Skip to content

How to stop your iPhone from automatically switching lenses when shooting video

2017 May 10
by RSS Feed

By default, iOS decides on your behalf when it’s appropriate to use iPhone 7 Plus’s telephoto camera and when to switch to the wide angle shooter, which may lead to some unwanted results during video recording.

If the phone switches to or from the second lens while you’re zooming in or out, glitches may appear in your video. That’s why Apple was kind enough to provide a toggle in Settings for overriding this behavior at any time, here’s how to use it.

With its dual-lens system, iPhone 7 Plus is an awesome portable camera for both pro and wannabe iPhone photographers. In addition to powering depth-of-field photography, the dual twelve-megapixel cameras give you the benefits of an 2X optical zoom when taking pictures and shooting video.

The problem with lens switching

Due to an ƒ/1.8 aperture and optical image stabilization, the wide angle camera captures sharper and more stable images than its telephoto counterpart. The two lenses also have different aperture and physical position, which affects image quality.

Glitches in recorded videos are caused by automatic lens switching, which kicks in if you zoom in closer than 2X. At that point, the phone switches to the wide angle lens to help digital zoom achieve best possible results.

iOS’s digital zoom algorithm must work with as sharp and stable images as humanly possible.

Because the telephoto lens lacks the lossless optical image stabilization feature, the digital zoom algorithm switches to the wide angle camera which allows it to work with clearer, brighter and sharper image data.

To prevent accidentally running into jarring transitions while recording video on your iPhone 7 Plus, you should disable the automatic lens switching feature, here’s how.

How to stop your iPhone from switching lens when shooting video

1) Launch the Settings app.

2) Tap Photos & Camera.

3) Tap Record Video underneath the Camera heading.

4) Slide the Lock Camera Lens switch at the bottom to the ON position.

Your iPhone will no longer automatically switch between camera lenses while shooting video.

This setting only takes effect when you’re actually shooting video. When you toggle the Lock Camera Lens to the ON position, your iPhone will keep on using whichever lens you started recording with. You’ll want to keep this in mind when fiddling with this setting.

BTW, I learned about this feature via the always informative iLounge.

Speaking of which, iLounge explains how this setting affects your video recordings:

In most cases, you’ll simply be relying on digital zoom rather than optical. However, if you begin recording a video while zoomed in to beyond 2X, you may not be able to zoom back out, as you’ll already be using the 2X lens.

iOS uses a number of factors to determine whether it should use the optical 2X lens or simply rely on digital zoom, such as in lower light conditions where the faster primary lens has an advantage, so you won’t always see the impact of the Lock Camera Lens setting.

And that’s it, boys and girls.

Any questions?

If you have any questions regarding lens switching on iPhone 7 Plus, please post them in the comment section below and our knowledgable writers will try to answer them.

Be sure to pass along this article to the friends and family you support.

You can shoot us your ideas regarding future coverage to [email protected].

Source link: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/05/10/how-to-stop-lens-switching-iphone-7-plus/

Leave a Reply

Note: You may use basic HTML in your comments. Your email address will not be published.

Subscribe to this comment feed via RSS