Lessons

Lesson Info

Q & A with Demo

We're here to take some of your questions and I know a lot of you had some questions during the broadcast. So I'm going to take those one by one and do my best to answer issues that you're having with your phone or perhaps just things we didn't quite cover in the class. So, the first question is, between the 7 and the 7 Plus, is there a difference in capturing details? Well, one of the cool things about the 7 Plus is it has what's called "Portrait Mode." And I like to look at this as a faux, F-A-U-X, faux macro mode. When you shoot with the portrait mode on the 7 Plus, it has you get a certain distance from the subject. And what it will do is it will make the background go completely out of focus. In other words, it acts like a macro lens. So in essence, you are shooting things a lot closer up and in detail with that macro mode. But as far as the sensor is concerned, the sensors are the same on both the 7 and the 7 Plus so there's no difference in terms of sharpness or quality of image...

between the two. But with that macro mode, it makes it really fun, or excuse me, the portrait mode makes it really fun to go in and take close-up shots of things because it'll make that background go out of focus for a really, really cool effect that makes your eye go to the place you want it to go in your images. Okay. Next question, does the selfie cam still have the same low light capabilities? Would you suggest brightening your screen in low light or would that make the image grainy? Really great question. The selfie cam on the front of the camera, I should say, if you turn around, I call the front of the camera, the part that faces you when you're looking at your phone, that is definitely a lower megapixel camera. The lens is not as good on the front side as it is on the rear. The rear lens has the ability to open up an aperture, which is much better for low light capability. So the selfie cam won't have the same capability as the rear camera. And brightening your screen, there's a difference between brightening your screen and actually increasing the exposure. In the class, you saw me hit and hold in low light conditions. You saw me, there's Lacey over there. She's going to... You saw me hit and hold the camera and that AE auto-focus lock, yellow banner comes across the top. And then I can scroll upwards to "Brighten or increase my exposure" of the image. Now, it can make your images more grainy but there's a lot of factors that go into that rather than just increasing the exposure or reducing it. And actually, underexposed images, darker images tend to have more noise in them than better exposed images. Now, with that being said, a lot of folks use the actual brightening mode in the phone. So for example, using the brightness dial here to brighten their screen. That won't have any impact on your images at all. All it does is help you see the screen better. So keep in mind, there's a couple of differences there. But overall, the selfie camera in the front is definitely not as quite of higher quality as the rear camera on the back. So, something to take note. But with the 7 and the 7 Plus, the selfie cam has been improved dramatically as far as megapixel and resolution goes, so that right there is going to make things look better. Okay. Next question. Do you have some favorite camera apps? The native camera is great but sometimes, another camera app seems necessary to capture the image envisioned. And this one's from Christopher Glenn. Thanks, Christopher, for your question. I do have a couple of favorite camera apps. ProCamera is wonderful. And Camera Plus is wonderful. And you saw me editing in Camera Plus. But both cameras have the ability to take advantage of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus' raw capabilities. ProCamera has the ability to shoot in what's called "Manual Mode," which is pretty neat. So, Manual Mode, when you go to your settings here in ProCamera, you can actually choose Manual Mode or Shutter Priority and ISO Priority Mode. So, this allows you to have a little bit more control over your exposure inside the camera, and it has a lot of features like being able to customize white balance. It has an anti-shake feature, which of course now the 7 and 7 Plus have that optical image stabilization. But anyway, these things add to the ability to take a good image, okay? So, and of course, you can go wide or zoom in, that kind of thing. I just love the way the Camera Plus app functions, for lack of a better word. And then if I truly want to pop into manual, I can do so without any issues and it just makes actually taking control of your image in the iPhone that much more fun. So yeah, ProCamera's an awesome one. Camera Plus is really good, too. And of course, both allow you to take advantage of those raw features that the iPhone 7 can now shoot, that file format, I should say. All right. Next question. What's your go-to app for editing images on the iPhone? Well, I demonstrated Camera Plus in the class but I also love Photogene, which you can see here on my screen. Photogene 4 is a wonderful app. It allows you the features that us pro photographers use, things like curves, bumps, and retouching. You could see I have one of my images already in here. This is a professional image that I actually shot with my DSLR. But it allows you, Photogene allows you to do things like clone, and spot healing, and