What's new for photographers with iOS 5?

Apple announced a lot of exciting things at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) yesterday, including details of its OS X Lion operating system and new iMessage messaging system. One of the announcements of particular interest to photographers is iOS 5, which contains several intriguing details aimed at allowing photographers to use their iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad 2 as a more fully-functioning camera.

The most exciting new feature is one of the simplest — the ability to snap a photo using the volume-up button on the side of the phone. This may not seem like a big deal until you're trying to take a picture in landscape mode (i.e., holding the phone horizontally), and awkwardly trying to push the Home button on the front of the phone. You'll also be able to get to the camera function right from the Lock screen, without having to unlock the phone first, which will be handy for those capture-the-scene-before-it's-too-late moments.

Adding to the camera functionality is the ability to pinch-to-zoom, a gridline rule-of-thirds overlay to help you compose your shots, and, even more exciting, a single tap to lock focus and exposure function. That makes it much easier to compose and shoot interesting, artistic photographs.

And if you have your Photo Stream enabled in iCloud (one of the other much-anticipated announcements at WWDC), the photos you take will automatically download to all your other devices. Photo Stream is pretty big news, too. Through this service, any photo you take with an iOS device or import from a camera to your PC will be automatically copied to all of your other Apple devices, including iOS devices like your iPad or iPhone, iPhoto on your Mac or the Pictures Library on your PC, and the Photo Stream album on your Apple TV. That's pretty handy for sharing and syncing your photos!

To recap, the new iOS camera features:

• Volume-up button can be used as shutter release (iPhone 4)
• Camera app available from lock screen
• Pinch-to-zoom function
• Rule-of-thirds gridline overlay
• Auto-focus and exposure lock with a single tap
• Photo Stream syncing

(Source)

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