Category: iPhoneography Tips

Lesson 43: Patterns

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

Today we’re going to return to a basic photography concept for inspiration.  Early on, we talked about filling the frame, the rule of thirds, and symmetry as different ways to create interesting compositions in your photos.  By composition, we’re talking about the arrangement of the stuff in your frame.  We also talked about inclusion and exclusion when it comes to deciding what to put in the frame and what to keep in focus.

Today, we’re going to talk about repeating patterns.  Sometimes, something that might seem ordinary and not worth photographing can become very interesting we we select a pattern from what we’re seeing and fill the frame with that pattern.

One of the aspects of what makes an interesting pattern in a photo is the 3 dimensional aspect of the subject.  For example, here are a couple of repeating patterns that don’t work so well to my tastes:

A slightly wrinkled dish towel
A smooth granite counter top
Head on to a walkway
Head-on to begonias

But, when we take a repeating pattern that has some dimension to it and add an angle to help guide the eye into the photo, you start to get something more interesting.  Compare the begonia angles and the walkway angles side-by-side:

Head-on to begonias
Shooting down the front of a row of begonias
Head on to a walkway
Creating an angle that leads into the photo

Gardens create interesting patterns to work with almost by definition–the gardener has probably carefully grouped together different types of flowers to create patterns pleasing to the eye.  In this particular garden, I found lots to work with.  Not only are the plants grouped to form patterns, but the plants themselves contain patterns, such as the large hosta.  The hosta has rib patterns in its leaves, a pattern of white marks at the edge of each leaf, patterns of repeating leaf shapes, and the pattern in which it grows.  It works well in color and it works in black and white against a similarly patterned fence:

The shape of the leaves and white border create yet another pattern
In B&W, the leaves and wood grain start to look more homogenous
The ribs in the leaf form a pattern
The swirl of leaves create another pattern

I particularly like to have a surprise in my photos that contain a repeating shape.  For example, one flower that stands out from the rest, fallen petals, a complimentary color in the background.  These are the kinds of things that make the pattern more obvious because there’s an exception.

A surprise patch of purple in the background complements the yellow
The one larger, brighter flower above the rest adds interest
The focus on the unopened bud with the blurred pattern of an open bloom
The fallen petals

A field of flowers can create more random patterns.  If you look at the photo that shows a field of flowers vs the photo next to it that gets in closer and just shows a few flowers as a random arrangement of repeating shapes, it give it a totally different look at feel (these were taken with a DSLR, sorry):

A field of flowers in front of repeating metal arches
Repeating shapes of sunflowers popping above the rest of the flowers

Your Assignment:  Look for repeating shapes with interesting textures and/or lines that can help draw the eye.  Try taking pictures of these repeating patterns from different angles and different distances.  Try using different apps–Camera Awesome is always great for realistic photos.  The black and white examples were taken using Hipstamatic with the Helga Viking lens and Black Keys film.  Do some patterns work better in color or B&W?  Do some work better from far away?  Think of photos you may have seen of the tulip fields in the Netherlands–if you haven’t see any, do a quick Google search on “tulip fields netherlands” and click on images to get an extraordinary number of examples of ways to shoot these repeating patterns).  Are there times when you could think about repeating patterns to enhance the way you, say, take a picture of a flower?

Lesson 42: New and Improved

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

Way back in Lesson 2, I mentioned there were several things that could be improved about the photo example that I would get to later.  I bet you thought I forgot?

Well, OK, I did, but then I remembered again.  So, here’s the photo from Lesson 2:

IMG_2613

What things can you see about this photo that could be better?

Here are the things I don’t like about it:

  1. The bright areas in the background are distracting.
  2. I think my dog would look better if I’d shot lower to the ground.
  3. My dog’s black spots are under exposed.
  4. The lighting is too gray.

So, today, we’re going to do two things.  First, we’re going to try to edit the original photo with Snapseed to see if we can make it look better.  Snapseed will help with items 1, 3, and 4, but it cannot help with the angle of the photo.

