Smartphones today have two cameras and multiple microphones built-in. It can be a great tool for shooting high quality videos if you know how to do it well.
What are some tips that they should consider in order to get the best quality out of that phone?
- Wipe your camera lens immediately after you get it out of your pocket. It sounds so obvious when you hear it, right? How many times have you seen those videos and it’s got that grainy, blurry look. Our phones are up against our face, so it could be makeup, dirt, grime. I’ve got two young kids, and they’ve always got sticky hands or dirt or whatever. Build that habit, and wipe your camera lens before you film. And it’s, yeah, it’s amazing what even that will do.
- An aftermarket or a third party microphone, so that you’re getting good audio. If anything, audio is more important than the video. If your audio is good and your video is bad, you can replace the video with stock footage or aPowerPoint presentation. But if your audio is bad, you’ve really got to reshoot.
- I like the Rode VideoMicro. It’s one that you will need to mount on a little tripod with your smartphone. So it’s not an easy, sort of, clip-on solution. So we’ll put links to those in the description And below if you guys want to check them out.
- Kicking into manual mode. So you use manual autofocus and manual exposure. So on your iPhone or even most Android devices, before you press Record, just press and hold on your camera screen. And that will lock the exposure and lock the focus point so that you’re in control, instead of your camera automatically adjusting as things change.
- Pick between using the front-facing camera and the rear-facing camera. The rear-facing camera has always got the highest quality. But you can’t see yourself. But rear-facing is the best option. And how you can monitor that is using a piece of software called Reflector 2. And it sells for $14.99. You can install that on your Mac or your PC. And it works with Android and iPhone. It’ll let you mirror your screen to your computer so that you can see what’s going on.
- Use a tripod or a selfie stick, or something to get your phone out of your hands. The most unstable place to hold your phone is actually holding it out, and holding it as far as you can.
And if you’re walking around– I mean, a selfie stick– as much as I hate to say it– is going to give you a much more stable video, and a better, smoother video. Which is, you know, a more professional video. So, again, these are all nice, but the goal is to create videos. If you don’t have these things, just create the videos.
I want to hear from you guys in the comments below with tips and tricks you have learned. For how to get the most out of your camera on your phone– on your smartphone– for making videos. The rest of you guys, if this is something that you are learning, you want to use your phone better– number one, read the comments that other people are leaving down there. You’ll learn a lot from them, as I always do.
LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO
– Check out Justin’s channel, “Primal Video.”
– Rode VideoMicro (affiliate)
– Boya BY-M1 Microphone (affiliate)
– Reflector 2 App
– Olloclip for iPhone 7 (affiliate)
– Joby Gorillapod (affiliate)
– (affiliate)