What's the best way to adjust exposure on an i-phone 5s?

dromunds

Thanks in advance for any advice on setting exposure levels, etc. Having trouble in particular with blown out shots during concerts.

msg

I keep an iPhone 5s for music and the camera because the one on my Android phone sucks. Just playing around:

• There's a setting for HDR with the default set to Auto, I think? Maybe see if yours is On or Off. With it set to Auto, it *should* manage it for you, but I've never really had the best of results with auto-anything. That said, Apple's pretty smart.
• Do you know you can also lock AE/AF, and then recompose?
• Do you know you can tap to choose a focus area, and then drag up or down on the screen to adjust the exposure?
• There's a slightly more complicated method involving the use of an app I've enjoyed for years called Camera+. It lets you choose one spot for focus, and then a second for exposure. I find it easier to manage exposure with this.

I've noticed the effect you mentioned in my own concert photos. I've always been pretty pleased with the iPhone's performance for photos in even just moderate lighting, but broad exposures I think have always been difficult in photography, even with film, so I've mostly just chalked it up to device limitation. What I try to do, though, is shoot for something in the middle, and then use highlight and shadow tools in post processing. Still playing around with the best method for this, though. Almost seems easier to pull a bit of detail from shadow than to recover detail from completely blown out highlights, which would mean leaning more to exposing for the highlights in a frame and fixing the rest later. This works best with RAW format, but I don't think the iPhone 5s offers that.

dromunds

Yeah, I'd be surprised if the 5s shoots RAW. I'm a neophyte on shooting with a 5s, so I appreciate the advice. Will check out your thoughts further. The 5s takes awesome photos but concerts have been a problem lately especially. And dark video in low light also.

msg

Sure thing. I just noticed that slidey exposure thing, myself, haha, but do vaguely recall now it being featured in a product demo video back when the 5s first came out. I think that was a new feature for the iPhone back then, being able to manually adjust exposure on the fly, mid-filming. Give it a try - you'll see the little sunlight icon and then drag up or down anywhere on the screen; doesn't have to be on the icon/focus point itself. I imagine the newer devices may have gotten better about doing this automatically.