Second, I’m going to take a similar photo of my dog and see if I can’t improve upon the original photo by using a different setting that has better light, and using a lower angle.  I am beginning to realize why taking my dog to obedience classes might be useful.

So let’s edit the photo in Snapseed.  Here are the steps I went through to improve the original photo:

And here is the edited version side-by-side with the original:

Original
Edited

The other approach is to try to capture the same photograph in a different setting that eliminates the bright areas in the background and allows me to take the photo at a lower angle to the ground.  I was planning to have some examples of a similar pose out on the grass in some lovely evening light.  Unfortunately, my dog was unwilling to cooperate.  Here is a selection of photos I got of my dog while trying to get him to lie in the same position as in the original photo:

But even that has a lesson in it:  if someone or something you love is doing something you want to remember, take the photo.  Sometimes you can’t get rid of distracting background.  Sometimes you can’t get the perfect angle before the subject jumps up and runs away.  But having imperfection is better than having nothing.  And, as we will discover over and over again on our photographic journeys, no two moments are ever exactly the same.

You’re Assignment:  Choose a photo from one of our early assignments you think you might be able to improve upon using Snapseed.  Get a little crazy with it.  See if you can create something that you really like.  Now, try to recreate the same situation with whatever bugged you about the photo fixed.  Is that even in the realm of possibility?

Lesson 41: iPhortraits

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

We talked about focus long ago in Lesson 4.  One of the things I mentioned back then was that because the iPhone has a very small sensor, it tends to keep a lot of stuff in your photo in focus, even when things are far apart from the front to the back of the scene.

Sometimes, like when you’re creating a portrait of a person, we don’t want everything to be in focus.  Sometimes, we just want the one main subject to be in focus.

Unfortunately, the one setting that has the most impact on whether everything will be in focus or not cannot be changed when using an iPhone.  Instead, we have to find ways to trick the iPhone into giving us the kind of focus we want.

We actually did this in some previous lessons.  In Lesson 30, we used Hipstamatic with the Tinto 1882 lens to blur everything except the face in the photo.  In Lesson 37, we used a macro lens attachment to get very close to small subjects and only a tiny little bit of the subject was in focus.

However, what to do if you don’t want to use a Hipstamatic effect or shoot macro?

There are only a few things that will help create a similar effect when you take the picture, but there are also editing tricks that will help create the blur you want.

When you’re shooting, the closer you are to your subject and the farther your subject is from the background, the more blurred the background will look.  To really emphasize your subject, having a dark background with no bright colors and relatively bright lighting on your subject will also help separate them from the background.  This can get pretty fancy pretty quickly, so let’s take one simple example.

I want to take a photo of my husband outside.  I place him so his back is to the sun.  This creates a rim of light in his hair that will help separate him from the background.  I also place him so that at the angle I’m shooting at will show mostly dark trees in the background.  Now, I get pretty close to my husband to eliminate other background stuff from sneaking into the frame.  However, I don’t want to get so close that I make his nose look bigger.  This is a good time to use the 2x telephoto attachment we talked about in Lesson 39.  It will help me fill the frame with my husband without distorting his face.  It will also make the distant background more blurred.  Compare the two photos side-by-side–can you see how his nose starts to distort and the shape of his face changes when I get too close to him with the default lens?

Camera Awesome Flash on – notice nose
2x telephoto and Camera Awesome – face more natural shape, but some glare

Now, the next challenge is that his face is in shadow.  I can do 2 things about that.  First, I can take off the telephoto attachment and use the iPhone built-in flash like in this photo:

 

Camera Awesome Flash on - notice nose
Camera Awesome Flash on – notice nose

By the way, in case you’re wondering what happens if you leave the 2X Telephoto attachment on with the flash, you get scary looking bright circles of light that may indicate paranormal activity:

2x telephoto with flash left on

A second option is to find a way to reflect some light into his face either using a white poster board or an actual photographer’s reflector.  Since my husband was already squinting, I opted for trying to fix it using Snapseed, similar to what we did in yesterday’s lesson.  Here are instructions for the edits I made:

