Are you making the very best of your Smartphone right now?
WHAT LENSES DO YOU HAVE ON YOUR DEVICE?
In 2022 most modern smartphones now have more than one lens and most have a wide angle lens or ultra wide angle plus a telephoto lens. Knowing the full spec on the smartphone you have is vital as you don’t want to buy any lens accessories if you already have that lens feature built in.
On all smartphones, one thing is certain – your front facing camera will be of equal or lower quality than the back, so if you are going to be vlogging you may want to think about how to bump up the quality and capabilities of your front facing camera as well as the back with some extra lens power.
Be aware that not all phones are created equal with the front facing camera spec
- Samsung Galaxy Ultra 21 has a front facing spec of 40MP
- The iPhone 12 Pro Max has front facing spec of 12MP
- The Goole Pixel 5 has a front facing spec of 8MP
If you are new to trying out different ways to shoot, I always advise my clients to buy a cheap set of clip on smartphone lenses for around £10 ($15) on Amazon and have a play around to see what actually works for your shooting style.
Let’s get you sorted today with a quick look at four popular lenses
WHAT LENSES DO YOU HAVE ON YOUR DEVICE?
Check what your phone comes with and if you have a wide angle lens then use it to give a greater field of vision to your video. A wide angle lens means you get to capture more in your video and offers a wider field of view than the human eye can see. This is the most popular lens for everyday use for smartphone video shooters and is a better buy than an ultra wide lens which is quite specialised.
TELEPHOTO LENS 58mm
A Telephoto lens is used for getting a closer shot of your subject from a moderate distance. This lens will shoot tighter crisper shots without you using the digital zoom on your smartphone. Telephoto lenses get two times closer when mounted over a single lens camera or the wide side of a dual lens and when placed over your phone’s built in telephoto lens, you can get up to 4x closer to your subject.
MACRO LENS 100mm
A macro lens is a camera lens designed for shooting small subjects at very close distances. They can focus much nearer than normal lenses and mean you can fill your frame with your subject and capture so much more detail. Macro lenses are the lenses commonly used by beauty bloggers and food stylists to get great close up shots. The key to success on a smartphone with a macro lens is to make sure what you are shooting is still!! This is not a lens to use to try to shoot anything at great speed. Using a light def helps it out too and it’s easy to experiment and get creative.
ANAMORPHIC LENS 17mm
An anamorphic lens is the one that gives you that cinematic look and sweet horizontal flares and the widescreen letterbox style that you see in Hollywood movies. It also creates the bars top and bottom and many of my clients tell me they think these are the “Holy Grail of Film making”!
Happy Shooting Do remember to drop us me an email on info@smartphonevidoeforsmartpeople.com to let me know how you are getting on…