retouch that's actually Photoshop features. So I really love Photogene 4, it's a great app for doing that. So check that one out, always fun. Then, of course, there's some fun apps that give you interesting effects, like old-time photo effects. The black and white master one is really cool. Mextures is really awesome. It allows you to put textures on top of your images. So, say, for example, you shoot a really cool wall that's old, an old brick wall. Then you can lay that as a texture down on top of images here and there. So Snapseed is also a really good one. And Pic Stitch, of course, allows you to do a collage, as we call it, where you can put multiple images inside one frame to show a collection of images in one frame rather than just one frame at a time. So hopefully, that gives you a couple different options for editing your images on your iPhone and having some fun. All right. Does the physical size of the 7 Plus change anything with image quality? Absolutely not. The sensors are both the same in the 7 and 7 Plus. All it really does for you is give you a bigger screen to look at. And I don't know about you but I love to use my phone for searching the internet. It's the device I happen to have on me at almost all times. So being able to see the bigger text, as you get older, you're going like that. I love having a bigger screen for that reason alone. And I haven't really found it to be a problem holding it to my ear or putting it in my back pocket. Of course, this is all personal preference and what you like to have in terms of size of your device but in terms of image quality and how the camera performs, it's exactly the same whether you get the 7 or the 7 Plus. The 7 Plus just has a few more features associated with it, like that dual-lens capability. All right. How do I enlarge the subjects in pano to see more detail like I can in other modes? And how do I shoot this horizontal versus portrait? Susie, this is a really good question and I think I know what you're asking. The pano mode is definitely a special effect kind of mode, so I'll go ahead and pop into Pano right here on my phone. And if you've used pano mode, you know that you can continuously take an image. So if I start pressing pano mode here, it asks me to keep my arrow on the centerline of what I'm looking at. And we just get to see the studio here, which is fun. And Lacey, line producer sitting over there. And it asks you to go pretty slowly and you can... Oh, "Slow down," moving too fast. You can actually create a neat, oh, slow down, slow down. You can create a neat 180-degree view, even a 360-degree view of the scene that you're looking at. But as you can see, it's super-wide-angle. So, everything's always going to look further away with the pano image than with the other modes, okay? The other thing is, you have to shoot this in vertical format. So, of course, when the image is already shot, I can turn it horizontal and see what's meant to be a horizontal image. But as far as shooting the image, you have to shoot it this vertical format. You can't flip the camera to a horizontal view like you can with the other modes, so just keep that in mind. Pano is a special effect. It's meant to allow you to make a 180 or 360-degree view of your surroundings. And it's not necessarily the best mode to shoot when you want to see more detail on something. I hope that answers your question, Susie. Okay. Are there video editing or video capturing apps that you would recommend? The video features on the iPhone are incredible. And I always recommend FiLMiC Pro, an incredible video shooting and video editing software. There are movies out there, a movie called Tangerine, that was completely shot on the iPhone using FiLMiC Pro. So, check it out, it's a neat app. There's lots of things to do with it. You can adjust your frame rate. You can adjust your resolution. You can adjust your cropping ratio. It's pretty amazing shooting video inside FiLMiC Pro and then, of course, editing it there as well. Okay. Next question. Have you tried printing from the 7 Plus? If so, how did you like the results and how large have you printed? Amazing question, Mariann. Thank you so much for that question. I actually just got this phone myself. It's brand-new and out, so I have yet to actually print from it. But printing isn't necessarily a factor of, well, it is a factor of the camera. Obviously, the better quality sensor you have in your camera, the better quality prints you're going to end up with in the end. But what's also neat about the 7 Plus is the fact that you can shoot in RAW and have very large megabyte files. Megabytes really come into play when you're printing. And it doesn't matter what surface you're printing on. You can print on canvas, regular paper, metal, any surface. But what does matter in terms of ability to print in size is having enough megabytes in your file to do so. Now, when I shoot with this iPhone and I'll go ahead and go into, let's see, what was I working in? I was working in, let's go into Camera Plus. I shot a couple of images in Camera Plus. This one yesterday. Let's go ahead and look at this one. We were having fun when we were shooting the course. So also, this is the shot of the production crew and my producer, content producer sitting there on her computer. And I'm going to go to Info. What I want you to notice is right there where it says, "iPhone 7 Plus JPEG plus RAW," and