Original Photo
After Snapseed Edits
Select the photo in Snapseed
Crop the Photo
Use automatic adjustments
Blur the background and brighten the subject
Save the final photo

Your Assignment:  Try using the 2X Telephoto attachment with your iPhone to see if you can create better separation between your subject and the background.  Compare the effect to getting closer to the subject without the 2X Telephoto.  Also try standing back a bit and using the flash, then cropping the photo to get a more zoomed in look.  Which method is the most flattering to your subject?  Have you noticed changes in their face shape based on how close you were with the iPhone?  Are any of those changes flattering?

Lesson 40: The Morning After

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

Or, the afternoon or evening after a shoot . . . whatever the case may be.  It all calls for post-processing.  What is post-processing, you ask?  Well, to put it simply, it’s “gentle” photo editing.

Photo editing can range from creating a completely new picture (like we did in Camera Awesome in Lesson 12) to doing minor adjustments to make your photo look more like reality.  The latter category of editing is usually referred to as “post-processing.”  Post as in “after you’re done shooting” and “processing” as in the digital version of developing a photo.

When you take photos with your iPhone, the iPhone is making a lot of decisions for you.  It decides how saturated to make your colors, how to balance the tones so that white looks white, how bright to make the image, etc.  Sometimes it does a pretty good job.  Sometimes it guesses wrong.

Today, we’re going to download another app.  This time, it’s not a camera, it’s a photo editing tool.  Good news!  It’s free!

Sometimes people are disappointed when they realize that some level of editing is called for to get the most out of their photos.  Using photo editing tools can help  take a ho-hum picture to something much more dramatic.  Often, it’s the drama that gets lost when you take a photo; you’re just putting back what your eyes saw.

We’re going to do a simple edit with Snapseed today.

I’m using an image that has a distracting background I’d like to make less distracting.  To do this, I start by opening the app and then selecting the image I want to edit.  The graphics below will walk you through all the edits I made to this one photo:

Selecting a photo in Snapseed
Using the selective adjust tool
Final selective adjustments
Add some background blur
Finalize your edits

I applied a few simple adjustments but left it looking pretty similar to the original–just a little better.  Here they are side-by-side:

Original
After post-processing

Your Assignment:  Download Snapseed (did I mention it’s free?).  Follow the instructions to open a photo that you ilke, but weren’t thrilled with.  Try making the simple post-processing adjustments above.  Do you like it better?  Are there still things you would like to change about it?  What are the things you couldn’t figure out how to do that you’d like to change?

Lesson 39: 2X

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons
Cropped and edited 2x telephoto spider
Cropped 2x telephoto spider

This is not a lesson about shirt sizes.  Instead, we’re continuing our progress using the Photojojo lens attachments with the iPhone.  Yesterday, we looked at the wide angle attachment.  The day before, we used the macro attachment.  Today, let’s take a look at the 2x Telephoto attachment.

This is what it looks like up close:

Telephoto Lens

If you either have reading glasses handy or don’t need them, you can see the edge of the lens is labeled “telephoto” to help you tell it apart from the other lenses in the kit.  If you’ve already adhered the metal ring around the built-in lens on your iPhone, the magnet in the 2x Telephoto lens will hold the lens in place on the ring.  If not, refer to the instructions that came with the lens kit for more info.

We previously used a different telephoto lens attachment in Lesson 25 to take pictures of the moon.  That one is 8x telephoto (or 12x for an iPhone 5).  So, you might ask, why would I want 2x if I have 8x (or 12x)?  Well, the answer is simple.  Sometimes, 8x (or 12x) is too much.  Bigger is not always better.

Let’s take the example of being in a park where you want to get a picture of a spider.  The spider is close enough that using the 8x telephoto wouldn’t allow the entire spider to fit in the frame, but far enough away that with no zoom, the spider gets lost in the flowers.

