How to video yourself on your iPhone?

How to video yourself on your iPhone? The days of requiring a ton of expensive equipment to produce videos that looked professional are long gone. These days, your smartphone may be used to record and edit stunning videos. But if you’re shooting yourself, that still means that in addition to being in front of the camera, you need to take care of a number of important factors like framing, composition, film settings, and audio quality. It appears to be a lot of work.

That’s why we’re going to provide you with some incredibly helpful ideas and demonstrate to you exactly how to record oneself on the phone in this article.

How to video yourself on your iPhone?

1. Use your phone’s camera appropriately, then keep an eye on yourself.

Two cameras are typically found on smartphones: a selfie camera and a front-facing camera. You can utilize either when using a phone to record yourself. The only advantage of a selfie camera is the ability to watch yourself while recording, but the back-facing camera will always be of much superior quality. So, as a general guideline, use the back camera when considering how to record yourself on the phone.

Being able to see what you’re filming becomes the problem at that point. This is crucial because you need to be able to watch your video to ensure that it is focused and that it is recording. Several strategies exist to solve this:

a) Utilizing a mirror is the first and easiest method. This may be outdated, but it still functions flawlessly. Furthermore, since you probably already have a mirror at home, it’s a wonderful choice. All you need to do is set the mirror in front of your phone. You must slightly incline it upward or slightly slant it sideways. You may then see the screen of your phone in the mirror. 

b) The next option is to start filming yourself while mirroring the screen of your phone onto that of your laptop or computer. In light of this, your experience will vary based on the sort of phone and computer you use.

The most crucial thing is to keep an eye on your video as you’re recording to ensure that everything is in focus and that the video is moving. In addition, you should always look directly at the camera while speaking if you want to learn how to record yourself using a smartphone. If you glance away from the camera while speaking to check on yourself, it will be quite obvious and distracting. Finish the phrase, examine your monitor, and then look back into the camera to resume speaking in order to prevent this from happening.

2. Use a tripod or gimbal

Use a tripod for still shots and a gimbal for shots that require movement instead of filming handheld or resting your phone on random surfaces if you’re wondering how to video yourself with a phone without having it fall over.

You might not need to bother about obtaining a gimbal if you’re just recording still images of yourself doing talking videos. However, you should look into obtaining a gimbal to steady your footage if you plan to capture B-rolls or vlogs with a moving camera.

3. Correct your video’s composition

Enhancing the aesthetic attractiveness of your film starts with how you compose your shot. The orientation of your shot should be your initial consideration. Will you be shooting in portrait or landscape mode? You should shoot your movie in landscape or horizontal orientation if it’s intended for YouTube. Additionally, you should shoot it in portrait or vertical orientation if it’s for Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts. Film it horizontally if you don’t know where it’s going to go, but allow extra room if you need to crop it in later.

When composing a shot, you should also take headspace into consideration. Make sure the top of your head is never even close to getting cut off by leaving a small gap between it and the frame at all times. It’s actually rather simple to make the error, but you should also watch out for too much empty space. You may either use your eyes to arrange the shot, or you can turn on the 3×3 grids on your phone to help you follow the rule of thirds. You can clearly see where your topic is in the frame, thanks to the grid lines.

Keep your phone level with your face while recording a talking-head video, if possible. Instead of recording from above or below your eye level, this usually produces the most attractive photos. Your tripod will come in handy in this situation since you can simply change the height of the tripod legs to place your phone where you want it for your self-shot movie.

Setting up your background is the following step in recording yourself on your phone. It’s always a good idea to add some visual curiosity to the background of a video if you’re only talking to the camera. Avoid blank walls, but avoid having too much clutter either because it will look cluttered. The ideal background should be pretty plain with just a few elements that either add a splash of color, serve as the backlight, or somehow link to your storyline.

