10 main rules of shooting video on an iPhone or Android smartphone

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The life hacker has figured out all the nuances of mobile video shooting and shares useful tips that will help you shoot cool videos even on a smartphone.

Modern smartphones are equipped with fairly advanced cameras capable of shooting quite high-quality videos with the proper skill. There are many subtleties on which the final result depends. If you want to get the most out of your smartphone camera, follow these guidelines.

1. Wipe the lens

Cleaning the camera peephole seems like the most obvious tip, and that's why it's always forgotten. For cleaning it is better to use a special napkin, but if there is nothing like that at hand, then you can just breathe on the lens and wipe it with a T-shirt.

2. Use third-party applications

If you want to shoot professional videos, you have to get the corresponding application. Unlike standard cameras on iPhone and Android smartphones, such applications have many settings that allow you to control the shooting process.

With Filmic Pro, for example, you can choose not only the frame rate, bit rate and audio codec for the video, but also adjust focus, exposure, white balance and many other parameters.

3. Consider lighting

As with photography, light is very important for video. Try to shoot in well-lit places to avoid noise and unnecessary shadows that ruin the picture. At the same time, it is undesirable to shoot when the midday sun is too bright, the best time is early morning or a few hours before sunset. If in doubt, it will not be superfluous to conduct a test shooting and see the result.

Also, avoid situations where the camera is pointed directly at a bright light source. Ideally, it will be behind you or to the side. The camera will try to adapt to the lighting automatically, but it is better to control this moment yourself.

4. Adjust exposure and focus

Now even mobile cameras allow you to change exposure and focus within narrow limits. In the case of exposure, this is usually a compromise: increasing it in pursuit of the maximum amount of light, we get a picture devoid of detail in the bright parts of the frame, and vice versa.

It is important to find a middle ground and understand which details are best sacrificed for the best effect.

If possible, avoid automatic exposure and switch to fixed mode, especially when shooting fast-moving scenes with different angles.

Perfect sharp focus is also very important. Autofocus is a good thing, but in low light it becomes completely useless and does more harm than good. It is more correct to use manual focus control, which is available in all professional video recording applications.

5. Hold your smartphone tighter

Due to the small size and weight of the smartphone, any movement you make causes the picture to twitch. When shooting without a tripod, it is very important to hold the smartphone with both hands, keeping your elbows close to your body for the most stable position.

Avoid jerking and move slowly and smoothly when taking panoramic shots. If you need to point the camera at another object, do not change the position of your hands - it is better to just turn the whole body.

6. Be careful with zoom and flash

There is nothing worse than digital zoom, and most smartphones have one. It is no different from simple image scaling, in which noise and pixelation appear. Forget about zooming, just get closer to your subject. In extreme cases, it will be possible to zoom in on the picture using scaling later, during editing.

Mobile flashes have, of course, made significant progress in their development in recent years, but they are still far from ideal, especially when shooting video. If you do not want to get people with red eyes and yellow skin, it is better to use an additional light source. A flashlight on another smartphone or a neon sign will do. Experiment!

7. Connect an external microphone

Poor quality audio can easily ruin even the perfect video. Smartphone microphones have noise cancellation systems, but they do not always cope in difficult conditions. You can try to get closer to the person to record his speech, or cover the microphone hole on the smartphone body, protecting it from the wind, but be prepared for the fact that the audio track may eventually have to be removed.

You can be sure of the sound quality only by resorting to an external microphone that connects through the headphone jack. There are a huge number of them on the market now, and even the most budgetary ones surpass the built-in microphones in recording quality.

8. Use accessories

In addition to microphones, there are many other accessories from well-known manufacturers that help improve the quality of your footage, taking it to a whole new level. If the end result is important to you, it makes sense to expand your arsenal.

A tripod and a steadicam will give you a smooth and smooth picture, a case with an external battery will increase the battery life, and universal drives will allow you to shoot more material. In addition, there are also removable lenses, external lights, remote controls and much more.

9. Take care of free space

Even if you are Spielberg himself with an arsenal of steadicams and expensive microphones, if your smartphone runs out of memory, you won't be able to shoot. It is worth taking care of the availability of free space in advance so as not to face this problem at the most inopportune moment.

The simplest thing is to buy a smartphone with the maximum storage capacity or install a memory card, although there are other ways. If you have a good Internet at hand, then you can simply upload the footage to the cloud, if not, a universal flash drive that connects directly to your smartphone will help out. As a last resort, take your laptop with you and copy the video from your smartphone to disk using a cable.

10. Edit the video in the video editor

The final stage of any shooting will, of course, be the editing of the video, for the sake of which everything was started. It is not always possible to shoot everything in one take, even with real directors, so the final editing is simply necessary.

If you don't want to bother, you can use mobile video editors to trim unnecessary fragments or combine several videos into one. If the goal is to create a full-fledged film, then you cannot do without serious software for editing on a computer.

What not to do

Finally, here are some of the most common mistakes. If you want to shoot a really cool video that you will not be ashamed to show your friends and post on social networks, then never:

• do not record video in vertical orientation;
• do not use zoom and flash;
• do not shoot against the sun or other light source;
• do not overuse panoramas, especially when shooting handheld;
• do not start shooting on an almost empty smartphone with full memory.