Let’s consider the macro attachment.  You might wonder why you wouldn’t use that for the spider as well.  There are three considerations:  1) How big is the spider?  2) Will the spider hold still while you manipulate the lens inches (or less above it)?  3) Will you scream and throw the phone if the spider suddenly moves while you’re that close?

The 2x zoom gets you in tighter without having to get within grabbing distance.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of my spider with and without the 2x zoom (uncropped):

Spider with Default Lens 1
Spider with 2x Lens 1

And a second one, just for fun.  By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, even with the 2x zoom, I still jumped when the spider suddenly ran to the top of its web.  It’s a big spider.

Spider with Default Lens 2
Spider with 2x Lens 2

Your Assignment:

Attach the 2x telephoto lens to your camera.  Look for subjects where you’d like to get closer without getting physically closer.  Notice how 2x sounds like a lot, but really only brings things in slightly closer.  Can you use the 2x telephoto attachment to fill the frame with your subject from further away?  Did you get any great photos of critters that can be hard to get close to like spiders or butterflies?

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Lesson 38: Wide Views

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons
Normal 1
Extra Wide 1
Normal 2
Extra wide 2
Normal 3
Extra wide 3
Normal 4
Extra Wide 4
Normal 5
Extra Wide 5

In yesterday’s lesson, we used the Photojojo macro lens to take close-ups of small subjects.  Today, we’re going to use the exact same lens but with the wide angle ring in place.  As a reminder, the wide/macro lens has two parts that look like this when separated:

Wide/Macro lens with the Wide ring removed
Wide/Macro lens with the Wide ring removed

When the two parts are screwed together, lens looks like this (the one in the middle):

 

The complete lens kit with the Wide/Macro lens in one piece
The complete lens kit with the Wide/Macro lens in one piece

If you still have them separated, reattach the wide angle ring for this lesson.  The lens will stick to the metal ring around your iPhone lens via a magnet.  Refer to Lesson 37 for more details about attaching the lens.

The iPhone lens is quite wide to begin with.  It’s a 4mm lens, which helps to compensate for its very small sensor when you’re trying to go big.  However, sometimes it’s still not wide enough.

The Photojojo wide angle lens takes your built-in lens from 4mm to 2.68mm, putting more stuff in the frame when the scene you’re shooting is really big.  Here’s a side-by-side comparison of what you get without and with the wide-angle attachment:

Normal 2
Extra wide 2

Notice two side-effects.  The corners of the image can get dark (called Vignetting) and objects around the edges of the photo start to bend.  Sometimes those effects can be fun to play with, too.

Your Assignment:  For an easy subject, try taking a picture from the corner of a room in your house.  If you can stand on a chair, even better.  Take the photo both with and without the wide angle attachment.  Can you get the whole room in?  Do you see both the ceiling and the floor in the photo?  How much more do you see with the attachment?  If possible, try the same experiment outside.  Notice what happens to street lights and houses at the outside edges of the frame–you get a little reality bending with a lens this wide.

Lesson 37: Small Subjects

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons
With the macro attachment
With the macro attachment head-on
With the macro attachment from the side
Using the macro attachment
With the macro attachment

Tiny subjects like small flowers can often be difficult to capture with the iPhone.  One way to address the problem is to use a lens that attaches over the built-in lens much like the telephoto attachment we used in Lesson 25.  In this case, we’re going to use the Photojojo macro lens attachment.

You can order a set of 3 lenses that attached via a magnet over the iPhone lens here:  http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/cell-phone-lenses/

The macro lens attachment will help you get up close to small subjects.  It’s actually part of the wide angle lens in the Photojojo kit.  You just have to unscrew a ring to get to the macro lens part.  Here’s what the kit looks like out of the box:

 

The fisheye, 2x telephoto, and wide angle/macro lens attachments from Photojojo
The fisheye, 2x telephoto, and wide angle/macro lens attachments from Photojojo

And here it is with the wide angle ring removed from the macro lens:

Wide angle lens with the ring to make it macro removed
Wide angle lens with the ring to make it macro removed