then right below that, it says, "4032 by 3024, 18 megabytes." That's how big my file size is. That's a huge file, you guys. When I had my professional DSLR camera that was 12 megapixels, it used to shoot images this size. So if I have an image that was taken well-exposed, in good lighting conditions, and it's nice and sharp, I can print that image, an 18 megabyte image, up to 24 by 30 in size with very good quality results. Now, if I print that large of a file at an 8 by 10, I'm going to get incredible results, excellent, excellent clarity, Christmas, and beautiful, a beautiful print. The larger I go, 30 by 40, 40 by 60, and up from there, I'll start to see the image get a little fuzzy or pixelated or just not quite as high-quality. But also remember, huge images like that that are 40 by 60 in size are meant to look at at a distance. You're not going to be right up close looking at it because it's like looking at a movie theater in the front row. Too big, okay? So, it's okay, especially for the consumer, to have images printed at 30 by 40 that maybe aren't quite as high-resolution. Now as pros and printing experts, we want the highest megapixel file possible so we can blow up to any size we desire. Now, there are softwares out there that will actually resize your image and for lack of a better term, this isn't exactly what happens, but create pixels in order for us to expand our image and print to a large size, but that's high-tech software that the pros use, things like Photoshop, Perfect Resize, things like that. But for the most part, what matters in printing is the size of the file, megabytes as far as enlarging, and then also the quality of the exposure and the sensor that you're using to take the actual image. This new iPhone 7 has a much-improved sensor. It's still a small sensor compared to a DSLR, so you're not going to get the same quality you would from a professional-level camera, but you're going to get great results, you're going to be very happy with it, especially with images the consumer wants to print. Most consumers aren't printing to huge sizes, so you should be able to get just as good a quality of a print from iPhone 7, maybe even more so than you did from the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. With that larger sensor, a little bit larger than the 6 and the 6 Plus, excuse me, the 6S, and the ability to shoot in RAW, with a good quality exposure, you should be able to get an amazing print out of it. Okay. Any tips on how to best shoot still life, still life objects with an iPhone? Do you hold at eye level, brighten on the screen, use white balance? And this question is from Lindsey. Lindsey, the best thing that I can say when shooting still life objects is, number one, get one of those awesome little tripods that you can stick your iPhone on, okay? That right there is going to be a huge improvement because you'll avoid any shutter shake at all. Now, granted, the iPhone has, the 7 now has optical image stabilization across the board, both with the 7 and the 7 Plus, but even so, shooting still life and setting yourself on a tripod is probably one of the best ways possible to create really, really stellar images. The other thing that I would suggest is simply lighting your still life from the side. Don't blast it with front light. The beauty of a still life is seeing the textures and the way the shadows play across everything. So if you light the image from the side and then shoot it from the front, you're going to get a much more interesting image. So as far as where to hold it, yeah, camera angle does matter. But really, it's about you being the artist and how you like to shoot. Some people like to shoot still lifes from above. Some people like to shoot them from the side or at a three-quarter angle. That's entirely up to you and your artistic desires and how you want to see the image. But most importantly, remember, an image is a rectangle. It's a square. So if you give lots of negative space to one side or the other, or place the image on what I call a power point, which is one of those rule of thirds where you split your image, your frame into three parts, and then put the subject or that still life on one of those thirds, you're going to create a much more interesting and pleasing composition. So just be thinking about that more than anything and get yourself on a tripod. And I guarantee you, those still life images, you're going to be a lot happier with. Okay. Does the 7/7 Plus have the live photo feature like the 6S did? Yes, it does. If so, can you edit live photos the same way you do for regular images? Yes, you can. You can edit those images the same way. Now, note, the live is like a GIF at the beginning of the image. It's a motion. It's just a half, split-second of motion before the still image comes up. And when you edit an image, you may see a shift a little bit from when the GIF goes into the actual frame of the image. So just note that sometimes, some editing applications that you put on your image, black and white or maybe a curves bump to brighten it, you may see a shift, as you scroll through the image, you may see a shift in what happens from the GIF to the actual JPEG file, so keep that in mind. But yeah, you can, for the most part, edit the live photos the same way that you do for regular images. Okay. I don't want to transfer all the images from my old phone. Is there an easy way to transfer