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How to Make the Best of Your Phone Camera (Videography)

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Umer Bilal
How to Make the Best of Your Phone Camera (Videography)

Videography isn’t just for professionals. It’s a great outlet for those looking for a new hobby. In our current age of technology, there are plenty of older and new phones that have great cameras that will take beautiful videos. But what makes a good video or even a photo, is the person behind the device. It’s important to know how to use your device to your advantage before you can delve into videography. Here’s how you can make the most of your phone’s camera when shooting videos.

Make sure you shoot in brightly lit areas. Poor lighting tends to have a huge impact on smartphone cameras, especially if your phone isn’t equipped to handle low-light adequately. Ensuring that you shoot in brighter areas will help avoid unnecessary shows and grainy videos. Many device cameras come equipped with back-lighting and white balance settings in the respective apps. You can use these settings to adjust your camera to adapt to a poorly lit area in order to compose better photos.

Keep your phone stable. The best way to avoid video footage coming out blurry or distorted is by keeping your phone steady while you are recording. While using both hands to hold your phone close to your body while filming can help, using a tripod or a stabilizer will do a much better job. If either of these are unavailable to you, you can also use a table or a book to place your phone on. Any physical object that won’t move will work!

It’s important to have knowledge of composition rules. One that you start experimenting with the rule of thirds. While it might seem basic, it is often overlooked by many amateur photographers. Some devices will allow you to have a grid while you shoot video so it is recommended you switch it on! The lines on the grid are the spots where our eyes automatically look and when you place your main subject or object in line with the grid, you will have far better results than you would have otherwise.

Manually adjust the exposure and focus on your camera app. It’s important to set the Auto Exposure lock on your camera app so that your device doesn’t automatically keep changing the exposure while you’re shooting. This will often happen when you’re panning across a scene with different lightings. Manually setting the focus is helpful as well in order to focus on exactly what you want, rather than letting the camera choose between different objects.

Experiment with different frame rates. The faster the frame rate, the smoother the video. 60fps (frames per second) is ideal as it produces smoother motion in videos. If your smartphone allows you, you can shoot at 120 fps for even better results.

Don’t use the digital zoom! There is truly nothing worse than having parts of your video pixelated because you’ve zoomed in on your subject. Move closer to your subject instead. Remember to keep your phone steady while doing so.

And most importantly, remember to film in landscape mode rather than portrait. Portrait videos are great for social media stories, but landscape videos are generally better and watchable on more platforms.

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