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hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,922
1,312
Hello, I have an iPhone 6s+. I want to take nice photos for publications in magazines and textbooks. As a one person team, I have to do everything myself. I used the timer of the stock Camera app but it would take me more than 10 seconds (about 15 seconds are required) to go back and forth between the camera and the scene. Yes, I am in part of the photos. Going back and forth in a hurry is not practical as I have to shoot many different poses. So, instead of taking photos, I just took 4K videos. Then, try to extract the best scenes from the videos later. Is extracting scenes from 4K videos a good way to product high quality photos? How is the quality of such extracted photos compared with those individual photos taken by the stock Camera app?
 

Apple fanboy

macrumors Ivy Bridge
Feb 21, 2012
57,003
56,027
Behind the Lens, UK
Hello, I have an iPhone 6s+. I want to take nice photos for publications in magazines and textbooks. As a one person team, I have to do everything myself. I used the timer of the stock Camera app but it would take me more than 10 seconds (about 15 seconds are required) to go back and forth between the camera and the scene. Yes, I am in part of the photos. Going back and forth in a hurry is not practical as I have to shoot many different poses. So, instead of taking photos, I just took 4K videos. Then, try to extract the best scenes from the videos later. Is extracting scenes from 4K videos a good way to product high quality photos? How is the quality of such extracted photos compared with those individual photos taken by the stock Camera app?
High quality photos is a subjective term. An iPhone and your technique doesn't sound like a good approach (nor does stills from a video).
Instead I'd suggest using a proper photographer. If money is an option why not ask for aspiring photographers or students as they will possibly work for free for recognition.
 

hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,922
1,312
High quality photos is a subjective term. An iPhone and your technique doesn't sound like a good approach (nor does stills from a video).
Instead I'd suggest using a proper photographer. If money is an option why not ask for aspiring photographers or students as they will possibly work for free for recognition.

I would have asked already if I could. I have to do it myself in this project.
 

neutrino23

macrumors 68000
Feb 14, 2003
1,881
391
SF Bay area
You can get a cheap Bluetooth device to remotely trigger the iPhone camera then you don't need to use the timer.

If you have to do your own photos at least get some suggestions from someone familiar with the topic. Good lighting will help you enormously.
 

kenoh

macrumors 604
Jul 18, 2008
6,507
10,850
Glasgow, UK
You need to help us here. What kind of photographs are talking? Large products? Landscapes, architecture? Indoors, outdoors? In short no, the way you are doing it is not ideal. Extracting stills from 4K video later must take longer than 10-15 seconds per shot done right no? Plus with the right setup for stills capture, the 10-15 seconds will still be there.

Have you got an apple watch? If so you can use that to trigger the camera.
 

hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,922
1,312
I want to take photos of an unreleased product with myself. It is about three times the size of a Mac PRO (the silver tower one). I do both landscapes and portrait. Indoors. I don't know which pose of myself looks good so I have to try many different ones. The easiest way is just to take videos and then extract the stills.

Let's double check. iPhone 6s+ has a 12MP camera. The resolution is 4000x3000 according to:
http://www.easybasicphotography.com/image-resolution-pixels-print-sizes.html

4K video has a resolution of 4096x2160. So, the vertical resolution of a frame taken from a 4K video is less when compared with a photo. Is that why this approach does not produce nice photos good enough for publication?
[doublepost=1481986208][/doublepost]
You can get a cheap Bluetooth device to remotely trigger the iPhone camera then you don't need to use the timer.

Any good recommendation?
 

xStep

macrumors 68020
Jan 28, 2003
2,031
143
Less lost in L.A.
Look in the App Store for a camera app that has a continuos timer mode. The idea being that you could set the app to take a picture every half second or so, allowing you to try your poses as you are now doing with video. This is similar to a timelapse app but timelapse apps create video, where as this type of app would create JPGs. Some timelapse apps may have the ability to output the individual images

I can think of two reasons why pulling from Video could be problematic. First, the compression used for video is likely more aggressive than that used for the JPG stills. Second, if the video uses interlacing, half the number of lines are being used from what your expecting. Each of those two issues would return a poorer result than the standard JPG shot. Perhaps you could layer multiple captured frames in an editor and gain some improvement, but that is likely to be a big hassle.

With the iOS 10 release Apple gave app developers the capability to capture raw images. I'm not sure if the iPhone 6s+ is supported but that could be another option to improve the image quality. There probably are not many apps that record raw, and that will involve more editing time.
 
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kenoh

macrumors 604
Jul 18, 2008
6,507
10,850
Glasgow, UK
Look in the App Store for a camera app that has a continuos timer mode. The idea being that you could set the app to take a picture every half second or so, allowing you to try your poses as you are now doing with video. This is similar to a timelapse app but timelapse apps create video, where as this type of app would create JPGs. Some timelapse apps may have the ability to output the individual images

I can think of two reasons why pulling from Video could be problematic. First, the compression used for video is likely more aggressive than that used for the JPG stills. Second, if the video uses interlacing, half the number of lines are being used from what your expecting. Each of those two issues would return a poorer result than the standard JPG shot. Perhaps you could layer multiple captured frames in an editor and gain some improvement, but that is likely to be a big hassle.

With the iOS 10 release Apple gave app developers the capability to capture raw images. I'm not sure if the iPhone 6s+ is supported but that could be another option to improve the image quality. There probably are not many apps that record raw, and that will involve more editing time.
Yeah good shout!
 

hajime

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jul 23, 2007
7,922
1,312
Look in the App Store for a camera app that has a continuos timer mode. The idea being that you could set the app to take a picture every half second or so, allowing you to try your poses as you are now doing with video. This is similar to a timelapse app but timelapse apps create video, where as this type of app would create JPGs. Some timelapse apps may have the ability to output the individual images

I can think of two reasons why pulling from Video could be problematic. First, the compression used for video is likely more aggressive than that used for the JPG stills. Second, if the video uses interlacing, half the number of lines are being used from what your expecting. Each of those two issues would return a poorer result than the standard JPG shot. Perhaps you could layer multiple captured frames in an editor and gain some improvement, but that is likely to be a big hassle.

With the iOS 10 release Apple gave app developers the capability to capture raw images. I'm not sure if the iPhone 6s+ is supported but that could be another option to improve the image quality. There probably are not many apps that record raw, and that will involve more editing time.


Thanks for the suggestions.

I use the Wide lens from Moment on my iPhone 6s+. Moment mentioned that with iOS 10.2, their app can capture raw images.
 
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