To attach the lens to the iPhone, you simply stick the metal ring around the built-in lens on the back.  I used the iPhone ring intended to attach to the glass back of the iPhone.  However, I attached it to the outside of my LifeProof case so I could keep the phone protected while shooting.  This is what it looks like on my 4S:

The ring adhered to the back of the phone is specially shaped for the iPhone lens
The macro lens attaches to the ring via a magnet

Once you have the ring adhered around your lens, remove the extra ring from the wide angle/macro lens in the kit and then let the magnet do the work to keep the lens attached to the phone.  Check to make sure the lens is centered around the lens before you start shooting–it can move around and block a portion of your photo.

To take macro photos, find a small subject like a flower and then get very close to it.  So close that you’re almost touching it.  You will need to experiment with your angle to the subject as well as your distance from the subject to get your subject in focus.  You will also need to hold really still–the magnifying effects of the attachment also magnify your motions.  This is a good time to refer to Lesson 34 on how to keep the phone still.  If you can use a tripod, do.

Here’s are some side-by-side comparisons of taking photos of small subjects with and without the attachments.  Notice that the iPhone is unable to focus at all on the flowers I chose for subjects without the attachment.

Without the macro attachment
With the macro attachment
Without the macro attachment
With the macro attachment head-on
With the macro attachment from the side
Without the macro attachment
Using the macro attachment
Without the macro attachment
With the macro attachment

Your Assignment:  If you decided to buy the Photojojo lens kit mentioned in Lesson xx, try your own up-close experiment.  See how close you need to get the subject to the lens attachment to get the image in focus.  Note that if you’re holding the phone so that the volume buttons are at the top right corner, the lens will be at the bottom right-hand corner.  Try taking a picture of the same subject from the same distance without the attachment.  Are you able to get the subject in focus without the lens attachment?

 

Lesson 36: Creating Space

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

Now that we’ve spent over a month together taking tons of pictures with our iPhones, we’re bound to have lots of extra photos lurking about that are just occupying space.  One of the great things about digital photography is that it frees us up to experiment and take lots of pictures without worrying about the cost of film and development.  The downside is that we end up with cluttered hard drives.

I use the Apple Photostream service.  I love it because it means I can take pictures on my iPhone and get back to my iMac or my MacBook Pro to write my lessons and find all the photos I just took already there.  There are a couple of problems with this, however.  First, Photostream has a way of proliferating the problem if you have a lot of trash photos.  Those trash photos get stored in the monthly archive for Photostream on each non-mobile device.  Add to that backup copies you make and that’s yet another copy of trash.

There are several things you can do to reduce the load.  First, apps like Camera Awesome do not automatically save the photos to your Camera Roll (which is what populates Photostream) unless you tell it to.  I like to leave the setting on the default, which is manual save mode.  That way, I can decide if I want to save a photo and let it proliferate or not.  The rest, I can delete and keep them out of my other devices.

Here’s how to check the auto export to Cameral Roll Setting:

Here’s how to go in and delete photos from inside the app (note:  make sure you’ve downloaded the ones you want first):

Fast Camera is another app that doesn’t automatically save all the photos to your Camera Roll.  This is particularly good because if you’re shooting with no delay between shots, you could quickly fill Photostream with one burst of shooting.  Fast Camera also has a nice organization of a series of photos–it puts them into folders.  You can open a folder to review, select a few to save, save them, and then select all and delete.   Here’s how to quickly delete the contents of a folder all at once:

Actually, you don’t even have to delete–if you click the done button, it will warn you that your photos will all be deleted.  Only use that if you are truly done with all photos in all folders–it deletes everything.

The default Apple Camera app and Hipstamatic do save photos to the camera roll automatically.  However, I tend not to take a large volume of photos with Hipstamatic because it has rather slow processing time.  I’ve run Hipstamatic out of memory on more than one occasion.  I also only use the default camera for panoramics, which I tend to take few of.  As a result, clean up is relatively easy.  If you use Photostream, just remember to remove bad photos from your Photostream as well as your camera roll.  Prioritize keeping Photostream clean–it will spread those bad photos everywhere.

