Submitted by Bob Bhatnagar on
Thanks to a built-in feature of iOS 5, the iPhone can easily take photos without ever touching the display screen. You may already be familiar with the fact that pictures can be taken by pressing the up volume button on the side of the iPhone, much like the shutter release on a compact camera. This improves the picture taking experience on the iPhone, but can still shake the device.
Photographers looking to stabilize their cameras during shooting look to use a remote control, or a cable shutter release to snap the photo without touching the camera. iPhones come with a modern version of the cable release in the Apple Remote Earphones.
As volume buttons are built into the earphones, plugging them into the iPhone when taking a picture makes the up volume button turn into a shutter release. Just stand up the iPhone or use one of the many tripod accessories to compose the picture with the headphones plugged in. The Camera app will snap the photo when the up volume button is pressed on the headphones.
Similarly, you can remotely control picture taking with an iPhone running iOS 5 and Bluetooth turned on. Any Bluetooth headset paired with the iPhone can be used in a similar manner to the wired headphones to take a photo. The volume up button on your Bluetooth headset will trigger the Camera app to take a photo just like a camera remote control. Because any device with a volume up button can snap a photo, even an Apple Wireless Keyboard can be used to remotely control the iPhone camera.
Not only this, but if you can take photos you can also remotely start and stop video recording without ever touching the iPhone.