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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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Panasonic has just released a whole bunch of GH5 tutorial videos (huh?)

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Panasonic has just unleashed a torrent of educational and tutorial videos on YouTube for the Panasonic GH5. Although such content is never unwelcome, the timing is a little odd. Why release this content now when the GH5 has already been available to purchase for three and a half years?

To me, it means one of only two things. Either they’re getting ready to unload a new firmware that’s going to add a bunch of cool new features (RAW over HDMI?) and they think the camera will become popular again… Or, they’re trying to get it all out of the way now because they’re about to announce its successor; The Panasonic GH6. Of course, both of those assumptions could be wrong, too.

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Here’s how you can light product photography using small LED light sources

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Lighting products is a lot of fun, but it can be quite tricky. Most lights we use in the studio for shooting products are huge. They’re often big strobes or LED panels, but sometimes you just need something small. Something you can fit into a small space and light up just a small section of a product, or indeed the whole of a small product.

In this video, photographer Mark Duffy shows us how he uses Spiffy Gear’s new KYU-6 LED lights to light up an Xbox controller for a little bit of small product photography.

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How to make just a single light look like many for photos and video

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For some of us, especially when we’re just starting out, we’re limited on gear. Maybe we can only afford a single light or perhaps we can afford more, but we want to experiment with just one before laying down a huge amount of cash. Either way, having just a single light for our work is not uncommon. It is possible to make one light look like many though.

In this video, filmmaker Brandon Li shows us a technique for multiplying a single light using multiple takes and compositing. It’s a technique that we’ve seen used a lot in photography, particularly product photography, but not that often with video – especially when you’ve got a moving camera.

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Here’s how to shoot a four hour video in under a minute

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Normally, this wouldn’t really make it past my first internal filter. It’s a silly idea and a silly video, but given who’s actually made it, I found it pretty funny. You see, David F. Sandberg, otherwise known as Ponysmasher, is the director of the rather hilarious Shazam. Yes, that Shazam. A few videos ago, David mentioned that as he’s not a “professional YouTuber” he doesn’t need to care about analytics and subscribers and that he’ll post what he wants when he wants.

He joked about a video flipping off the viewer for four hours. The problem with making threats like that on YouTube, though is that you often have to follow through. So, he did. And he made a behind the scenes showing how he shot the whole thing in just 53 seconds. Because who’s really going to stand there in front of a camera flipping it off for four hours?

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This in-depth tutorial covers every feature of the new GoPro Hero 9 Black

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The GoPro Hero 9 Black was just officially announced only 9 days ago. But as usually happens, one gets into the hands of a lucky individuals few rather quickly (sometimes before it’s even been announced). One such individual is YouTuber the daniel life. He hasn’t posted a review of the camera yet, but he has posted is a mammoth long tutorial going over the Hero 9 Black’s feature set.

He’s actually done two videos – one in English (above) and one in German (below) – and each is over an hour and a half long going over just about every topic you can imagine. It’s designed to help everybody from complete beginners through to those who are a little more advanced and just want to find out more about specific features.

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How to recreate the original title card from “The Thing” completely in-camera

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The Thing is arguably one of sci-fi’s finest masterpieces, of that there is no doubt. Released in 1982, its creators didn’t have access to even the most modest of modern CG tools that can run on just about everybody’s desktop or laptop computer today. They had to do things practically. For real. In-camera.

Amongst those things shot practically is the initial opening title sequence. After initially seeing a ship hurtling towards the earth, the words “THE THING” are burned into the screen. But how exactly was it done? In this video, Tommy and the team at InCamera walk us through a recreation, sticking as closely to the original techniques as possible.

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Watch and learn how light paint your product photography with LED lights and strobes

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Product photography can be a lot of fun, especially when you start to experiment with light painting. In this video, photographer Mark Duffy shows us how he does his long exposure product photography using the new KYU 6 LED lights and Godox MS300 strobes in the studio on a pair of trainers (or “sneakers”, for those of you in the US).

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Are you guilty of “scene stuffing”? How to avoid this landscape mistake with long lenses

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While most landscapes seem to be photographed with pretty wide lenses and is often the key selling point of wide and ultrawide lenses, they don’t have to be. You can shoot landscapes with just about any lens, and they can be particularly interesting when you use a long telephoto.

But shooting landscapes with telephoto lenses isn’t always straightforward. It’s easy to mess things up and ruin your composition. One particularly common mistake is what Mark Denney calls “scene stuffing”, and in this video, he explains what it is and how to avoid it.

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Watch this if you’re still trying to figure out a good video editing workflow

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If you’re new to video editing, it can be difficult to start figuring out a good workflow. How do you manage and organise all those huge files? How should you arrange them in your editing software? And is there some trick to editing to make things more efficient?

It can be a tricky process if you’re just trying to muddle through it by yourself, and you’ll likely make mistakes along the way. This video series from Ben Gill at Oxenfree Film & Motion is designed to help ease you through the process.

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