Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Picture Taking With iPhone
- Thread starter adam044
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Video films have historically been shot in landscape mode because of the format of the cine camera and the orientation of the photo on the film.
Whether you take still pictures in landscape or portrait mode is entirely dependent on the subject matter. There is no "right" or "wrong" way!
Whether you take still pictures in landscape or portrait mode is entirely dependent on the subject matter. There is no "right" or "wrong" way!
Scenery is usually taken in the wide format, that why they call it "LANDscape." There are usually more materials on the sides than top (mostly blue sky), and if you include too much earth bellow, that distracts from the rest of the scenery. In photography, a rule of thumb is, you want to concentrate on 1 subject matter. In a scenery, your subject matter is the whole expanse, not any one single item.
Portrait, like portrait of a person, a pet, a plant, because these subjects are taller than wide. If you take these subjects in landscape mode, then the side stuff is going to distract from the subject at hand.
There are exceptions. I.E. you are outdoors, you are on a side of a mountain, you want to show how high the drop is. In this instant you take a picture of the mountain's ledge in portrait mode which will include the top of the mountain, and much of the drop as you are able, that gives the observer the sense of a big drop. If you take the same pix in landscape, it won't feel the same.
Example 2: You dog is chasing a ball, you want to show how hard your dog is working. So you shoot your dog in landscape to show him AND the ball at some distance.
Welcome to photography lesson 1.
Portrait, like portrait of a person, a pet, a plant, because these subjects are taller than wide. If you take these subjects in landscape mode, then the side stuff is going to distract from the subject at hand.
There are exceptions. I.E. you are outdoors, you are on a side of a mountain, you want to show how high the drop is. In this instant you take a picture of the mountain's ledge in portrait mode which will include the top of the mountain, and much of the drop as you are able, that gives the observer the sense of a big drop. If you take the same pix in landscape, it won't feel the same.
Example 2: You dog is chasing a ball, you want to show how hard your dog is working. So you shoot your dog in landscape to show him AND the ball at some distance.
Welcome to photography lesson 1.
Last edited:
Always Landscape, i rarely take pics portrait unless their beautiful selfie shots on the front camera.
I agree 99.999% of the time.
However if you want to stitch together a panoramic scene from a series of still images you will want to shot them in portrait mode. This allows you more editing material when you go to clean up the image after it has been stitched together.
Head shots - you know -> portraits should be shot in Portrait orientation.
Anyone who wants to move their pictures from the phone to a PC cares about this. If you take the picture in portrait mode, when you move it to a PC it will be sideways. You can rotate it to look correct but cannot save it that way. Pretty annoying if you ask me.
OMFG you just solved one of life's mysteries for me. I always wondered why I would always have to rotate photos and had no idea it was because I took it in portrait. Now that I think about it, it was pretty obvious, but it never crossed my mind.
Why can't you save it? It's easy. Open photo, realize it's sideways, edit-rotate-file-save, done.
