Today I helped change the perception that iPhone photos were very bad. This guy was using an iPhone 8 Plus. He was using Live Photos all the time. He learned to lock AE/AF and override exposure. He fell in love with his iPhone again. 😎👍🏻😊

numericcitizen.micro.blog

@numericcitizen There are people that still think iPhone photos are very bad?

@pratik yes because they don’t use the camera app as they could / should

@martinfeld @numericcitizen I use the Live Photo option as default and have always found unintended benefits post-photo-taking.

@pratik concurrence

@numericcitizen I thought Live Photo’s was a gimmick when Apple announced them. But after getting my iPhone X I love them and wouldn’t want to do without. Great for getting the best possible facial expression from kids, as one example.

@ronguest @pratik @martinfeld @numericcitizen I turned Live Photos off as soon as I finally ended up with a phone that supported them, because I’m rarely ever taking a photo of anything where motion is present or desireable. I have recently started selectively enabling it, either as a quick substitute for video when I also wanted a still, or where I thought it might produce something useful. For me it’s still a kind of a gimmick, but an occasionally useful/interesting one. Obviously, for other types of photography (e.g. kids, as Ron mentioned) it can be a lot more of a true feature. If you have to turn it off to get good photos, though, then Apple’s doing something wrong.

My real complaint here, as it is with a lot of “new Apple”, is that there’s a paucity of good/useful help/documentation with the Camera features (and I read the iPhone/iOS manual cover-to-cover in iBooks when I got my first iPhone); most of what I’ve learned about basic Camera functionality I’ve picked up from someone’s random comment sometime… :-(

@ronguest @pratik @numericcitizen You make a good point about the documentation, @smokey. I've noticed that the company has really shifted to more ad hoc tips and tutorials, such as the Tips app, its YouTube channel and highlighted iPhone-feature pages on its website, rather than longer guides. That can be frustrating if you want something more comprehensive. (Although perhaps there’s still such stuff in the iOS guides on Apple Books!) 😀 As far as Live Photos go, I really enjoy using the feature when people are blowing out candles on birthday cakes or for long-exposure shots over water. Great to have!

@martinfeld @pratik @smokey the next generation is not reading as we used to... they prefer YouTube videos to see and understand our world... Apple is responsing to this new reality I think.

@numericcitizen I don’t so much mind the shifting formats (though I would still prefer to read a good manual/guide and/or have it handy for a refresher) as the ad-hoc and scattered nature of the instruction. Usage information is scattered between Tips (new tips for each OS only, though), the App Store “stories”, the website, etc. All of the incremental things are fine if you’ve been using iOS since the beginning, but it would be much more helpful generally to have everything in one place (even if it just linked out to various items, at worst) so that you can progress from switching modes & options to setting focus to adjusting exposure and so forth. // @martinfeld @pratik