4. Utilize manual mode on the camera on your phone.

Use manual camera settings as the final piece of advice. Every phone has a camera app built in. Still, those apps typically don’t allow you much control over your focus, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and other factors that you would be able to adjust on a professional camera. You can thus download a third-party program like Open Camera to control all these different aspects and have more control over the filming process instead of utilizing your phone’s default camera app. 

The default video settings to utilize when your camera is in manual mode are listed below:

• Since 24 frames per second is the most widely used frame in filmmaking and enable you to produce smooth videos, set this as your frame rate.
• To ensure that it is neither too fast nor too slow and that it allows enough light in without generating a flicker in the frame, set your shutter speed to 1/50th of a second. Generally speaking, your shutter speed should be twice as fast as the frame rate you’re recording at.
• In order to get adequate light in your shot without having grainy video, set your ISO as low as you can. The granularity of your image will increase with increasing ISO.
• Although the majority of modern smartphones have outstanding autofocus capabilities, you could have problems in dimly lit areas. To guarantee that your camera sensor receives sufficient light for it to be able to focus optimally in situations like this, it is best to have an external light. To prevent the frame from varying in and out of focus, you can alternatively choose to manually select the focus and lock it.

5. Make sure your videos are lit appropriately.

Make sure your videos are lit properly as per the following piece of advice. The majority of modern smartphones have excellent, powerful cameras. But even with these high-quality cameras, you won’t obtain professional-looking shots if your videos don’t have excellent lighting. So let’s look at how to use a phone camera to record yourself while maintaining proper lighting.

Utilizing natural light is the most basic type of lighting. Therefore, if you’re going to take photos outside, you should do so during the golden hour, which is the period just before sunset or just after sunrise. The best lighting for videos is provided at that time by the sun. Compared to the intense sunshine you could experience at noon, this light is pleasant and soothing.

6. Capture sounds of a high standard

The second piece of advice is to ensure your audio recording is of great quality. People will still put up with ordinary video quality, but if your audio is poor, they will rapidly stop watching.

Although some of the most recent phones do have good built-in microphones, it is often preferable to use external microphones rather than relying on them.

Depending on your needs, you might consider a few alternative options. As opposed to a shotgun mic (Rode video micro pro), which must be fixed on your phone, a good lavalier mic, like the Rode lav mic, allows you more freedom of movement and allows you to film while sitting further away from your phone.

You could also utilize separate recorders, like the Zoom h1n recorder, but in that case, you would need to edit your audio and video in sync. But doing that is not really difficult. Make sure to clap your hands to start the recording since this will cause an audible spike that will be clear on the waveform once you bring it to the editor.

Ensure that your microphone is positioned at the proper distance from you in order to catch your speech properly and reduce background noise. Additionally, if you’re using a lavalier microphone, be careful to position it so that it doesn’t pick up any rustling from your hair or clothing because you won’t be able to remove that during post-production.

Camera modes on your iPhone

Photo

When you launch the Camera app, Photo is the default option that you’ll see. Both static images and Live Photos can be taken in this mode.

Your camera automatically changes exposure and focuses based on what you’re pointing your camera at. Tap a different spot in the viewfinder to adjust the focus and exposure. Press and hold on to the screen until you see AE/AF Lock if you want to maintain your focus and exposure in the same place.

You can capture movies in photo mode with QuickTake on iPhone XS, iPhone XR, and later models. Other iPhone models allow you to shoot a fast burst of pictures by pressing and holding the shutter button. To stop, let go of the shutter button.

Portrait

The depth-of-field effect produced by portrait mode maintains your subject clear while blurring the background. Open the Camera app, then swipe to Portrait mode to use it. Whenever the app recommends it, get further away from your subject. Take the photo when the Depth Effect box goes yellow.

You can add studio-quality lighting effects to your Portrait mode photographs on iPhone X and subsequent models, as well as the iPhone 8 Plus, to make them even more compelling. Tap Edit after taking your picture to select between Contour Light, Studio Light, Stage Light, and Stage Light Mono.

