How To Record Yourself Well With Your Phone

(Pocket-lint) - Recording video has never been so easy or effortless. Everyone has a powerful video camera in their pocket: a smartphone. In fact, smartphones have become more important every bit mobile inventiveness tools, to the point where some encounter it as the primary purpose, and only as important as communication.

With a picayune exercise and access to a few primal tips, fifty-fifty you - yeah, you lot - can start recording great footage, vlogging, or even record an indie movie or documentary using just your smartphone.

Thus, in an effort to help you capture whatever it is you lot want in the best mode possible, Pocket-lint has rounded up ten tips. Although some of the tips might seem obvious, following all of them should result in astonishing video every time.

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Tips for recording meliorate video with your smartphone

Landscape

Zip ruins great footage like having two black vertical bars along both sides of your video. To avoid this amateur mistake, brand certain to utilise landscape orientation and not portrait orientation while recording.

Non just does landscape make your video seem more aesthetically pleasing in general, it'll besides make information technology more enjoyable to watch when viewed on a widescreen or television. Plus, you'll capture more in the actual video.

So just remember: never hold your phone vertically while recording, unless yous really similar or want those vertical black confined included (or if yous're recording purely for something like TikTok or Instagram Stories).

Framing

Now that you're recording in the proper orientation (meet above), completely fill the frame with your subject field. You can as well put him or her or it slightly off-center to create a more visually interesting scene. Just play around and see what looks best.

Most telephone camera apps have the option to enable gridlines if you go into the photographic camera settings, where you take vertical and horizontal grids on the screen while shooting. The virtually popular framing tool is 'rule of thirds', then if you enable a 3x3 grid on you lot photographic camera app, you tin can line up the subject area with one of the vertical 'third' lines or use the horizontal lines to get the horizon line in the desired position.

Zoom

Nothing is worse than digital zoom - just enquire any professional photographer. Thankfully, we're now in an era where a lot of the summit smartphones come with a lossless or 'optical' zoom, which lets you zoom in without losing a lot (if any) of the detail.

In guild to zoom in while recording without losing the well-baked, bright quality you desire in videos, y'all'll need a device that offers a decent optical zoom - such as the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. If you accept a smartphone with more than one camera on the back, often one of the actress lenses is a designated "telephoto" lens.

If you don't have a smartphone with optical zoom, you'll need to become closer to your subject or use an accessory similar the clip-on lenses from Moment, every bit an example. In general, yous should ever get every bit close every bit you can, peculiarly for tight shots on faces. Permit us see those freckles and fine lines and cheek fuzz.

Flash

We've all seen those videos where the field of study has yellow skin and cerise devilish eyes combined with super dark backgrounds. The culprit? Well, yes, it'south the photographer...but it'southward likewise the flash.

Smartphones, you see, come equipped with LED lights that are too bright and tin can hands skew the color temperature of photos. Also, video will often all the same come out poorly lit in the terminate. If you desire to record a photo at night, you lot'll have to find another light source. Or, if your telephone has a nighttime manner for shooting, you can also use that. For video though, there aren't many phones out there that shoot great footage in low calorie-free.

If you exercise want or need extra lighting, thankfully y'all can choice it up relatively cheap. Search Amazon for affordable ring lights if y'all desire an evenly lit confront for filming vlogs to camera, or option up some small-scale battery powered LED panels. They'll requite yous a much more consistent and fifty-fifty expect than the LED flash on your phone e'er could.

Backlighting

At that place's something else you should go along in mind when thinking nigh wink and lighting in general: fugitive heavily backlit-settings.

You may be able to see people and their faces when they're backlit, but your smartphone camera unremarkably tin't and will output footage with a bright light haloing a nighttime effigy. That figure will also accept no visible features, meaning yous but missed whatever information technology was you were trying to capture. Unless your phone has some really advanced HDR capabilities, that's something you lot definitely need to keep an eye on.

To avert this situation, effort configuring a basic light setup. Those of yous who are recording on the fly can also improve a backlit state of affairs by moving to one side or another, or moving your subject then that they're facing the light. Although some stock camera apps try to reduce the furnishings of backlighting, you should try reducing the effects on your end as well.

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Fourth dimension lapse

Time lapse or time-lapse photography is a cinematography technique whereby frequency at which picture frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than that used to view the sequence. When y'all replay this sequence at normal speed, fourth dimension appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing.

