Videos Should be Horizontal
If you’re able to hold your phone horizontally without fumbling it, accidentally pressing the locking button or covering a lens with your hand, Apple’s camera app is the best for taking stabilized videos. If you’re a klutz like me who’s incapable of holding a phone in any position but portrait mode or your horizon always looks like a ski slope this app might help. It’s not perfect by any means. It’s totally un-stabilized video and if shooting on the run, the horizontal floating frame is a bit slow adjusting to hand movements leading to rolling shutter effects. The camera also takes a few seconds to warm up so unless the app is already running in the background immediate grab shots are likely to be missed. However: Rolling shutter and startup issues aside, this app will create proper horizontal videos no matter how your phone is held. A horizontal video is always easier to look at than those with a vertical or square cropped format. Invest in a post shoot stabilizing app that’s able to subdue the majority of video jitter or better yet, if a support can be found to rest against, the video can be less bouncy to begin with. A few things to know: Horizontal videos taken with the phone held upright maintain high resolution because the zoom ratio is increased. In unlocked mode if you start a scene with the phone held vertically and then smoothly rotate the phone to a horizontal position you will create a professional looking close-up to wide angle transition of your subject, or vice versa. I’ve found the on-screen timer is useful when taking selfies where both hands need to be shown. The phone can be set in place and the timer accessed without having to fumble with the screen to access sub menus. The “center mode” feature has little value to me. Unless the horizon is more important than any other attribute, the result still needs cropping and stabilization. Until someone can rationalize a better reason for it, removing it would help simplify the interface. Adding stabilization would put Stanley in another class entirely. As is, and for the cost it’s off to a good start.
