HTML5 video controls.
[+] lucasmullens|8 years ago|reply
Broken for me too. For me it might be because my laptop has a higher device pixel ratio.
[+] naviehuynh|8 years ago|reply
Funny how they still use the old iOS theme on their player's seek bar. It has been years since the introduction of new UI and I still find it suck. Look at the share button on "Edit selfie" video, it just feels like a toy design project of some students.
[+] Tanegashima|8 years ago|reply
Apple always comes up with great soundtracks to their ads/infomercials. Sometimes made by themselves/exclusively for them.

I wish they would give developers a royalty free library for our App demo videos.

[+] juandazapata|8 years ago|reply
Anybody knows what's the genre of the music used in the videos?
[+] bluetidepro|8 years ago|reply
I don't know what genre this is considered, but I used Shazam on the music in the videos, and the artist in most of them is "Electric Mantis". Found 'em on Spotify. Good tunes.
[+] jkoschei|8 years ago|reply
Sounds like instrumental hip-hop. If you're on Spotify, check out the "Lush Vibes" mood playlist for similar.
[+] saurik|8 years ago|reply
In "how to shoot a group portrait" (or all of them, honestly ;P), one of the steps should be "turn the damned camera 90° so everyone is actually in the frame".
[+] dutchbrit|8 years ago|reply
Seems like I don't have the option to choose portrait, nor do I have the option to change exposure, is this a guide for all iPhone 7's or just the iPhone 7 plus?!
[+] rahilsondhi|8 years ago|reply
This is amazing. I wish the selfie video would talk more about angles. My girlfriend tells me my angles are always wrong :/

Also, Google should do this for Pixel.

[+] Kluny|8 years ago|reply
Hold the camera higher so you're looking up at it. Up-the-nose shots are most people's problem. It's really unflattering.
[+] sidcool|8 years ago|reply
Spot on. Pixel has a better camera than iPhone 7/plus, but the marketing efforts are missing