The final app we’ve used so far is the Pro HDR app.  In this app, you can choose whether you want to save the original photos as well as the HDR processed photo or just the HDR processed photo.  I like to save them all, but then I regret it when I end up with a photostream full of over and under exposed photos.  I suggest just saving the HDR processed photo to minimize the clutter.

Finally, do not get attached to photos.  You don’t need those 15 bad shots of the same thing.

Your Assignment:

Go delete junk photos!  Here are some rules to help you get over the urge to keep them all:

  1. If you only got one really bad shot of something really important to you, keep it.  Otherwise:
  2. If they’re out of focus, delete them.
  3. If they’re overexposed, delete them.
  4. If they’re underexposed, delete them.
  5. If you have 15 you can’t tell apart, delete the first 14.
  6. If you have 15 that are all slightly different, pick the 2 you like best and delete the rest.
  7. If you used photos for utilitarian purposes like taking pictures of serial numbers on things you own for insurance purposes, file those away and delete them from your Photostream.

Lesson 35: Do the Time Warp

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons

In Lesson 32, we downloaded Fast Camera and discussed using Fast Camera to take pictures of moving subjects. We also exported a series of photos as a movie. What we didn’t do was talk about time-lapse photography. That is what we are doing when we take a series of still images and then string them together into a video. When the video plays so that the photos are shown closer together in time than they were taken, that’s a time lapse.

This used to be (and still can be) something complicated and difficult to do, but Fast Camera makes it very easy. There are two tricks to creating interesting time-lapse videos. First, the camera must be still through the entire process of taking the photos. This is what happens when you follow a moving subject around and then try to create a time-lapse video from them:

It looks more like a series of photos of my dog than a time-lapse. While, technically, it is still a time-lapse video, because the background keeps changing, we lose sight of the fact that we’re watching a scene unfold. Instead of following a subject around, place the iPhone on the tripod we used back in Lesson 25 and again in Lesson 34. Or, refer to Lesson 34 for other ways to stabilize the phone. For this exercise, I used the tripod:

AU0A3745

Notice the headset plugged into the iPhone. I used the volume up button on the headset to start and stop taking photos so I wouldn’t knock my precariously balanced iPhone over.

Putting the iPhone on a tripod for time-lapse photography also implies that there needs to be something moving in the frame while you take a series of photos. For example, you’ve probably seen some really awesome time-lapse videos of a flower blooming or of city traffic. In the first case, the subject remains in the frame the entire time but moves. In the second case, the subject is the city itself and the traffic driving through it provides the motion.

Another great subject for movement is water. When I chose the river as my subject, I was hoping for a nice big barge to go by or perhaps a low-flying Great Blue Heron. I didn’t get that lucky. The only boats that went by were so small and far away that they’re very hard to see. However, the movement of the water still creates interesting motion. As a side note, the small tripod on an uneven rock wall makes it rather difficult to get a level photo.

Here is a time lapse taken under a bridge:

And another looking down the river:

Could you spot the boats moving through the video? These were both shot with a 5 second delay between photos.

Another great subject for time lapse is any astronomical body. For the iPhone, the sunset is a safe bet. A couple of problems happened during my sunset time lapse. First, I used a 10-second delay between photos. Because of the lack of cloud motion, that was too fast. Second, the sun popped through the cloud coverage in a couple of frames, causing sudden overexposure. Finally, failing to take my own advice on making sure I had a fully charged phone before heading out to shoot, I ran out of juice before the sun had gone down. See Lesson 28 for tips on conserving battery life when you’re out to get a time-lapse–it is battery intensive. This is what it looks like:

The final thing to think about is what frame rate you want to create the video at. The frame rate is how many of the photos will be displayed per second. 30 frames per second is the rate that most movies are played at, so if you want a really smooth looking video, that would be the rate to choose. Since I took a smaller number of photos, I slowed things down a bit and exported my videos at 24 frames per second. Think of it this way: if you want 1 minute of video at 30 frames per second, you need 60*30=1800 photos.

