Hi Todd, The iPhone’s camera, just as many point and shoot cameras, is an auto focus camera. This means it automatically focuses on what is in the centre of the picture. This is why Voiceover say “Focus unlocked” it simply means focus is not locked to anything outside the auto focus area which is in the centre of the screen. As a blind person all you can do is to try and focus the camera so whatever it is you are taking a picture of is hopefully about in the middle of the screen where the auto focus area will do its job. If you take a picture of a person Voiceover will tell you when it sees the face and if the face is centred and if it says “face near left edge” you can try to move the phone a tiny bit to try and get it to be in the centre where the auto focus area is located.
You can force the camera to focus on something that is not in the auto focus area in the middle of the screen by tapping on it, but obviously this is a photography feature which is of limited or no use to a completely blind person. Note that if a sighted person taps on something off to the side, maybe a flower or person that is not in the centre of the frame then the camera will still use auto focus and focus will still be “unlocked”. A sighted person can also “lock” the focus on an object or person on the screen by tapping and holding on the object or person instead of tapping it just once. If somebody did that and then you turned on Voiceover it would say “Focus locked” instead of “focus unlocked”. I have not yet discovered a way to “lock” focus when Voiceover is running, a double tap and hold doesn’t seem to do it, I tried a double tap and hold and then to tap with another finger and I tried force touch. On the other hand, if I toggle Voiceover off with a triple click of the home button and then touch and hold somewhere on the screen and the turn Voiceover back on, Voiceover will then say “Focus Locked”. There are also third-party apps which allow for “manual focus” instead of “auto focus”, but once again these would be of no use to a blind person and the same applies to adjusting the exposure which you can do even with Voiceover running if you double tap and hold and then slide a finger up or down on the screen. Of course you don’t really know what exposure will be best and here it is simply best to let the camera of the iPhone which is a very good camera do it’s job and let it auto focus and auto expose the picture. For anybody who is interested to learn a bit more about how photography in particular on the iPhone works even if many of the features require you to see what you are doing, the below article explains this quite nicely: http://iphonephotographyschool.com/focus-tips/ Best regards, Sieghard From: viphone@googlegroups.com [mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Todd Patkus Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2016 6:49 AM To: viphone@googlegroups.com Subject: Focus automatic in camera For those who have experienced taking photos using the iPhone’s camera, how do I make the camera before taking a photo made to automatically focus on an object when facing the camera in front of it? What does it mean when it says Focus unlocked image? That is concerning iPhone 6S iOS 10.1.1. Please let me know. Thank you. Todd -- The following information is important for all members of the V iPhone list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your V iPhone list moderator is Mark Taylor and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com<mailto:caraqu...@caraquinn.com> The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/viphone@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<mailto:viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. To post to this group, send email to viphone@googlegroups.com<mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com>. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/viphone. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- The following information is important for all members of the V iPhone list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your V iPhone list moderator is Mark Taylor and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/viphone@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to viphone@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/viphone. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
