Question :

Lately, whenever I try to take a photo with my iPhone, all I get is a black screen.

I am using the pre-installed Camera-app in iOS.

How can I get this fixed ?

Answer :

There are two known software causes for this ‘black screen’-issue (so apart from hardware problems like broken iPhones) :

solution  #1 :

If you have just used your camera in another app (e.g. WhatsApp) and you then switched to the  standard iOS Camera.app, you might run into a black screen because the camera is still being claimed by the previous app…

The fix for this is easy : close down the iOS Camera.app and the other app that was using your camera, then re-open the iOS Camera.app ; to do so :

1. double-clicking on the Menu-button below the screen (in the next view you’ll be able to browse through windows of all open apps)
2. close all apps that are using your iPhone’s camera (by swiping the windows of those apps you want to close upward)
3. then return to normal view by clicking the Menu-button once
4. and when done, re-open the iOS Camera-app

solution #2 :

The black screen issue in Camera.app has been reported as a bug in earlier versions of iOS 9, so fixing it is simply done by updating your iPhone to the latest version of iOS 9 (or iOS 10).

To do so :

1. on your iPhone, go to Settings –> General –> Software Update
2. you will most likely see that you don’t have the latest version of iOS
3. activate the update to the latest version of iOS

…that’s it 😉

enjoy !