This week, I thought I’d share some fantastic footage shot by Benjamin Dowie on his new iPhone 4S. Sure, the 4S is barely out of its diapers, but clearly filmmakers are already beginning to discover its enormous potential.
Benjamin makes excellent use of the new phone’s 1080p, auto stabilization, and portably. He even managed to make the iPhone’s mechanical auto-focus look somewhat artistic! Good stuff!
Thanks to the gang at AppAdvice.com for pointing out Benjamin’s video!
Taz Goldstein
Taz is a Los Angeles based Director who launched Hand Held Hollywood to satisfy his own gadget addictions.
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Gorgeous… Great use of restrained color & depth. The skateboard shot? So effortless and lightweight – it feels logical. I think it would be a pain to try and get that effect with "tiny" DSLR cameras… It could definitely be done with GoPros, but why not use your phone?!
Terrific video! I’m quite new to capturing video with the iPhone, but have been working on a project recently that requires me to record under high intensity lights (not sure of the technology).
I’m using my fancy new 4S, but one thing I notice immediately is that I get 3-4 dark bands across the screen. This occurs with both photo and video…
I did find a tutorial that shows how to edit these out with final cut, but I’d prefer to eliminate it at the beginning. My impression is that I will have to change the shutter speed of the shots (photo and video)? I know this is not possible through the 4S itself, but there seem to be a variety of apps that could possibly help me achieve this.
ANY suggestions you have would be helpful.
Thanks!
I just got my first iphone (4S) and shot some video. (a friend’s concert indoors at a recording studio) It looks great and sounds good on the phone on playback, but HORRIBLE when brought over to my macpro and played on screen/ editing. I used Image Capture to transfer the video to my computer. Am I doing something wrong?
Hi David,
Normally video is brought in via iPhoto, but I can’t imagine why Image Capture wouldn’t do the job. Try iPhoto and see if you get the same results. When you say it looked terrible, can you be more specific? Pixilated (bad compression), jumpy (bad stabilization), color issues?
-Taz
Hello Taz and company!
I don’t yet own a 4S, but as a test I shot some video in the store, then emailed it to myself and tried it out in FCP. However, the video I received wasn’t even close to 1080. I didn’t use a text message, just plain old email. Thoughts?
Also, wondering how the 4S looks with the Owle?
Micah,
You say you shot some test footage with the 4S in the store – it wasn’t with the forward-facing camera was it? I know it’s not as powerful as the rear-camera… (I don’t own the 4S myself, but my 4 only has a VGA front-facing camera…)
Nope, I definitely used the "real" camera, and the footage looked great on the phone. I also know that sending video via text reduces the file size greatly, so I was careful to avoid that. The footage that I got back from the email was 1.1 MB, 568×320 using the H.264 and AAC codecs. That’s for an :11 clip, so it wasn’t very long to begin with.