I’ve been using my iPhone 17 Pro as my main camera for day-to-day photography since I got it in September of last year. I’ve used it more than my Nikon DSLR, mainly because it’s so portable. There’s three cameras on the iPhone with fixed prime lenses: a 13mm, a 24mm, and a 100mm telephoto. Every other zoom option for the camera is cropping into the sensor, although it is very detailed, even at half the resolution of the sensor, since all the sensors are 48 megapixels. One thing that I use often with the 17 Pro specifically is the camera control button introduced in the 16 series. I’ve seen a lot of people neglect this button, but it’s really helpful if you hold the phone at each corner when taking photos and changing zoom increments.

Despite amazing hardware, and really good software, the iPhone is lacking when it comes to good defaults. By default, photos taken by the iPhone 17 Pro are 24 megapixels, AI “enhanced,” and are stored in lossy .heif files. This is fine for most (99%) of people, and the photos still look amazing, but if you want RAW photos*, you still need to enable it manually. I’ll be going over the best camera settings for both the 99% of people who just use their phone camera like, well, a normal person, and then the best way to get amazing stills from your phone, with some extra work.

Overall Good Settings™

First, turn HDR photos off. HDR, while it sounds nice, is yet to be implemented well in photography. This should be disabled by default on most new iPhones, but I have seen iPhone pictures that are in HDR floating around, and they look overexposed and overall just not as good as normal SDR photos.

Another good thing to have is all the pixels on your camera actually being used. The iPhone, by default, should be set to a 4:3 (or 3:4 for vertical) aspect ratio, which uses the entire sensor of the camera**. This can always be cropped later, but you can’t un-crop an image after it’s taken.

Turn Live Photos off. These are small videos that capture a bit more of the scene, but are shoved into the default Photo mode by default. This is the second worst part of the default Camera app on iOS in my opinion, behind not having a proper manual mode. These could have easily been their own separate mode, like slow motion video or “portrait” shallow-depth-of-field-y stills, but Apple decided to put it right in the main Photo interface. It’s a gimmick.

I wasn’t sure which place to put the grid view in, so I’ll put it here. You can turn on a 3x3 grid line array in the settings for the Camera app. If you’re new to photography, this lets you visualize something known as the “rule of thirds,” which says to put the subject of your photo on one of the four intersections between the lines. This isn’t a rule you always have to follow, but it’s a good guideline.

Casual, no-edits settings

My favorite part of taking photos on my iPhone isn’t the pro features that it has, but Photographic Styles built into the Camera app. If you click the six dots in the top right of the Camera app, you can access Photographic Styles, which are fancy color filters that go over your image to give a certain feel. These happen early in the photo rendering process, so it still has the full dynamic range of the photo, but with a different feel. You can easily switch between them for different moods, and change it in post in the Photos app. How Apple does this without using up more storage space than a normal image? I have no idea. I actually use the normal .heif mode more than RAW just for photographic styles if I’m planning on not editing the photos later in Lightroom Classic.

I would also recommend sticking with 0.5x, 1x, and 4x zoom for the most part. These are the lowest zoom amounts for each lens on the phone, letting you get the full resolution of your images. Again, you can always crop in later.

More advanced settings

First, before anything else, go into Settings -> Camera -> Preserve Settings and turn “ProRAW & Resolution Control” ON. This makes the Camera app remember to set the resolution to the full 48 MP and Apple ProRAW format.

Next, I would recommend getting used to the Camera Control button, but this is completely optional. I find it much more similar to an actual DSLR than a phone, since I’m actually pressing a button and kinda turning a dial to get my photos. This doesn’t come close to the feel of an actual DSLR, but it’s closer than tapping around on the screen.

Final tips

If you’re a complete newcomer when it comes to photography, just know that settings aren’t that important. Beginners tend to focus a lot on the technical aspects of photography, but ignore the artistry that goes into it. Framing, lighting, etc., will be much more important to your work than megapixels. And if you’re a “pro” photographer, try shooting auto on your DSLR, or try the stock Camera app on your iPhone without any RAW junk. Just use Photographic Styles, .heif, auto exposure, and just take cool photos.

Notes

* RAW photos take up much more storage space than .heifs, so use sparingly.

** In the 17 series of iPhones, the front camera is 1:1, but doesn’t allow you to use the full aspect ratio of the camera. It’s rumored that in the 18 series, this will be used in the back cameras too. Keep this in mind if you’re reading this on an iPhone 18.