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Rode has released a new range of Vlogger Kits for mobile filmmakers

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Rode has launched a new range of Vlogger Kits aimed at vloggers and smartphone filmmakers. The kit comes in three flavours. There’s a Lightning-equipped iPhone kit, a Type-C USB based Android kit, or a universal kit that works with both (although you’ll need your headphone jack adapter cable).

Each kit includes a mini tripod, a phone bracket, microphone, windshield, light, lighting gels, and all the extra cables and bits you need to get up and running quickly. As mentioned, though, if you get the universal kit, you’ll need your Lightning or Type C USB to TRRS headphone jack cable. While you might prefer to go with a kit specific to your device, the universal one is handy if you use different types of phone (or camera) and want to be able to switch between them.

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How to shoot cinematic footage with your smartphone without buying a whole bunch of accessories

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We’ve all seen the “Shot on iPhone” campaigns. Apple takes some Hollywood filmmaker, shoves some iPhones in their hand and lets them go create something epic. But as we’ve seen from the behind the scenes footage, they’re often using an entire production crew to help them make it, along with a lot of the same tools they use with “real cameras”.

But there’s a lot that you can do without having a couple of dozen people helping (handy, given the pandemic n’ all) and without having to buy a whole bunch of extra toys and tools to bolt onto your phone. In this video, Steve Write from Learn Online Video looks at using just a naked iPhone without any other devices to shoot your smartphone videos.

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Auto white balance in phone cameras kills real color in wildfire photos

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Massive wildfires are currently raging in the US West Coast. The skies have been colored orange and red, but you might not be able to accurately capture it with your phone camera. Many people have noticed that auto white balance on phone cameras is severely affecting orange and red hues. This makes this whole tragedy look way less dramatic and alarming than it is.

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Zhiyun shrinks their smartphone gimbal even further with the new Smooth XS

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Zhiyun has announced their new Smooth XS gimbal. Like the Smooth X launched earlier in the year, it’s a 2-axis gimbal designed for smartphones, although the Smooth XS is actually even smaller while seemingly offering the same feature set.

The Smooth X offers up to five and a half hours of battery life from its internal battery that charges in three hours. It provides 290° in the pan access and 268° in roll with a payload of up to around 200g. Oh, and there’s an over-the-top launch video that very much signifies who the target market is.

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10-year-old 2K cine camera goes up against 8K smartphone camera in this side-by-side comparison

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The 2K Arri Alexa was a revolution in digital filmmaking. It was the first camera that saw a lot of big Hollywood filmmakers really start paying attention to digital and consider ditching the laborious, messy and expensive film process. But with 4K now standard and 8K on the way, does it still hold up?

In this video, Gene Nagata, AKA Potato Jet, puts it side-by-side with the new 8K Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra to see how well these tiny sensor 8K smartphones do and just how well the old Arri Alexa competes today.

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Six cheap DIY rigs to raise your smartphone shots to a ninja level

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Smartphone cameras are now advanced enough to give us many possibilities for shooting photos and videos. But with some tricks and DIY magic, you can make your work much, much better without spending lots of money. In this video, COOPH brings you a selection of their six best DIY rigs for smartphone photography and video. They’re affordable, easy to make, and they’ll help you add a new dimension to your smartphone shots.

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Watch these techniques to shoot smooth handheld footage on your iPhone without a gimbal

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Smartphone gimbals are pretty commonplace today. There are countless models from companies like Zhiyun, Moza, Feiyu, and a million other brands. It feels like we’ve had them forever, although they’ve only really been around for about four years. And sometimes, even today, we need to figure out a way to live without them.

You’re not always going to have it with you when you see something cool and want to whip out your phone to grab a sequence. Or perhaps, as filmmaker Brandon Li mentions in this video, carrying a gimbal defeats the whole purpose of using your phone. Putting his money where his mouth is, this 10-minute video shows us how we can get gimbal-like shots without a gimbal.

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FiLMiC DoubleTake is a free app that lets you shoot with two different iPhone cameras at the same time

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FiLMiC has launched a new and very cool app named DoubleTake. It’s is a free app that lets you shoot with two different iPhone cameras at the same time. You can choose between all available cameras on your device and simultaneously shoot two different videos with the same device.

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Researchers develop system to locate gunshots based on smartphone video

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In some parts of the world, gunshots are heard more often than in others. Sometimes in places where one shouldn’t be hearing gunshots. Places where response teams need to act fast to catch the person firing them. A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a system that can use smartphone video to locate the source of gunshots using machine learning.

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Shooting concerts with your phone: did you REALLY have a good time?

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Risking to sound cheesy and cliché, I must say: I couldn’t live without music. It adds flavor to my everyday life and a soundtrack to most of my memories. When I go to a concert, it’s the best night out I can imagine. But, concerts in the 21st century come with a phenomenon I rant about whenever I can: smartphones.

Every time I go to a concert, I feel like I’m the last of the Mohicans: someone who has come to a concert to enjoy the music, sing along, dance, cry, laugh, and clap my hands until my palms are numb. Other than listening, I’m there to watch the performance, too. But it seems that most people prefer watching the entire show through the tiny displays of their phones. And this time, I won’t even bitch about how those people are blocking everyone else’s view. I wanna discuss whether or not they can even enjoy the show if they watch it entirely through a smartphone screen.

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