Adjust exposure - iOS Tutorial

- [Instructor] In most cases, iPhones do a really good job of automatically finding a good exposure. But at other times, you may need to make some adjustments to get it looking just right. The ability to modify the exposure before you take the shot is essential for taking better photos with your iPhone. Let's check out how it works with the native Camera app in iOS 14. When you open the Camera app and compose a shot, it will automatically set the focus based on what it sees in the scene. And it will also choose an exposure setting based on the varying levels of reflected light in the scene. You can easily see automatic exposure in action when you fill most of the frame with either a very dark or a very bright subject. If the subject matter is darker, such as we see here, the camera might tend to overexpose it, trying to let in more light to create a good exposure. Ideally, I prefer this particular subject to be a bit darker and not so washed out. If the scene is really bright, such as with this composition, the auto exposure setting may make it look a bit too dark because the camera is trying to compensate for what it thinks is too much reflected light. For this image, I prefer to adjust the exposure to keep the bright feeling of the original subject. When you tap on the touchscreen while you're framing your shot, that tells the camera to focus on that area. It also evaluates the reflective luminance or brightness of that area and adjusts the exposure accordingly. As you tap in different areas of the scene, you'll see the live view of the image get lighter or darker depending on the brightness of the area where you tap. You can see this here when I tap on the brighter area in the background, the scene gets darker. And when I tap on the darker area of the rail car in the foreground, it gets lighter. The area that is used to determine focus and exposure is shown by a yellow square. If you have smart HDR or normal HDR turned on, the differences may not be as significant when you tap on bright or dark areas, since the HDR feature is working behind the scenes to create a more balanced exposure. On one side of the yellow square, you'll see a small yellow sun and when you see this, simply drag up to brighten the exposure or down to darken the exposure. And you don't have to drag right on the little sun symbol, you can drag up or down anywhere on the screen when you see this. It's a really handy way to customize the exposure before you take the shot. On iPhones with dual or triple lenses, if you try to do this too close to the button for switching between the lenses, it's all too easy to accidentally start adjusting the zoom instead, so just be aware of that. The exposure adjustment control works in nearly every camera mode, including the video modes. The only mode where it does not work is panorama. You can still tap to set focus and basic exposure in panorama mode. You just can't fine tune the exposure before the shot, other than by tapping somewhere else in the scene. When you set an initial exposure, the iPhone will hold that for a few seconds but will eventually revert to its default setting of using auto exposure for evaluating the entire scene. And you can see that happening with this scene because it's mainly darker subject matter and after I set the exposure that I like and take a shot, it gets brighter when it resets back to auto exposure. Sometimes, it can be very useful to lock the focus and the exposure so that they don't change. If you want to lock both focus and exposure, press and hold on an area for a few seconds and you'll see a yellow AE/AF lock label appear. After this is activated, the focus will stay locked but you can still adjust the exposure to fine tune it by dragging up or down on the screen. When this is turned on, both the focus and the exposure are set and will not change even if the conditions in the scene become lighter or darker. AE/AF lock can be useful if you're photographing something where the lighting and the distance of the subject from the camera is consistent and you want to be sure to use the same focus and exposure settings. To turn this off, just tap on the square again or tap somewhere else on the screen. AE/AF lock works in all camera modes, even panorama. iOS 14 has a new exposure compensation feature that works very similar to exposure compensation in other types of cameras. You can find it in the additional settings, which you can see by tapping the angled arrow at the top or left side or just swiping on the screen. The plus/minus icon opens up the exposure compensation dial, allowing you to apply an adjustment to brighten or darken the exposure. If I choose a minus value, it means that whatever exposure is automatically chosen by the iPhone will be darkened by the amount that I have chosen. This can be useful for situations where you feel that the overall exposure for a given location is either too bright or too dark. In the lower left, you can see an indicator of what the exposure compensation is set to. This will be in the upper left if the iPhone is in the vertical position. If there is any clipping or highlights are being recorded as total white or dark shadow areas as total black, you'll see a red line at the end of the small exposure compensation indicator. This indicator is also a useful reminder that you do have exposure compensation turned on. This feature will remain on until you turn it off. Even after you close or quit the camera app. There's an option in the camera settings to control whether the exposure compensation indicator is visible all the time or only when you're using the feature. You can tap on the indicator in the corner to open the exposure compensation control again and set it back to zero. The ability to control the exposure before taking the shot is an essential feature in any camera. It gives you more creative control over how you capture the image, letting you get the shot you want, rather than just settling for the camera's default interpretation.