Smartphone question

[hark]

These were taken at Neshaminy Creek in Hulmeville (Bucks County). All are iPhone photos.

The first was tripod mounted and taken with an app called Slow Shutter Cam for 4 seconds (but no neutral density filter was required). The second was taken with the iPhone native camera app as a Live photo handheld. The third was also taken with the iPhone native camera app handheld as a Live photo then was converted to a Slow Motion image afterwards (so the 3rd image initially looked like the 2nd image before conversion).

In the past I have photographed this waterfalls using my D750 with a neutral density filter to achieve a slow motion image. However, none of the iPhone photos required an ND filter.

There are filter holders made for mobile phones as well as apps that offer legit slow shutter. I'm not sure the Slow Shutter Cam really takes legit photos since an ND filter wasn't needed. I'm sure there must be people here who take slow motion and/or long exposure images with their phones. And if so, do you use a filter holder? And what app(s) do you use?

I have several long exposure phone apps such as BlackMagic Camera app, Even Longer app, Moment app, AstroShader, and one or two others. What I'm hoping to find out is what do you use to mount a Neutral Density filter onto the phone and which long exposure app do you use? I'm guessing these other long exposure apps are going to require the use of an ND filter so I need to get one of those first. Some filter holders are mounted with a clip, others by magnet, and another type has a screw mount that tightens against the phone's glass screen.

If you have any long exposure phone photos to share, please do. Thanks for any input! By the way, I'm not too thrilled with the converted iPhone image. During conversion, it seems some of the rocks became slightly out of focus which I didn't notice with photos taken with the Slow Shutter Cam.

1. Slow Shutter Cam App using an iPhone.

2. iPhone Native Camera taken as a Live photo.

3. iPhone Native Camera app taken as a Live photo then converted to a slow motion image afterwards.

 

[BF Hammer]

The way to take a long exposure handheld without a ND filter is to take multiple short exposures and stack them. This is what the app is doing.

I have attempted this once with my Lumix compact camera when it was my only camera in car. It works, but not ideal.

 

[Eduard]

I've barely played around with the beta Adobe Project Indigo app. I've used it to capture RAW images on my iPhone a couple times. There is a long exposure feature which I haven't tried myself. Take a look at this video around the 2:00 mark.

 

[hark]

The way to take a long exposure handheld without a ND filter is to take multiple short exposures and stack them. This is what the app is doing.

I have attempted this once with my Lumix compact camera when it was my only camera in car. It works, but not ideal.

I wondered how it worked. BUT the thing is when hand holding the phone, the result was blurry – which I shouldn't be when holding it for regular photos. However, as you mentioned, that seems to be what I'm finding out. Rhetorical comment ... so my next question is why do they even make ND filters for smartphones if the camera apps don't work the same as a DSLR or a Mirrorless camera.

I've barely played around with the beta Adobe Project Indigo app. I've used it to capture RAW images on my iPhone a couple times. There is a long exposure feature which I haven't tried myself. Take a look at this video around the 2:00 mark.

Thanks, Eduard. I'm going to watch this next.

 

[hark]

In reference to the video Eduard shared, whoa ... adjusting the Focus blew my mind! I haven't seen any smartphone camera apps that allow this as a feature.

 

[BF Hammer]

It was 4 years ago when I shot this man-made waterfall during a lunch stop. I only had my Panasonic Lumix compact digicam. But I set to manual mode to underexpose a bit. I set on top of a post, and used the self-timer to add delay on the shutter release. Then I took 30 photos and exposure-stacked them later. End result was too over-exposed for my taste, so I never really shared it before.

 

[hark]

This is interesting, @BF Hammer – any idea what the average shutter speed was? I've never heard of this type of stacking process for slow motion images until looking into smartphone long exposure apps. Had no idea it was even possible with a regular type of camera!

 

[BF Hammer]

This is interesting, @BF Hammer – any idea what the average shutter speed was? I've never heard of this type of stacking process for slow motion images until looking into smartphone long exposure apps. Had no idea it was even possible with a regular type of camera!

Looks like the sub-frames are 1/80s. Here is a sample single image. The Lumix is JPG only, no Raw files to play with.

I think I had recently watched a video on the subject by Tony Northrup. Not that I really take his advice normally, but I thought the idea of exposure-stacking for a long-exposure blur was interesting. But I have nicknamed Tony the Master Click-Baiter for reasons.

But the technique is mostly what we do in astrophotography. Take dozens of photos of shorter shutter times then combine them to get an equivalent of multiple minutes of exposure time.