Working with Photos and Video on your iPod Touch
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
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Topics in this chapter include the following:
- Taking photos with your iPod touch
- Taking video on an iPod touch
- Viewing, editing, and working with photos on an iPod touch
- Viewing, editing, and working with video on an iPod touch
- Moving photos and video from an iPod touch onto a computer
The iPod touch’s camera takes very good quality photos. Because you’ll likely have your iPod touch with you at all times, it’s handy to capture photos with it whenever and wherever you are. And, you can capture video just as easily.
Whether you’ve taken them on your iPod touch or moved them from a computer onto your iPod touch, you can view your photos individually and as slideshows. You can also do some basic editing of your photos. If you decide some of the photos you’ve taken on your iPod touch are worthy of adding to your photo collection, you can move them from your iPod touch onto your computer (if you are using Photo Stream, this part is automatic). You can view and edit video and move it to your computer just like you can with photos.
Taking Photos with Your iPod touch
Current iPod touches have two camera lenses: one is located on the back side in the upper-left corner, and the other is in the top center of the front side. You can use either to take photos. Using an iPod touch’s camera is easy.
Taking Photos with the Camera App
You can use the Camera app to capture your photos, like so:
On the Home screen, tap Camera.
To capture a photo in landscape mode, rotate iPod touch so that it’s horizontal; of course, you can use either orientation to take photos just as you can with any other camera.
- Ensure the Photo/Video switch is set to Photo.
- Tap the Lens Change button to switch the camera being used for the photo. When you change the lens, the image briefly freezes and then you start seeing through the other lens. The front-side lens has fewer features than the back-side lens. For example, you can’t zoom when using the front-side lens. When you are using the front-side lens, some of the details in these steps won’t apply, but the general process is the same.
Tap Options. (If you are using the front-side lens, you have to switch to the back-side lens to change the options.)
- Set the Grid to ON to see an alignment grid over the image.
Tap Done.
- Tap the screen where you want the image to be focused. The blue focus box appears where you tapped. This indicates where the focus and exposure will be set.
Unpinch on the image to zoom in. The Zoom slider appears. (Reminder: you can’t use zoom when taking photos with the front-side camera.)
- Pinch or unpinch on the image or drag the slider toward the + to zoom in or toward the – to zoom out to change the level of zoom.
- Tap again where you want the focus and exposure to be set. The blue focus box indicates the current location on the image.
- Continue using the zoom and focus controls along with moving the camera until the photo is properly framed.
- Tap the Camera button or the upper (louder) Volume button on the side of the iPod touch. The iPod touch captures the photo, and the shutter closes briefly while the photo is re-corded. When the shutter opens again, you’re ready to take the next photo.
To take more photos, repeat steps 4 through 13. To see the photo you most recently captured, tap the Thumbnail button. The photo appears on the screen with iPod touch’s photo-viewing controls.
- Use the photo-viewing tools to view the photo (see “Viewing, Editing, and Working with Photos on an iPod touch” later in this chapter for the details).
- To delete a photo, tap the Trashcan and then tap Delete Photo. The iPod touch deletes the photo, and you see the next photo in the Photo Roll album.
- Tap the Camera button. You move back into the Camera app, and you can take more photos.
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Taking Photos Quickly
Because it is likely to be with you constantly, an iPod touch is a great camera of opportunity. You can use its Quick Access feature to take photos in a very short time when your iPod touch is asleep/locked. Here’s how:
- Press the Home button twice. The Lock screen appears (with the Camera icon, which you don’t see if you only tap the Home button once).
Tap the camera icon. The Camera app opens.
- Use the iPod touch’s camera controls to frame and zoom the photo and set Options as needed; these work just like when you start with the Camera app as described in the previous steps.
- Press the Volume Up button on the side of the iPod touch or tap the Camera icon to take the photo.
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Taking Video with an iPod touch
You can capture video as easily as you can still images. Here’s how.
On the Home screen, tap Camera.
- To capture video in landscape mode, rotate iPod touch so that it’s horizontal; of course, you can use either orientation to take video just as you can with any other videocamera.
- Set the Photo/Video switch to Video.
- Choose which lens you want to use, and use focus controls to frame the starting image for the video, just like setting up a still image.
To change the proportion of the video image to widescreen, double-tap the screen. Black bars appear at the top and bottom of the screen.
To start recording, tap the Record button. The iPod touch starts capturing video; you see a counter on the screen showing how long you’ve been recording.
- To stop recording, tap the Record button again.
To preview the video clip, tap the Thumbnail button.
- Use the video tools to view or edit the clip (see “Viewing, Editing, and Working with Video on an iPod touch” later in this chapter for the details).
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