Where is the camera on iPad Pro?

Yea, a legit question. I was trying to take a selfie with my new iPad Pro 12.9 (2024) running on iPadOS 18 and just couldn’t figure it out. Where do I look? Where is the camera on iPad Pro? I investigated and looked at where the camera has gone and where it’s been…

It used to be  in the center on top when held vertically. Especially with cameras in the corner, people  would look at the screen – and not the camera. Good for them, but not for the viewer. Makes sense. That’s one reason we now have the emerging field of eye-level cameras for laptops and desktops.

On the latest model of the iPad Pro, the front-facing camera, however, has moved to be best used in landscape mode. Here’s how the placements have evolved:

When recording or streaming horizontally, that’s perfect and actually makes the person look at the camera. Here’s how that looks in the wild.

And then looking at the camera when the iPad is horizontal produces a photo or video like this:

And on the contrary, this is what it looks like when using the iPad vertically. It’s just not nearly as easy to look straight at the camera for the creator with the new placement and using the iPad vertically. I mean, even my hand covered up the camera when I took the picture.

So that’s where the front-facing camera is on an iPad. I can see some advantages of it – especially for creators that use the horizontal mode because they want 16×9 videos. But for vertical videos, which are now so common on LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, etc. it does create a problem. So, for those instances, recording with Restream from your computer or just an iPhone might be the way to go.

What other equipment do you need to shoot good horizontal videos with your iPad? I recommend a stand like this: