I love revisiting some places and try to create something different everytime. About 40 km from where I live, hidden inside the mountains there is a place so beautiful and peaceful that one might think he is dreaming.
I needed some peace and quiet so around 4 AM, I woke up, grabbed my backpack, got into my car and headed for the mountains. An hour later I was there.
The first thing that you notice when you get there is the roaring sound of waterfalls (yup, that's why I love that place, it has waterfalls).
Anyway, I left the car behind, took a small path trough the woods and eventually got to a small clearing right before the sunrise. Nor words, images, sounds or videos could describe the amazing smell of wild flowers in the morning, of blossoming trees and of fresh morning dew on the high grass.
I sat there for a while just soaking in the beauty of the morning. After the sun rose I headed downhill, for the waterfalls. I thought I'll do some long exposures and try some freelensing techniques but I neglected one very important thing: my camera runs on a battery and I forgot to charge that said battery so I had enough juice in it to take 2 photos, the one above and this one.
If it were any other day I would kick myself in the head for not checking the battery but I went there to relax so the battery dying on me wasn't such a big issue. I found a nice patch of grass that was lit by the sun and just sat there for a while, until the big idea came.
Could I shoot a small video using only my phone? In theory, yes but I have never tried it.
Before I start nagging about the quality, this and that, let me just say that I'm absolutely loving the end result. Yeah, the quality isn't DSLR good and it lacks details here and there but for a clip that was shot handheld with a phone that had seen better days..LOVE IT.
Being the first clip I shot on my phone, top to bottom, I couldn't help but notice some things.
Let's start with the pro's:
- easy to handle;
- you can switch between slow motion and regular clips with a touch of the screen
- good for when you don't have your camera with you, a backup of sorts;
The con's:
- focusing is a pain in the ass;
- without a dedicated video app with a manual mode your white balance is gonna be all over the place ;
- a very, very short dynamic range (you won't be able to recover much details from the shadows or the highlights)
- not very sharp;
- color grading is a bitch with this kind of clips;
- despite my best efforts, I have some blown off highlights and it looks messy;
Here's some examples:
Don't get me wrong, you can achieve some pretty great results with just a phone but it wouldn't be my tool of choice when it comes to video. You'll have to make a lot of compromises and quality will suffer.
Hope you enjoyed this little clip as much as I did. :)