I assure you that I did look for an answer in SO for my question but none of them were helpful. Here I got a simple code that should present a UIImagePickerController<
UIPopoverControllers should always be held in an instance variable. It is a good practice to create a strong property for it.
UPDATE:
As of iOS 8 you should be using UIPopoverPresentationController. Then you don't need to keep a reference to the popover because it is managed by the presentation controller.
Code example (works both on iPhone and iPad):
UIImagePickerController *picker = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];
picker.delegate = self;
picker.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera;
picker.allowsEditing = YES;
picker.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationPopover;
UIPopoverPresentationController* popoverPC = picker.popoverPresentationController;
popoverPC.barButtonItem = bbItem;
popoverPC.permittedArrowDirections = UIPopoverArrowDirectionAny;
[self presentViewController:picker animated:YES completion:nil];