Nearly 100 million people in the United States today have iPhones, yet many people don’t know how to use them. Later generation iPhones have greatly improved their camera. With the iPhone 6 having an eight megapixel camera, it competes with many point and shoot cameras on the market today. So, in order to help people use these cameras, I’m going to spend a few weeks demonstrating each camera function. For starters, let’s begin with the left-most setting: the time-lapse.
Okay, first thing is first: what is a time-lapse? A time-lapse is a form of video where a series of photos are taken at timed intervals. When played all at once, it gives the illusion of a sped-up video. Sounds cool, doesn’t it? Let me show you how it’s done. First, open the camera on your phone. You can do this several ways. From the lock screen, you can swipe up on the camera to take photos without unlocking your phone. You can also open the phone’s camera by touching the camera app or swiping up after unlocking the phone.
From here, it’s important to keep the phone in the same place while it takes the video. If not, your time-lapse will look wonky. Kathy recently bought an inexpensive iPhone tripod that I can use. While it’s not as advanced as the ones we use with our cameras, it gets the job done. So here’s what Kathy and I did to experiment with our iPhones. We went out to the studio and set up our camera/tripod duo and went to town. Kathy watched from behind the camera and took a time-lapse as I tied my boots. In total, this took a minute or so, but as you can see below, the video is only five seconds long. This is because it only takes photos in intervals, in order to speed up the process. Check it out!
Secondly, videos are fairly understandable. When taking a video, I highly recommend taking it horizontally, rather than vertically. Actually, this should go for all photography and videos. If you can, take it with the phone sideways. There’s actually a good reason for this. Besides it being irritated to watch a video on the internet with a black curtain on either side, our eyes are next to one another, not on top of each other! Taking a video this way fills the entire screen as well.
Those are my tips this week. Next week, I’ll be tackling slow-motion video. Hopefully you’ve learned a thing or two! Additionally, if you’ve tried out your new skills with a time-lapse, send it to us! We would love to look at it!
