iOS taking photo programmatically

You can also do it without AVFoundation and it is in my opinion an easier way to implement it using only the UIImagePickerController. There are 3 conditions:

1. Obviously the device needs to have a camera
2. You must hide the camera controls
3. Then simply use the takePicture method from UIImagePickerController

Below is a simple example that you woul typically trigger after a button push

- (IBAction)takePhoto:(id)sender 
{
    UIImagePickerController *picker = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];
    picker.delegate = self;
    picker.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera;
    picker.cameraDevice = UIImagePickerControllerCameraDeviceFront;
    picker.showsCameraControls = NO;
    [self presentViewController:picker animated:YES
                     completion:^ {
                         [picker takePicture];
                     }];
}

This is very simple, just use the AVFoundation reference guide:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/AVFoundationPG/Articles/04_MediaCapture.html

If you don't want the user to see the preview input you can just skip the set preview layer part of the code.

Edit: To be more detailed.

1)You set your capture configuration using the AVFoundation.

• Set the camera input to frontal, turn off flash etc etc.

2)You SKIP the part where the video preview layer is set.

3)You call the captureStillImageAsynchronouslyFromConnection:completionHandler: method whenever you want the picture to be taken.

Note: If you want the flash to not be heard and such then you might be violating the user rights in some countries (japan for example). One workaround I know of to do so is by capturing a frame of a video (does not trigger flash).