some images from your iPhone 6 to your 7 Plus? Oh, yeah. I totally can relate. I think I have, oh goodness, how many images do I have on this thing? I think it's close to 2,000 or 3,000 now? Yeah, it's ridiculous how many images I have on this phone. But I have to admit, I did transfer them all over. The really good way to keep track of all this and actually, file handling and file management is the nemesis of being a photographer because we take so many images. And it's easiest if you do it as you go. I know the temptation is to shoot a bunch of images and go, "Oh, I'll take care of it later." And then you never do, and all of a sudden, you have 10,000 images on your iPhone. I totally get it. But when you plug into iTunes and do a backup, it's going to save all of those images on your iTunes, and then when you restore onto the new phone, it's going to transfer all those over. So, what I would now do is go through and get your images, let's see here. Get your images and favorite them. So for example, we took a bunch of selfies and we're having fun. You can press the heart and favorite which ones you like. So I have a couple different images of me and my producer Cathy here, just one, excuse me, and a couple images of me with my name in lights, because I just thought that was really cool. Getting your name in lights is a, I don't know, anyway. And I like this one the best, so I'll go ahead and save that one or at least put it to my favorites but not the others. But then, when you go into your catalog or collections, you can actually see your favorites in your phone under "Albums," okay? So here's my favorites. These are the ones that I actually put a heart next to. So from there, you can selectively take those but just keep in mind, it's not an easy thing to do. And the best practice is to actually edit the images as you go and delete the ones that you don't necessarily want over time. So yes, if you do a backup and restore through iTunes, they are all going to transfer over. What I would suggest is getting them all off your phone and onto a hard drive and then just wiping clean to begin with so that you don't have any images on your new phone. The other ones are backed up and then you're good to go. The other thing you can do is actually save images to the cloud, to iCloud. And that's a really great way of storing because it's offsite, it's in a cloud, you know it's always going to be there. Well, hopefully, as long as Apple keeps its servers up-to-date, right? But anyway, if they're on the cloud, then you can restore from the cloud at any time. What's nice about that is it's an offsite backup and you don't need to worry about it. However, what's negative about that is your iCloud account is going to get full in a hurry and then you're going to have to start paying for storage space. But honestly, having the peace of mind and sanity of knowing that my images are backed up offsite, as well as in a hard drive at my home, makes me feel better. So, having those two sources of backup ultimately will make you feel like, "Oh, if I lose my phone, somebody steals it, or I drop it in the toilet and it's ruined, I won't lose all my precious memories." That's the most important. Okay. How do I disable noise reduction on the iPhone 7 to eliminate soft, waxy skin? That is from Melinda. Melinda, I know what you mean. I'm not sure there's really a good way, there's not really a way to do this. Because the sensor is so small on the iPhone, just naturally, it has to be because it's a small camera, it's going to produce some noise. So Apple has already created a noise reduction automatically to each image. So, there's not really any way to turn that off, so to say, but what I would suggest is sharpening your image a little bit to make things better. But overall, it has to be that way because the sensor is so small to begin with and in low light especially. If you're trying to shoot an image in low light, I'm sure you've seen that noise. And that's what actually makes images acceptable is to have that noise reduction. So that about wraps it up for our Apple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus class. Using this amazing device to take great photos. Of course, it's always good fun to have a camera on you at all times and the smartphone revolution has really made that possible for all of us. So, if I can just reiterate one more time, we're taking so many more images than we ever did before in any generation past, but we're losing them. We're not backing them up. We're not printing them. And ultimately, what's the point of taking a picture if you don't enjoy it and have it out and walk by it every day of your life? So make sure that you print, make sure that you preserve those memories. Be sure that you frame them or put them in an album on the wall because, ultimately, when your kids are grown, that's what they're going to want to see. They're going to want to see that there's a memory alive and left, not something that's hidden on a digital hard drive and doesn't see the light of day except once a year when you happen to pull your iPhone out and scroll through. So, I hope this class was informative, helped you figure out if you want to upgrade to the iPhone 7 or perhaps it just might have made you that much better of a photographer today. Go out there. Enjoy your phone and take more pictures, and print them for the rest of generations behind you to enjoy.