Useful Tips for Using Portrait Mode on iPhone 7 Plus

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In the iPhone 7 Plus, portrait mode is an incredible feature. This camera setting allows you to take photos of people or objects magnificently with depth-of-field effect.  The background is a blur by the effect and brings the subject into focus. A trick called bokeh for DSLR cameras.

Portrait mode

You can take some steps to ensure the highest quality image possibly when shooting in Portrait mode since the iPhone 7 Plus is not quite on par with DSLRs just yet and Apple doesn’t claim it. That means angling the camera, and avoiding certain scenes appropriately, etc.

To get stunning results there are four best tips with your iPhone 7 Plus.

Stay in Bright Conditions

The quality of the photo suffers even in dim indoor lighting.

For bright conditions, portrait mode on the iPhone 7 Plus will call. It takes pretty bad photos in any other situation. The effect needs enough light to figure out what’s in the foreground and what’s in the background and blur accordingly. It suffers when the environment starts to get dark. You are more likely to have issues with the bokeh effect either not working or incorrectly blurring parts of the subject.

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Additionally, the quality of the photo suffers even in dim indoor lighting. The photos are extremely noisy in anything but bright sunlight because the telephoto lens is at work. For letting in light than the wide-angle lens as it has a much smaller aperture.

Take your Portrait shots outdoors on a nice day. Indoor shots look fine too as long as the room has good lighting. Steer clear of the evening and night shots or environments with dim lights.

Avoid Objects with Odd Borders

Portrait mode is a lot smarter than you might think for what it is mostly an elaborate software trick. While blurring what’s behind, it does a pretty decent job correctly tracing the outline of a person’s hair to keep in focus. Still, it needs some improvement for objects with crazy borders.

Avoid Objects with Odd Borders

You might be disappointed with the results if you have particularly fuzzy hair or hair that is blowing in the wind for the shot. Plus, plants with lots of stray branches. It doesn’t fully work with the bokeh effect and leaves sometimes. Neither do objects with some transparencies such as fences.

This is something that should hopefully improve over time because it’s a software issue more than a hardware one but for now objects. People with smoother borders fair better with the bokeh effect.

Avoid Close-Up Objects

Avoid Close-Up Objects

In portrait mode, if you are trying to take close-up shots, don’t bother. You will see better success just using the standard Photo mode in the Camera. The iPhone camera can detect when you are focusing on a close-up when you take a regular photo. Automatically switch to macro mode on its own. This blurs the background much more effectively than the software tricks in portrait mode. Besides, Portrait will probably tell you to stepfather away from the object anyway. Portrait works best for objects. And people around 10 feet away will give or take.

Take Horizontal Photos

Taking vertical photo chops off a lot of the background. That gets rid of much of the bokeh effect.

I know you’re used to taking vertical photos with your iPhone in portrait orientation rather than landscape. Use Portrait mode in landscape orientation as weird as this sentence. Take photos in Portrait mode holding your iPhone sideways. So you get a nice wide photo.

Maybe it’s just a preference. On concord, this tends to make the Portrait photo look much more professional. It looks closer to a DSLR. Additionally, you get to see more of the blurred background that seems to somehow enhance the subject in focus. Taking vertical photo chops off a lot of the background and gets rid of much of the bokeh effect.


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