Avoid camera shake in video captures with a cell phone
Cell phones really are universal devices of out times, they manage your adresses and appointments, are able to capture photos and videos and of course you can do phone calls 😉
Starting position
Besides taking photos mainly with a 12 MPix sensor cell phones have the capability to record videos. Full HD or 1920x1080px resolution is standard at least for most devices but also a lot of cell phones offer 4K resolution as an option. The differences between high end modells and mid class phone mainly are frame rates and other things.
Avoiding camera shake normally means to attach the camera to a tripod. There are a couple of adapters on the market to mount a cell phone on a tripod but for a simple panoramic shot you’ll probably need a specialized video head to do it smoothly. But even a tripod wouldn’t solve the problems or the camera movement if you’re going towards the main object of your video capture.
Bracket or software stabilization
Besides the large number of videos captured in portrait mode the main problem is to hold the cell phone stable without covering the lens with your fingers. Maybe a selfie stick (but because of a stable position not extended to the longest position) or a combination of a tripod adapter and a hand grip could be helpfull.
Let’s take a look on my video, where i did a comparism.
A bracket will help to avoid camer amovement a little bit. The built-in camera stabalization is a lot better to keep the video image steady, but also has problems to balance your normal walk.
Ex post stabilization
While most of the cell phone are 4K ready a camera stabilization in the camera is limited to the top modells on the market. Other models are limited to fuul HD and depending on the model support either 30 or even better 60fps.
If you want to stabilize your 4k footage maybe you’ll give Google fotos a try. This app offers besides the name video stabilization and does a pretty good job.
Conclusion
Most of the internal camera stabilizers work on a very high level, so there is no reason why not activate this feature by default. On higher resolutions and/or frames per second the Google app seems to be a very good alternative.
ciao tuxoche
