Useful Smartphone Photography Tips for iPhone 8

Review of the iPhone 8 Plus phone

The new iPhone 8 Plus camera has been touted as one of the best today. With it’s dual 12 MP camera lenses, it can take those food photos with a depth of field that you used to only get with a DSLR. Not anymore.

Three took us on a Photowalk around Bermondsey, Tower Bridge and South Bank recently to test out the photography functionality of these new iPhones. The iPhone 8 Plus is so much better than my current iPhone 6 Plus.

iPhone 8 is the Phone For Bloggers

At first, you would think that the 5.5 inch size would be too big and unwieldy to handle. You actually get used to the size very quickly and its very comfortable to hold. Within half an hour or handling the new phone, it seemed strange going back to my old phone. The new phone’s screen is 5.5 inches of Retina HD display which makes your images look wonderful. It also has True Tone technology which automatically adjusts the white balance.

According to Apple:

iPhone 8 features a more advanced 12MP camera. With a larger, faster sensor. A new colour filter. Deeper pixels. And optical image stabilisation for photos and videos.

Portrait Lighting changes the game

Taking pictures in portrait mode is now better, with clearer and brighter foreground and blurred backgrounds. Incorporated in Portrait mode are several professional portrait lighting effects. I like the Stage Light mode which captures faces in black and white and the background is blacked out. You can see some great portrait shots here.

Here are some shots I took at Maltby Street Market. The scotch egg picture is taken in Portrait mode, sharp in front, blurred at the back.

The picture of the gin bottle at the top was also taken using the Portrait mode.

Southbank Photowalk Autumn Leaves — Autumn Leaves – Vibrant colours

The time lapse function has improved with this new version. I learnt that you can take some great photos of things that are in motion using the time lapse function. Something to experiment with soon.

Slow sync flash. I never use the flash on my phone as it creates a very harsh image and dark background. With the slow sync, it keeps the shutter open for a bit longer, merges with ambient light to give a more balanced photo.

The new iPhone 8 also takes videos in 4k and you can record your screen too.

The zoom feature has been improved to include an optical zoom which gives you a better quality image than the digital zoom. The new HEIF and HEVC formats used in the new phone saves at half the size, so it takes up less of your phone memory.

On this Photowalk, we were given some challenges that would make full use of the camera. Here are some of the images.

A post shared by May EatCookExplore ?✈️⛱ (@eatcookexplore) on Oct 22, 2017 at 10:46am PDT

Smartphone Photography Tips for Bloggers

Take photos from different angles.

Look at buildings from a different angle. Don’t always use the “eye-see” angle. Take photos from the ground up or from high up. Getting a different perspective makes a more unusual image. Sometimes, the architecture can help you with that.

2. Use Symmetry

Symmetry is very pleasing to the eye. Where you see something that can look more powerful when its symmetrical try to take that shot.

This shot is one of the gates at the Tower of London. It’s not the perfect example of a symmetrical photo but it gives you an idea.

3. Food photos with depth of field

Using the iPhone 8 Plus Portrait feature, it just focuses on one point and blurs the background. If I took this with my old iPhone, the whole picture will be in focus. This looks like an image I would have taken with my proper camera.

4. Using Time-Lapse

I always thought that time-lapse was just a speeded up video but it’s more than that. It saves as a video file on your phone but it is made up of a series of photos. You can use time-lapse to photograph a moving sequence. Give it a go.

6. Framing

Use structures to frame your photo. Sometimes, you see a different perspective when you take a photo. Use nearby structures to frame you photo. In this one below, I used the branches and the balustrade to frame the boat and Tate Modern across the river. See the Instagram pic above where the Shard is framed by the two structures in the foreground.

This one, just because, DOG. Look at the colours.

I can’t wait to upgrade my phone to an iPhone 8 Plus. This will make it so much easier for travel as you can take some really high-quality images without carrying around a lot of gear. Definitely the best smartphone camera today.

You can find out more specs of the iPhone 8 Plus here.

Some great photography apps for the iPhone

Adobe Lightroom CC for manual control of your camera. You can slow down the shutter speed and create some dynamic photos.
Roll World- This one creates really fun rolled circular images with your panomrma shots. Give it a go.
Colour Screen – This is a photographer’s tool which turns your phone screen a solid colour to use when you need to bounce off some coloured light.

EatCookExplore was a guest of Three on this Photowalk