How To Shoot Better Landscape Photos on iPhone

One of the most powerful tools you can use for landscape photography might just be your phone. It’s small, lightweight, always by your side when the light is magical, and it's a lot more powerful than you think.As a photographer living in New Zealand, it’s ideal to have a capable camera in my pocket for situations where I might not have my larger cameras with me. I have been using my iPhone 13 Pro for the last few years, and while it isn’t the latest and greatest in the iPhone line, it has still given me some great images!

Setting Up iPhone for Shooting:

So one of the main things I have changed in my iPhone settings is switching from shooting in JPEG or HEIF to shooting in ProRaw. This will give more dynamic range and color information than the standard JPEG/HEIF profiles in the normal camera app, at the cost of requiring some editing in post, either on a computer or in an app on your phone.

Note, this is in iOS 26.2.1 as of the time of writing this.

1. To do that, go to the Settings app.
2. Then to Camera.
3. Then to Formats.

Then on this screen, you will have the option to turn on Apple ProRaw.

This will result in much larger photo file sizes, so be prepared for that. But the trade-off is that you will have better image quality after you do some editing.

If you would like better manual control over your images as well, I recommend downloading the Moment Pro Camera App, which is what I used for all of the iPhone ProRaw photos in this article. It let me set my Shutter Speed, ISO, and focus to achieve the look I wanted.

To turn on ProRaw in the Moment Cam App, open the app and tap the top of the screen where it says ‘HEIF’ or ‘JPEG’, depending on your iPhone. Mine started with a JPEG file.

Then you will go to the left-most tab and change it from ‘Natural’ to ‘ProRaw’.

I leave Fusion options set to ‘off’ because they're unpredictable and I prefer manual control.There are also a bunch of other iPhone apps that let you shoot RAW images, look around, and find one that best suits your shooting style!

Example Photos:

I took an overnight trip to Quail Island in Lyttelton Harbour near Christchurch, New Zealand, and decided to focus on taking images with my iPhone rather than my Lumix S9, which I also brought. I did do some comparison images with the S9, though, so keep an eye out for those as well.

Really, what I decided to focus on with the iPhone on this trip was composition over shallow depth of field, which is what I do a lot of the time when I am shooting with the iPhone, since it has a bit less control over having out-of-focus areas in your images.

Here are a few comparison images that I took with both the iPhone 13 Pro and the Lumix S9, a full-frame compact camera.

Rule of Thirds:

For a lot of my iPhone landscape photography, I like to use the rule of thirds to break my frame into sections. In this comparison below, you can see the action in the middle, the racing boats in the harbour, with the background hills in the upper third and the island grasslands in the lower third.

Foreground Element:

For my iPhone composition, I'd like to include a bit of a foreground element to help with scale. It’s harder to tell how close or far away a subject is without something to compare it to! The example below shows the foreground of the grassland on the island, with the sea cliffs in the mid-ground, and the Port Hills in the background. So this is a good example of both foreground element and the rule of thirds.

Leading Lines:

I also like to use leading lines to bring your eyes around the frame. In this set below, I have the line of the rocky shore leading to the dock, which then leads you out to the subject on the dock itself, the Department of Conservation ranger waiting for the ferry out, as well as leading you out to the harbour beyond. I think this is a better composition overall in the iPhone shot than the Lumix S9 because of where the ranger is in the frame.

Multiple Lenses:

One of the most powerful aspects of shooting with an iPhone is that you have multiple lenses all built in! One of my favorite techniques for landscape photography is to use a telephoto lens to bring my subject closer, giving me a better sense of the details.

Having multiple lenses packed into one small package is a godsend for creative angles and for seeing how different focal lengths look in different situations without having to get a big camera out and swap lenses.

Here are a few examples of before/after with iPhone 13 Pro ProRaw images, edited in Lightroom Classic.

You can see that the ProRaw image straight out of the camera lacks contrast and color, but some work in Lightroom can really bring them back.

Black and White:

Another option for landscape photography, especially if you are in drab skies with little light, is to focus more on shapes, lines, and textures and convert your images to black and white.

Tips

Use a Tripod:

It really does help hone your composition to set your phone in one place, think about the image you want to take, and make small tweaks instead of just holding your phone and having a constantly changing composition.

Use Filters:

If you want to get a bit more serious about it, use some for your phone! The main ones I use for landscape photography are the Neutral Density, or ND filter, and the Circular Polarizer Filter, or CPL. These filters can give you another level of creative control over your images that the camera itself can’t necessarily provide.