4 Clever Smartphone Hacks for Photographers

Photography Tips  •  Smartphone Photography

Stuck at home on a rainy day? Lost for ideas as what to shoot? Or lamenting that you can’t seem to take your smartphone experience to the next level? Matthew Rycroft shows some really cool things you can do with your smartphone in this video tutorial:

1. Extra Options in the Hyperlapse App

Open the app Hyperlapse.

Now tap the screen four times with four fingers.

Voila! A secret menu opens up. You can now increase the resolution to up to 1080p (full HD), change the frame rate to 24 fps from the default 30 fps, and change the speed to up to 40x, among other things.

2. Ditto with the Boomerang App

Do the same thing with the Boomerang app. Tap the screen four times using four fingers. Again, a secret menu opens up.

You now have a bunch of interesting options to work with. Check out the Capture Frame Rate option. Tweak it and you can shoot over a longer period of time.

If you’re familiar with Boomerang, you’ll know that it can shoot for one second only. Now you have the power to stretch it all the way to 10 seconds.

3. UV Backlight

To get this hack going, you’ll need some sticky tape, a blue pen, and a purple pen.

Put a small strip of tape over the camera flash. Color it blue.

Put another piece of tape over it. Color it blue again. Repeat the process, but this time color it purple.

You are all set. It’s kinda cool to fiddle around with when you have nothing else to do. Whip out your highlighters and have fun glowing.

4. Hologram

We all love 3D holograms and this trick is really neat. You need four polygons cut out of transparency film, like this:

They should each be 1 cm x 3.5 cm x 6 cm in dimension. Stick them up using tape so that they look something like the viewfinder of a Rolleiflex camera.

Search YouTube for a hologram video. Place your funnel shape on the center of your device’s display. Play the video. Enjoy!

Do you have a hack like this of your own? Share it with us in the comments below. We would love to hear from you.