PLEASE....
When taking video for later use, hold your phone HORIZONTALLY - making a wider shot. It will be much more pleasing and useful.
Also: Please don't wave the phone-camera around like a garden hose watering the plants. STEADY shots, or SLOW pans & HOLD work best, and look more professional.
Also: Trust your automatic settings. The time it takes you to manually adjust all your exposure settings will cause you to miss the shot. Automatics are Very Good these days, and work fine 99% of the time.
Also: Don't "breathe" your zoom in and out and in and out. PICK a setting, and make a good steady shot. THEN re-frame and touch up with the zoom for a perfect composition and shoot.
Your shooting will look a lot more professional, and we'll all need less Visine.
73
IBTZ
I couldn’t agree with you more! So much more to see horizontally than vertically.
All very good advice.
My buddy in television news production is vehement about this, too.
If his kids send him video shot vertically he gets on them. They don’t anymore.
Still photos, yes, it depends on the composition of the image you’re trying to capture. Video must be landscape.
Horizontal is the only way to capture all of Whoopie.
Forget I mentioned her.
Do as he op-ed said.
Agreed. Vertical camera shots are crap.
Landscape vs Portrait.
Completely agree! It’s a pet-peeve of mine as well.
73 to you as well!
Shouldn't you be posting this on tick-tock?
Thank you! I have been preaching for years against people who do video using their smartphones in portrait mode. And then jerk the phone back and forth so they can capture the whole view. It’s the test I use to determine idiocy.
No.
I agree, but I wonder why society is changing so quickly? Pictures tell the story and now it’s so quick and people just react.
Remember when Islam was a threat – everything in the news was about Islam. And now it’s trans and drag queens. Everything is about trans and drag queens. Society has changed so quickly.
Now the military is woke. When did that happen? Again so quickly and people just react if at all... most just accept it.
There is a lot of change going on and not for the good and conservatives just react... if at all. Where did this change come from? If you take a picture of a man dressed up as a woman it would be considered humorous years ago... like Brutus, from Popeye and Brutus, in a wig. Here is a guy with a beard in a wig. Now it is real and no longer comedy. And if you try to make it look ridiculous you could be charged with a hate crime.
Pictures today tell a different story that a few years ago.
A major pet peeve of mine!!!! These phones can make amazing videos at 16:9 etc., yet people hold them vertically, and then it looks like crapola when it hits the TV. I make every video in the landscape orientation.
My phone has a round lens. If it took round pictures like it’s supposed to we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Yes, I’m always surprised to see people recording video in portrait mode even though there is no TV around that actually plays in that mode. Such a basic Video 101 step!
Love it - and useful for non-pros.
My little peeve are the so-called professional online media types who use phrases like “video filmed by...” or “The man, seen here in this video, was filmed doing...”
We used to smack our tv production interns for parroting mindless crap like that.
I bought a light kit camera ring thingamabob off Amazon. Looked great. Has a tripod and collapses and fits inside a neat, slim carrying case. In fact it is pretty good in all respects except one. The little grip piece contraption that holds the phone doesn’t extend wide enough to hold the camera in a horizontal position! What were they thinking? I had to fashion some duct tape and a stuff a hand towel behind the phone and place some cotton swabs under the corners to keep the phone balanced, in place, and at a 90 degree angle.
Sure, this isn’t for handheld shooting of events you encounter or for moving around it is for “studio type” of shooting. Isn’t meant to be moved around too much. Pan left and right that’s about it. But you would think that the makers of these thingamabobs would know that everything is 16:9 especially “studio type” shooting. Why they chinsed on the design of the camera holder is beyond comprehension.
This has been a complaint of mine for years as well. These days it has a lot to do with these idiot tiktok videos. Even YouTube is copying them with their stupid “shorts”. I would like to say it is kids who don’t know any better but it is old folks who do this as well.
Would you ratther have your postcards go up and down instead of left to right?
Hold your phone left to right, and you will have more in the picture, or, find an old kodak digital camera, and use that.
Good advice, but...
If I want a real picture I use a real camera. phone pictures get thrown away eventually.