Seems like it’s about time to download a new app–it’s been quite a few lessons since we did that. Since yesterday’s lesson was about dealing with moving subjects, let’s continue with that theme and give Fast Camera a try.
Fast Camera is an app designed to take a bunch of photos really quickly. That’s its forte. There are settings in other camera apps that will take bursts of photos in rapid succession, but there are 2 particular features about Fast Camera that made it worth the $1.99 to me:
- The default setting is to start shooting as soon as you launch the app.
- You can take a series of still photos and then export them as a video from the app.
Let’s talk about why I like these 2 features so much. First, when I’m out with my dog and he does something cute, it’s pretty standard that he stops doing whatever it was by the time I get my camera app out and start shooting. The only thing that would make it better is if I could set the camera button on the iPhone lock screen to launch this app instead of launching the default iPhone camera app. None-the-less, it’s still a time saver to launch the app and point. I can adjust the settings while it’s shooting if needed. It just keeps firing away.
Second, I love making movies from stills. I don’t know why. There’s just something fun about the gap in time created by stills being run together as a movie. Here’s an example of a movie from stills of my cooperative husband jumping up and down:
Isn’t that much funnier than if I would have recorded it as a video to start with?
But here’s the thing, whether you like the instant launch or not (you have to remember to stop it if you’re not ready to keep shooting or you’ll end up with 1000 photos–this setting can be changed if you don’t want it to start shooting on launch), the fact that it fires lots of super-fast photos helps ensure you get at least one good shot of a moving subject.
It’s really hard to stop motion with an iPhone camera. But, as you can see in these photos of my husband jumping, there are often moments when a moving subject is moving slowly enough that the motion can be stopped. Here, when my husband reached the peak of his jump and gravity took over, there is a moment when his momentum is switching from upward to downward. In those moments, I was able to get relatively sharp photos:
Similarly, when my dog walked into my frame and stared (bewildered) at my husband’s antics, I caught him in the moment he was holding still. Compare that to the photo on the right when he turned his head quickly to figure out what I was doing.
You’re Assignment: Consider if you’re willing to spend $1.99 for this app. If so, download it and go chase something moving. Launch the app and stop it when you have enough photos of your moving subject. Here are a couple of settings to check out:
After you’ve taken a series of photos of a moving subject, try exporting them as a video. To do this:
Snap Great Photos 