If you follow any of my photography work, you know I’m a big fan of HDR. I have a pretty fair mix of all types of photography formatting, it is only that HDR is pretty noticeable so folks tend to remember those shots.
Over the last weekend, I started to play with the iPhone’s video capabilities. My previous iPhone movie work has actually been iPhone Photos using highly managed Ken Effects and image stitching.
I will work through several movie apps that I’m happy playing with so far. First up, Flare for iPhone (Careful, there are a couple apps called Flare) which makes movies with the HDR effect. This is not a filter app, rather an app that you use to do the actual video recording. You can see the HDR effect in real time as you record. It isn’t actually taking two images and merging them but the effect is pretty nice to get maximum impact of environments that respond to HDR.
When you start up Flare, there is a box just below the recording view which allows you to sweep through three different recording options. They are… well, I have yet to figure out the differences, and the developer didn’t take the time to explain.
Videos created with Flare are 640 x 360. The frames per minute recordings vary depending on the quality of your iPhone (requires iOS 4.1) where the iPhone 4 with free memory will hit 24 fpm.
Tapping the screen results in a focus box that you can move around to adjust your focus point. Pinch to zoom works very quickly.
To the right of the ‘Record’ button is a slider which will hide the box of options for the recording formats.
Panning around in my lower light yard with Flare, I found that the clouds refreshing was fast showing a HDR effect I am used to when photographing. The trees look like they had a hazy filter over them. When I lowered the camera to the grass, the trees and grass really started to pop… cool!
It was nice to see that Flare works in both Landscape and Portrait layouts. I say ‘nice’ as I was surprised when playing with other iPhone Video apps that only recorded in a single view.
In the lower corner of your recording view is a box showing an image of the last video you created. Tapping it will take you to a screen to view your creation. From this same page, you can return to the record area, Share and to trash a video.
When you are ready to share your creations, you have a pretty good list of options. Flare, via the Share button, will let you save your video to your iPhone’s Photo Library. And to the popular social sites: Twitter, Facebook, YourTube, Tumblr and Flickr.
I’ll post up links to the videos I shot, shortly…