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Use Your Apple Watch To Take Perfect Holiday Photos (And Selfies)

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Apple’s iPhones have always packed high quality cameras. But even a great camera can’t overcome basic limitations --like hand shake, selfies that are limited to face shots or group photos where someone is out of the frame. However, if you own an Apple Watch, you can use it to seriously up your photo game.

You’ve probably noticed there was a Camera app on your Apple Watch. Most people tend to assume that’s basically a remote to trigger a photo being taken on their iPhone. That’s true, but it’s actually much more useful than that. The Camera app turns your Apple Watch into a live, remote viewfinder for the iPhone camera as well. Why is this important?

Better Selfies

You use the selfie camera on your iPhone instead of its primary camera for one reason: you can see yourself on the display. The main camera is vastly superior in quality, but it’s pointing the wrong direction for a selfie --unless you feel like guessing whether you’re actually in the frame or not. 

By using the Apple Watch Camera app, you can make full use of the superior, primary camera. One person can hold the iPhone while the other composes the photo using the Apple Watch display, then triggers the selfie. Even better, you can prop up the iPhone and fire away, without having to hold onto it at all. That means selfies that are more than just a headshot. And they are much higher resolution photos.

Better Holiday Shots

Everyone wants to take family or group photos at holiday get togethers. Using the iPhone alone, you have limited options. Trying to squeeze everyone in using the selfie camera is one option. You could also prop the iPhone up to use the primary camera, try to get everyone in the frame, tell them to hold still, set the timer then scurry over to get in the shot yourself. If everything goes perfectly, you get a good holiday group photo. More likely than not, you’ll end up repeating this exercise multiple times until you get a shot that’s good enough, or everyone loses interest and wanders away.

Using the Apple Watch Camera app, you position your iPhone to take advantage of its primary camera, get the group together --including yourself-- compose the photo using the live viewfinder view on the Apple Watch, then remotely trigger the shot. Done.

Here’s how you use your Apple Watch to take better photos. I’m going to use one of my dogs as the subject, instead of chasing people around a holiday gathering...

1. Find the Camera app on your Apple Watch. It’s one of the default watchOS apps, so if you haven’t already moved it to the dock, it will be on the Home Screen.

Camera app is circled in red (Credit: Apple)

2. Position your iPhone. You can open the iPhone’s Camera app to get an idea of placement, or just leave it and use Open Camera from the Apple Watch to launch the app. In this case, I set my iPhone on my office floor, six feet or so from the sleeping dog.

3. Open the Apple Watch Camera app. If your iPhone’s Camera app isn’t open, you’ll see an Open Camera button.

4. After a second or two (the initial Bluetooth connection isn’t quite instantaneous), you’ll see a live view of the iPhone camera viewfinder on your Apple Watch display. You can tap anywhere on the live view on the Apple Watch to bring up the yellow focus box, just like with your iPhone.

5. Beneath the viewfinder are three icons: a thumbnail of the last photo taken (this will be blank at first), Shutter button and a Timer/Burst button.

To immediately snap a photo, simply press the Shutter button. Press Timer/Burst and you get a three-second countdown on the Apple Watch, followed by a burst of photos.

You can review a photo on the Apple Watch by tapping the thumbnail icon.

The photos you take using the Apple Watch are stored in the Camera Roll of your iPhone’s Photos app. You'll have to imagine the photo below is an awesome selfie or heart-warming holiday family shot instead of my dog having a nap on my office floor...

Unfortunately, this trick doesn’t work with shooting video on your iPhone. It also doesn’t currently support switching between the iPhone 7 Plus dual cameras --whichever camera is selected using the iPhone’s Camera app is the one that’s used.

However, the ability to compose and shoot photos on your iPhone using your Apple Watch is a powerful tool once you get the hang of it. Better selfies and perfect holiday shots will soon follow.