Square

The ideal photo size for many social media platforms is square. Therefore, square mode restricts the frame of your camera screen to a square. So, after taking a picture, you may immediately share it on your preferred social media sites.

Pano

By carefully panning your iPhone, you can take a wide-angle landscape using pano mode. To assist you in taking your picture, pano mode provides a guiding bar in the center of the screen. Make sure the arrow is directed to the right if you want to start the snapshot from the left. Tap the arrow to change its direction to start from the right.

After pressing the shutter, slowly move your camera from one side of the shot to the other. Try to maintain the arrow on the yellow guiding bar as you move.

Video

The shutter button changes from white to red when you go to any video mode. To begin recording, tap the shutter once. To stop, tap the shutter once more.

Would you like to shorten your video? To change the start and stop times, click Edit or the edit button, then drag the slider. To save your changes, tap Done. With Cinematic mode on an iPhone 13, you may give your videos more depth of field. Additionally, you may use the slo-mo or time-lapse modes to make your video faster or slower on all devices.

Cinematic mode

Your iPhone 13 camera can record videos in Cinematic mode with a shallow depth of field and add lovely focus transitions for a professional-grade appearance. iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, or iPhone 13 Pro Max are allowed for cinematic mode. Find out more about how to use your iPhone’s Cinematic mode.

Slo-mo

Slow-motion films help your favorite moments last longer. As usual, your video records. However, the slo-mo effect can be seen when you play it back. Your video can be edited so that the slo-mo action begins and ends at the times you specify.

Time-lapse

Create a time-lapse video that is quick to make and simple to share by taking pictures at predetermined intervals. When you tap the shutter button while your camera is in time-lapse mode, it will capture pictures at regular intervals until you tap it again.

Adjusting your camera settings

Image stabilization

First, our resident video guru Ben Toalson recommends changing your camera settings. By default, the iPhone shoots video at 30 frames per second (fps). Depending on your model, you can choose alternative frame rates and video resolution settings.

Tap “Camera” in the iPhone Settings menu from the home screen, then choose “Record Video.” The usual frame rate and video quality are 1080 HD at 30 fps. Ben advises selecting 4K at 24 fps. Your videos will appear to have been professionally shot if you use this setting to make the most of the available resolution.

After that, stabilize your shot. Nobody wants to watch shaky footage unless you’re filming a found-footage horror film. The picture stabilization on iPhone cameras is quite good. For instance, the iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7, and a few other more recent models all come with optical image stabilization (OIS).

Sensor-shift optical image stabilization, a more sophisticated stabilization capability found in the newest iPhones (iPhone 12 Pro Max and after), is especially useful for vlog-style films where you might be moving around and capturing what’s in front of you.

We advise always utilizing a tripod when recording talking head videos. Certainly, you could lean your camera against something, but a tripod offers you the assurance and control to stabilize your photo at the ideal angle.

Lighting and audio

Your lighting arrangement and a steady shot are crucial for giving your film a polished appearance.

A video may appear blurry in low light. To be able to record video whenever and wherever you need to, we advise having a simple lighting setup. Ring lights reduce shadows by dispersing light around your camera rather than having it come from a single angle. 

Finally, if you’re discussing or teaching something in your clip, make sure your video has excellent audio. Without a costly setup, high audio quality is still possible. Ben suggests utilizing a lavalier microphone compatible with iPhones, such as the Rode smartLav+, or Apple’s corded earpods, which have a surprisingly good microphone.

The lapel microphones clip to your shirt. This Rode mic offers a hands-free alternative for those who move around a lot while instructing. Simply attach the mic with a clip and connect it to an adapter or the headphone socket on your smartphone.

To ensure that the microphone can pick up your audio, project your voice and talk loudly enough. Additionally, make an effort to reduce echo and background noise as much as feasible.

These were our top suggestions for recording videos of oneself on the phone, and utilizing your iPhone to do so should be easy for you now. Have fun shooting!

FAQs on How to video yourself on iPhone

Originally posted on November 16, 2022 @ 1:43 am