Simply put: time-lapse photography is time manipulation. Objects and events that would normally have hours, days, months, or years tin be captured and then viewed later at a much faster speed, thanks to fourth dimension-lapse photography techniques.

Before the Instagram team debuted Hyperlapse, creating a time-lapse video with your smartphone was both tiresome and, to be honest, difficult. Since so, most manufacturers have just built the feature right into the preinstalled camera app. Apple iPhones, for instance, accept a fourth dimension-lapse feature in the photographic camera.

Notwithstanding, some phones don't have information technology, and Hyperlapse has since been discontinued, but there are alternatives. Microsoft has its own Hyperlapse app on the Play Store which is uncomplicated to utilise and stabilises your footage, and there'due south some other called Framelapse Pro that is rated quite highly.

Stabilising and shine footage

1 advocacy to come out of the smartphone industry in recent years is electronic and optical image stabilisation. In essense, it reduces whatever handshake to a minimum if you're shooting handheld. It works relatively well, but if you're moving to follow a discipline or using it to pan or orbit around a person or object, you're best bet is getting a concrete gimbal that works with your phone to get in really smooth.

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Ane such gimbal is the DJI OM 4. With your phone attached and app loaded, you'll be able to utilize the ability of your phones video capabilities, only the stabilisation offered by the gimbal will requite you a clean, cinematic expect you'd struggle to go shooting handheld. No matter how stable your grip is.

Snapchat

Effects

Snapchat was 1 of the kickoff apps to totally alter the mode we shoot video. With information technology, you tin quickly ship a video (or snap) of yourself at work to a friend and then they can open it, screenshot it if they want, and reply back with their own video response.

You can brand snaps fifty-fifty more fun by adding augmented reality-based special furnishings and sounds, with a feature called Lenses. Like Lenses, which are primarily applied to your confront in existent-time, at that place are likewise 3D World Lenses that uniquely touch the surround effectually you.

What's the betoken of Snapchat and how does it work?

This animation is overlaid on the world around united states and can exist captured and and so shared with our friends in a conversation or followers via our story. Both Lenses and World Lenses are oftentimes changed by Snapchat, though popular ones are recurring. Lastly, there are filters, which yous can use to jazz up your snap.

Y'all tin can add coloured filters, the current time, local weather, speed overlays, or geofilters to your video. Now, once you're done playing with whatever of these Snapchat features, you tin can ever save your snap locally to your device and then share information technology with others via other social networks or SMS. But, if Snapchat isn't your matter, try Instagram. Instagram offers several filters and lenses for videos, too.

Accessories

Let's exist honest: smartphone cameras are just non as skilful as the powerhouses made by Catechism or Nikon or Sony, mostly because smartphone cameras and their stock photographic camera apps lack finer controls and other things, even though they are getting much ameliorate.

If yous therefore desire to accept your smartphone video-recording skills to the next level, without having to buy a pricey DSLR, yous might want to consider ownership accessories that reveal your photographic camera's true potential. Y'all tin become everything from tripod mounting systems to creative lens add-ons.

Best smartphone camera accessories

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Editing

And finally, sometimes a little editing is required in order to brand your footage become from "meh" to "wow". And present you tin can exercise some intense editing on your smartphone besides, significant you won't need to invest in fancy desktop software.

Everything from basic trimming to adding transitions, titles, and furnishings is simple on both iOS and Android mobile devices. Whether your next video is a montage or a school projection, mobile apps can streamline the video-editing process.

Apple'due south ain iMovie for iPhone and iPad, for instance, includes titles and transitions and even supports making theatrical trailers on the get. Other features include picture-in-picture, split screen, and slow motion effects. Information technology's very similar to iMovie on the Mac, in fact. For iPad Pro, you might want to give LumaFusion a get, although that's quite pricey.

Peak Studio is another skilful example, equally well as Videon and Magisto. But that's not all: Adobe's Premiere Rush app is a powerful video editing tool with many of the features of Premiere Pro, though it'south stripped down and tin can be used by anybody.

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Information technology offers fast video editing, much similar other mobile apps, where yous tin can merely drag and drop footage and photos in the order y'all like and trim them down, just it is likewise compatible with Premiere Pro and then you can consign the cease consequence to the desktop software and refine with greater control.

Writing past Maggie Tillman and Elyse Betters. Editing by Cam Bunton.