How to Use Camera on Instagram | Capture and Share

Whether you’re posting your first Story or just upgraded your phone, finding Instagram’s camera is usually the confusing part because the icon moves between versions. The camera itself is simple once you’re in it. Here’s what you need to know about opening it, shooting, and getting your post out to your followers.

Finding The Instagram Camera

You don’t open a separate camera app. Instagram’s camera is built into the main app’s creation tools, and the entry point changes depending on what you want to do.

For a Story, tap Your Story (the circle with a plus sign) at the top of the home feed. That opens the camera ready to shoot. The exact icon shifts by version, but the entry point is always tied to the creation flow, per Instagram’s official Help Center documentation.

For a feed post, tap the + icon in the center of the bottom navigation bar. That lands you in the camera, where you can switch between photo and video modes.

Shooting With The Camera

Once the camera is open, you have the standard controls you’d expect from any phone camera app, plus a few Instagram-specific touches.

• Tap the white circle to take a photo, or hold it to record video.
• Toggle between front and rear cameras with the flip icon (two curved arrows).
• Tap the flash icon to cycle through auto, on, and off.
• Open the creative tools panel on the right side for effects, text, stickers, and drawing tools before you share.

Instagram has also rolled out specialized camera formats over the years. For instance, the Focus mode — introduced in version 39.0 for both iOS and Android — allows you to capture a photo with a blurred background, putting the subject in sharp detail. You may still see this option in the camera’s format carousel on some devices.

Adding Effects And Editing

After you capture your photo or video, you’re not done yet. Instagram lets you layer on creative elements before publishing.

Tap Edit to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, and other fine details. Then use the smiley-face icon to add stickers, the “Aa” icon for text, and the pen icon to draw directly on your image. The effects gallery at the bottom lets you apply AR filters and style overlays in a single tap — hold down on a filter to see how a video clip will look with it applied.

One thing worth noting: you can add locations and tag friends from this screen too, which is a quick way to boost discoverability without any separate steps. If you are planning to upgrade your hardware for better shots, our roundup of the best camera for Instagram content covers bodies and lenses that pair well with the app’s creative workflow.

Sharing To Your Story

When your photo or video looks right, the final step is publishing it to your Story so followers can view it for the next 24 hours.

Tap Your Story at the bottom-left of the editing screen. Instagram processes the image briefly, then displays a confirmation that your Story has been shared. Your Story appears at the top of your followers’ home feeds with a colorful ring around your profile photo.

You can also send the post as a direct message to specific people or close friends, or save it to your phone’s camera roll before sharing. The key is that the camera and the publishing tools are one continuous flow — there’s no separate “save draft” step for Stories, so once you leave the editing screen, your work is either shared or gone.