iPhone: The Missing Manual: Covers All Models with 3.0 Software-including the iPhone 3GS

iPhone 3GS Picture-Taking Goodies
by David Pogue

If you have an iPhone 3GS, then you’re in for some extra camera goodness. See the white box in the center of the screen? That’s telling you where the iPhone thinks the most important part of the photo is. That’s where it will focus; that’s what it examines to calculate the overall brightness of the photo (exposure); and that’s the portion that will determine the overall white balance of the scene (that is, the color cast).

But often, dead-center is not the most important part of the photo. The cool thing is that you can tap somewhere else in the scene to move that white square—to make the camera recalculate the focus, exposure, and white balance.

Here’s when you might want to do this tapping: 1) When the whole image looks too dark or too bright. If you tap a dark part of the scene, you’ll see the whole photo brighten up; if you tap a bright part, the whole photo will darken a bit. You’re telling the camera, “Redo your calculations so this part has the best exposure; I don’t really care if the rest of the picture gets brighter or darker.” 2) When the scene has a color cast. If the photo looks, for example, a little bluish or yellowish, tap a different spot in the scene—the one you care most about. The iPhone recomputes its assessment of the white balance. 3) When you’re in macro mode. If the foreground object is very close to the lens—4 to 8 inches away—the iPhone automatically goes into macro (super closeup) mode. In this mode, you can do something really cool: You can defocus the background. The background goes soft, slightly blurry, just like the professional photos you see in magazines. Just make sure you tap the foreground object.

• Use it as a phone -- save time with things like Visual Voicemail, contact searching, and more
  
• Treat it as an iPod -- listen to music, upload and view photos, and fill the iPhone with TV shows and movies
  
• Take the iPhone online -- get online, browse the Web, read and compose email in landscape, send photos, contacts, audio files, and more
  
• Go beyond the iPhone -- use iPhone with iTunes, sync it with your calendar, and learn about the App Store, where you can select from thousands of iPhone apps

Unlock the full potential of your iPhone with the book that should have been in the box.