Portraits · iPhone Photography

Portraits

One of the biggest differences in smartphone cameras and professional cameras is the depth of field. If you notice in professional portraits, the subject is in perfect focus while the background is blurry. This is a great look for portraits, products, automobiles, and others. Although smartphones can’t naturally get this look, there is a built in AI feature that gives this look - Portrait Mode. Many people know about this feature and have used it, but there are some techniques and settings that allow this to be even better.

F stops

What the portrait mode is mimicking from a professional camera is aperture. Aperture allows more light to hit the sensor, and in turn gives that blur look. However, it seems somewhat backwards. Lower aperture = more light = more blur. Aperture is measured by “F Stops.” Don’t ask me how this came to be, but that’s the way it is. And just like you can adjust the F stops in a camera, iPhone gives you the ability to adjust the “F stops” (blur) in portrait mode. Sometimes, the blur just looks too much and unnatural. So you can raise the F stops in the hidden menu. The same way we reach the hidden menu for exposure, you can get there to adjust the F stops. Simply swipe up on your screen (you may have to swipe twice in Portrait mode), or hit the little arrow at the top of the screen. You then want to tap on the fancy “f” icon, and you adjust it from there. I never want to make the photo look like it used AI. If the blur is too much, the subject will get a weird ring around their head and body that doesn’t look professional at all. So, make sure you’re using the right aperture.

2. Lighting

One thing that iPhone has that professional cameras don’t have is insane AI. And one of the features that this brings is the portrait lighting settings. If you swipe up the first time to get the hidden menu, you’ll see a wheel of different lighting settings. The default is “Natural Lighting,” but there are plenty of other options. For practical purposes, I would never use the last three settings - “Stage Light,” “Stage Light Mono,” “High-Key Light Mono.” These simply look too artificial. But the others can be incredible options. My personal fav is the studio light. This just makes portraits of people even better. It adds more light on the person’s face that makes it look like it was taken in a studio, which look amazing.

3. Lens

Just like in regular photos, the lens choice can change the photo’s look completely. One way to make the portrait even better is to use the telephoto lens. If you don’t have a telephoto lens, it’s not necessary to get good photos, but it does help to get even better portraits. You can also purchase telephoto lenses if you want, but they are around $100 or so. The wide angle lens (1x) is a great camera, but it can cause some mild distortion on a person. Have you ever heard that a camera will add 10 pounds to a person? That’s what the 1x lens can do sometimes. But with the telephoto lens (2x, 3x or 5x for iPhone 15 Pros) this is no longer an issue. Everything looks more natural when using the telephoto lens.

And there you have it! Some tips to get even better portrait photos. Let me know if you have any questions, and let me see your portrait photos! You can post them in the Favorite Shots discussion.

Happy Shooting! 📸📱✨

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iPhone Photography

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