Your Assignment: Open Fast Camera (and stop the photos if you have it set to start taking photos at launch) and follow the instructions below to set the time between photos. The faster the movement, the less time you need between photos to create a sense of movement. I used a 5 second delay for the river and a 10 second delay for the sunset. I would suggest using a 1 minute delay for the sunset instead, but it depends on whether the clouds are moving rapidly or not.

Now decide on your scene. If you don’t have one, you could try setting the phone up in your living room during a time when people (and/or pets) will be coming in and out. Time-lapse videos of families moving in and out of a room can be quite amusing.

Save and export your movie using the instructions in Lesson 32. Choose the frames per second based on whether you want it to look like a real video or whether you’d rather slow things down. You can also export the video and then go back and export it again at a different speed so you can decide what works best later.

What do you think? Is this a medium you could get into?

Lesson 34: When You’ve Got the Shakes

by dkrashb, posted in Featured, iPhoneography Lessons, iPhoneography Tips, iPhonography, Photography Lessons, Simple Photography Lessons
Low light means no details in dark areas in the 4S

In Lesson 31, we talked about how adding the iPhone flash can help reduce the blur of slow-moving subjects.  What we didn’t talk about was another way blur can be introduced by movement–the movement of you holding your iPhone.

One way to reduce movement of your phone is to hold it very still.  For tips on how to hold it as steady as possible, see Lesson 6.  Sometimes, it’s hard to hold your phone still–especially if you’re shooting in low-light conditions when holding it still makes the biggest difference.  In those cases, using a tripod would be ideal, if a little silly looking.

In Lesson 25, we looked at using a telephoto attachment from Photojojo that includes a mini-tripod for your iPhone.  You don’t have to use the telephoto attachment to benefit from the tripod.  If you are taking landscape photos, especially in low-light, and you purchased the telephoto kit, try using the tripod without the telephoto lens to see how it improves your landscape photos.

There are other options if you don’t have a tripod for your iPhone.  For one, you can find a place to set the iPhone if you can balance it or prop it against something to eliminate your shake.  If you are a die-hard iPhone user, you may also find some of the various attachments for the iPhone that are helpful for keeping it stable.  For example, a car holder that doesn’t block the camera, a mount on your bike, or even the LifeProof life vest I showed in Lesson 19.  The large block size of the life vest makes the iPhone easier to grip securely.  It also makes it easier to stand on edge.  As a bonus–if your iPhone falls off its perch, there’s not much chance it will get damaged!

But let’s say you want to take a photo when there is no way to prop up your phone, or, the only place you could prop your phone would not result in getting the photo you want.  Another option is to use the “image stabilization” feature provided in many camera apps.  Unfortunately, not the default camera app from Apple, but, yes, it is one of my favorite features in the Camera Awesome app.

Unlike expensive gear that comes with image stabilization features that work mechanically, the Camera Awesome app uses the gyroscope in the iPhone to determine if the phone is moving.  If it is, it waits until a moment when you’re still before taking the photo.  This works great in that pushing the volume-up button or touching the shutter button on the screen creates most of the motion.  This setting allows the movement to settle before the picture is taken.

The downside is that the pause can cause you to miss the exact shot you wanted when your subject is fickle (like my dog) and decides to walk away while you’re waiting for the photo to take.  I highly recommend it when you’re taking photos of subjects that are either still or cooperative.

Here’s how to turn the image stabilization feature on in the Camera Awesome app (downloaded in Lesson 7):

Your Assignment:  Get out the Camera Awesome app and turn on the image stabilization feature.  Take some photos of a scene that isn’t moving.  Now, turn it off and take the same photos.  Do you notice a difference?  If so, you might want to make it a setting you use a lot.  If you happen to have very steady hands, you might prefer not to use it because of the delay it can introduce.