smartfilming

Exploring the possibilities of video production with smartphones

Tag: Smartphone

#57 What is this tiny green/orange dot on your smartphone’s screen? — 23. January 2023

#57 What is this tiny green/orange dot on your smartphone’s screen?

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Remember the 3.5mm headphone jack? You know, the port on your phone where you put the cable of your headphones in before Bluetooth headphones became all the rage? Given all the differences between Android phones and iPhones, both in terms of hardware and software, this was, for quite a while, a somewhat unifying factor. For the mobile content creation community this meant that you could use certain external mics (like the original iRig Mic) with both kinds of phones. Then Apple and in its wake many/most others smartphone makers decided to get rid of the headphone jack and rely on a sole physical port for accessory hardware connections: the Lightning port (Apple) or a USB-C port (Android phones). While we’re still waiting for the iPhone to finally give up its proprietary Lightning port and switch to the universal USB-C, I found a little something on the software side that works the same on both mobile platforms. It’s something lots of people might not even be aware of and those who do may not know what it’s actually about. But it’s useful and interesting.

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#55 After 7 years of brand loyalty to LG: Why I chose Sony to follow in its footsteps — 12. December 2022

#55 After 7 years of brand loyalty to LG: Why I chose Sony to follow in its footsteps

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The first smartphone I ever owned was a Samsung S3 Mini. When I purchased it in 2013 I didn’t really think about the phone’s potential for video production. I just wanted to finally step into the world of touch screen phones with mobile internet, without paying a premium price for an iPhone. It was only after spending some time with the lil’ Samsung that I became more and more interested in seeing the device’s potential for more than just taking calls, browsing the web and snapping some pics. My next phone was, interestingly enough, a Nokia 920 running the Windows Phone operating system. I was very much aware of the sparse app situation on Microsoft’s platform but intrigued by Nokia’s camera hardware (Zeiss lens) and the support for 25fps in the native camera app. Since the WindowsPhone app store didn’t really improve much and it became obvious very soon that the platform was not going to stick around much longer, I kept looking for an Android phone brand that would strike a chord with me.

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#53 What’s new and useful in iOS 16? (by Marc Blank-Settle) — 2. October 2022

#53 What’s new and useful in iOS 16? (by Marc Blank-Settle)

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Preface

Last year, I hosted for the first time an article on this blog that wasn’t written by myself but by BBC Academy mobile journalism (“MoJo”) trainer Marc Blank-Settle whom I have met on several occassions and keep constantly in touch with via Twitter. His yearly insights into every new iteration of Apple’s mobile operating system iOS from a journalist’s point of view have become a much respected staple of the community so it’s no surprise he’s done it again for iOS 16. If you are an iPhone user, you should definitely dig into this and don’t forget to follow Marc on Twitter for the latest updates or to ask him a question. I’m also using this opportunity to apologize for my own relative silence on this blog in the last months but life’s been extremely busy. Hopefully the near future will allow me again to post more content here. But for today, I’m handing things over to Marc Blank-Settle. – Florian from smartfilming.blog

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#16 Six months with the LG V30 – a dream come true for smartphone videographers? — 3. January 2019

#16 Six months with the LG V30 – a dream come true for smartphone videographers?

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LG V30 with transparent protection case

A little more than six months ago I bid my LG V10 goodbye into retirement. The V10 was the first flagship smartphone I had purchased and I had done so for a very specific reason: LG had redefined what a stock/native camera app on a smartphone can offer in terms of pro video controls. While many other phone makers were including advanced manual controls for photography in their camera apps, video had been shamelessly ignored. With the introduction of the V-series in late 2015, LG offered avid smartphone videographers a feature pack in the native camera app that could otherwise only be found in dedicated 3rd party apps like FilmicPro. While LG’s smartphone sales can’t really compete with the ones from Samsung, Huawei and such, the V-series fortunately didn’t just vanish after the V10 but was succeeded by the V20, V30, V35 and V40 henceforth. As I don’t see the need to upgrade my phone on an annual basis, I went for the V30. It took over the useful dual rear cameras from the V20 and newly introduced features like LOG profile, Point Zoom and CineVideo. After spending six months with the V30, what is there to say about the device as a videography tool?

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#10 Important update on the subject of Camera2 API — 26. March 2018

#10 Important update on the subject of Camera2 API

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So some time ago I made a blog post about the topic of Camera2 API on Android devices and why it is important if you are interested in doing more advanced videography on your smartphone. If you don’t have a clue about what Camera2 API is, please check out my previous article before continuing to read this. One of the things that my previous article suggested was that you need a device with „Full“ or „Level 3“ Camera2 API support built into the Android OS by the manufacturer of the phone to take advantage of pro video recording apps. If your device has only „Legacy“ or „Limited“ Camera2 API support then you are not able to even install an app like Filmic Pro. However, after recently getting an Honor 6A into my hands, I need to differentiate and clarify some things.

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#9 Android-App-Liste zur Medienproduktion mit Smartphones — 23. February 2018

#9 Android-App-Liste zur Medienproduktion mit Smartphones

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English preface to this post: Post #9 was supposed to be the 2nd part of the article about native camera apps but something came up so I’m squeezing another one in before delivering the sequel to #8. The reason is an event that’s happening today, February 23rd 2018, in Bochum, Germany: “MoJo Meeting” (Twitter: @MoJoMeeting), a (first time) gathering for the German/German-speaking “MoJo” community (“MoJo” = “Mobile Journalism”), hosted by the NRW Media Lab. While I’m unfortunately not able to participate in person, I have used this occasion to finally finish my extensive and fairly detailed Android app list for multimedia production that I had been working on for quite a while. A 15-page-pdf of the list will be downloadable from this post but the current list is in German. However I’m planning to make an English language version of this list available within the next few weeks.

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