Tablet and Mobile

Unlike previous models, iPhone 4 has a reasonable camera on it – and iPhone 4s even better. Yet time and time again I see people churning our terrible photos and videos using these devices.

The following are just a few tips to ensure you get the best from your iPhone.

Firstly – the deal-breakers:

Lighting – if you know the lighting will be poor, forget it. The iPhones are awful at handling low light, often resulting in blurring and grainy images.

Sound – ever stood in a church or large school hall – that kind of hollow sound (which is related to echo but faster) – the internal microphone in the iPhone suffers from such effects at just a few feet from the mic (like most phones). Get a plug-in external mic – preferably with a long lead. Maplins do a great lapel-mic (though I had to change the plug to make it fit the iPhone  – I’m sure an adaptor is available).

Tripod – no matter how hard you try, holding iPhone by hand is not going to work well – you can remove shake in software but it doesn’t hold a candle to starting off with the phone mounted on a rock-solid surface such as a decent tripod. Look up eBay for suitable clamps. There’s a tripod here but I would not recommend sticking the zoom lens on – pictures look awful..

Dirt and Grease – the big let-down here is the lens – the slightest bit of grease, finger-print, dirt on the lens will ruin the quality because of its tiny size. Don’t even consider taking a video or pictures unless the lens is spotlessly cleaned with a soft, dry cloth (commonly known as an unused handkerchief).

Duration – you should always use the best quality settings to get high quality you need lots of memory – stick with videos segments of a few minutes each if possible or you’re going to spend all day getting the material onto your PC.

Here then is how I have managed to produce half-decent quality video, given decent lighting. I use an iPhone 4.

I purchased a tie-clip microphone from Maplins for under £20 – and this plugs into the iPhone (effectively preventing the speaker working while it is plugged in). The lead is 3 metres long, suitable for interviews. I had to change the plug for the iPhone).

The App I use is called Filmic Pro and It will take video at the highest quality (1280px * 720px, 24 frames/second) at 16:9 format – this ensures a quite reasonable image with no unpredictable changes occurring. Automatic sound level control is turned off.

The image below shows the controls – the one below that shows what they are for. Essentially you make sure the brilliance and focus are right, start the recording, set all 3 controls to ON… and start your video.

And below, the help screen.

The controls are easy – “focus lock” will stop the focus changing if someone walks past the camera. Modern low-cost autofocus systems work the wrong way – if they are just out of focus they go WAY out of focus – then work their way back toward sharp focus. “Exposure lock” stops the camera dimming if light levels change which they do all the time in any moving scene. “White balance” takes a little more thought – the camera wants to compensate for too much of any one colour – to get professional results you have to make sure the imagery looks right at the start – then use the control to LEAVE It that way.

Essentially you then make your recording – then using the normal iPhone lead to your PC, offload the file to the PC – doing this wirelessly might not be a good idea when the file is large. Incidentally the iPhone is probably not your best choice for long meetings or interviews – you will run out of memory – don’t be tempted to chose a lower quality setting. In a test I took a 2 minute video and the file was over 200MB long. So this approach is best for short interviews of a few minutes – or multiple scenes take at different locations.

The App is set to record at the highest setting, 24fps, 16:9 format.. and it outputs MOV files which you can then import into an editor.

Some more setting screenshots..

That’s it, if you want more information, let me know.