How to Bring Out the Best of iOS 8's Photography and Sharing Tricks

If you haven't yet taken the iOS 8 plunge, you may not know what you're missing. True, iOS 8 has the familiar iOS 7 look and feel, but it's chock full of both new and improved features and functionality. And it's free.

However, if you're toting an iPhone that's getting a little long in the tooth, you might want to consider trading up, as iOS 8 is an option only for owners of the iPhone 4s and later models.
Some of the new features evoke a sigh of relief -- we've been waiting for these, Apple. Others are downright pleasantly surprising and altogether cool.
Here's your guide to the most useful and welcome iOS 8 changes to the Camera and Photo Apps, the new Family Sharing feature and more.

Camera App

The iPhone is the world's most popular camera, and the built-in Camera App is one of the most important apps around. In iOS 8, Apple has introduced several new features, including the ability to adjust exposure separately from the focal point. How does it work?
All you have to do is tap your screen to tell the Camera where to focus. A box pops up with a slider next to it. Slide your finger most anywhere up or down and the exposure will adjust accordingly. Most people who use it will likely attempt to make an image brighter -- or make it darker to better evoke a mood.

The new Timer mode lets you set a timer for 3 or 10 seconds, after which it delivers a burst of 10 photos -- handy for making sure you capture everyone with their eyes open.

For time-lapse fans, the new Time-Lapse mode lets you take a series of photos to create a time-lapse video. For best results, you'll want to prop or stand your iPhone up into a stable position and let it run -- for instance, to capture a river, a tide, or sunrise or sunset. Unfortunately, you can't set the number of photos or interval -- it's automatic, for better or worse.

Photos App

In iOS 8, your Camera Roll is gone forever, and all your photos are in the Photos app, which gives you two basic views: Photos as a timeline broken up into Years; or Collections based on smaller date ranges. Moments is the zoomed-in view of a particular Collection, which is usually a few days or a particular location. You can search your photo library by date, location, or album name. If you tap the search icon, Photos will deliver a set of recent searches as well as other results it thinks are important to you.
The Albums section is where you'll likely find what you're looking for most often. The most likely place is the Recently Added album, which does what you would expect -- stores your most recent photos and videos.
Other albums break out your shots by type, like Panoramas, Videos, Slo-mo, Bursts, Hidden and Recently Deleted. So what's "Hidden?" This new feature "hides" photos from your Moments, Collections and Years sections and moves them to the Hidden album.
Sure, they aren't exactly hidden, but if you're trying to show a bunch of photos to a friend, you can get the personal photos out of the way. (Would be nice if it were password- or Touch ID- protected, but it's not.) To hide an image, tap and hold on its thumbnail view, then tap the "Hide" popup. Reverse the procedure to reveal the photo again.
What about Recently Deleted? This stores photos that you "delete" in the new Recently Deleted photos album for 30 days. To make them really go away, you can delete them again for real from this folder -- or you can choose to "recover" them as well.
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