whats up guys this is Ben from Life in 360 and today I want to talk about
shooting wirelessly with your theta 360 and using your smartphone as your remote
trigger so you don't have to hold the camera
I found this feature to be super handy and has helped me shoot some of the best
images I've ever done because it allowed me to take a step back instead of having
my hand in shot and being right in the center of the planet it's allowed me to
become an inhabitant of the planet instead of being a dude taking a selfie
so you want to connect your theta camera to your smartphone via Wi-Fi fortunately
you don't actually need an internet connection
it does it without it which is really handy it means you can shoot remotely
very easily next we want to go into the theta s app and you click the logo down
the bottom there that little circle and that'll take you to live view mode in
Live View mode we can now have full control over our exposure as well as see
the composition before we actually take it to make sure we're happy with
lighting composition and whatnot and then the big button in the middle there
that then acts as our remote shutter all right so I wouldn't normally use a
tripod but it's an extra windy day and I don't particularly feel like I'm fishing
or swimming at the moment I just turn my camera on and obviously what's behind
me is going to be the most picturesque thing within this environment so I want
to feature it as best as I can so what I want to do is give it the clearest view
possible from wherever I place the camera so now what we're going to do is
connect to our smartphone app and now I'm going to bring up the Live View mode
so I can see what I've got I'm not liking it 100% and because this beam
here is in the way too much so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna reposition the
camera and hopefully give our theta theta theta a clearer view of the Harbor
bridge oh that's looking much better already so I'm just gonna lean against
this and here I go I'm gonna take this shot and smile in three two one so first
I tried standing next to the beam but I didn't really like it because I was too
far away from the harbor bridge and the two were competing with each other and
you want them to be as close together as possible so what I'm gonna do is it's
gonna sit here maybe something like this okay three two one smile next I tried
lying down next to the camera and I didn't like this either because firstly
I was just too dark you couldn't see me but also I didn't like the composition I
was competing too much with the bridge and neither me nor the bridge was really
prominent so instead of me standing in the shade here I want to position my
face in the Sun so now I'm gonna be much better lit when we do take the photo
I think I'm cutting off the bridge a bit where I'm standing now so I'm gonna just
duck down finally I tried ducking below the bridge and striking a pose and this
worked much better I was much happier because now I was working harmoniously
with the bridge and it allowed me to create a more symmetrical shot later on
while not detracting from the bridge nor myself in the final image often every
photo you take will require a bit of fine-tuning so this means moving the
camera position and moving yourself it's worth it like if you've got five or ten
minutes it's worth hanging around and just taking a photo uploading to your
smartphone preview editing it you can normally turn over about three photos in
ten minutes with different compositions and you
standing in different places and different features being on different
parts of the planet it's worth it when you get that awesome image that blows
everyone away so one final thing worth noting is that I put the camera right in
the path of the shadow of this beam here and that's because I don't want the Sun
directly hitting the camera because whenever the Sun directly hits the
camera is going to make a huge kind of white spot in the sky and it just never
looks good and if you expose for that white spot then everything else is too
dark so if possible try and avoid the Sun hitting the camera look it's not the
end of the world at all in this situation because we're using auto
exposure keeping the camera in the shadow is working to our advantage
alright so now let's take this image into RollWorld and see what kind of a
tiny planet we can make so let's go ahead and open up the app there and
let's make magic alright so we hit the crosshair we hit photo so now we've
imported I'm going to just rotate it invert it a bit bit more rotation a
little zoom there it's looking good already
going a little bit closer I think pretty happy with that how cool is it that you
can like edit an image in the 15 seconds it just took me and I've got a damn good
plan it already I mean I'm still going to heaps more to it but I think it's
pretty uncool that you can edit so quickly and in on something that fits it
in your pocket like that's amazing let's invert a little bit more it will
definitely need a bit of colour correction but the way the architecture
really kind of pops off the planet like that I'm really happy with it so let's
go ahead and export so we go picture on screen and I want to go 1920 and camera
roll all right so now let's let's do a quick color gradient Snapseed okay open
and is so okay to an image you don't have Snapseed would highly recommend it
such an amazing tool it's a it's like Photoshop for the iPhone you can do
everything with your thumbs it's incredible
that's pretty down blue all right I like my colors either really bright or black
and white I don't like dull colors at all I give
the bright version about a 7 out of 10 in order for me to be happy and needs to
be at least Adel or above out of 10 so let's have a look at the black and white
version I reckon we've got a black and white planet here we just need to adjust
some other things so it's both a brightness how about the ambience there
we go we're getting a bit more contrast from that still needs to be brighter
want to get that background toward the the sky there as bright as possible so
let's raise the highlights mm-hmm it's a bit too much we're losing too
much detail by doing that what about shadows that's good again for the
contrast our exposure is pretty good so we don't really need to play too much
with the highlights or shadows whenever your exposure is bad like if your face
too is too dark the shadows function here will really help you out so all
right let's just play with the ambience again no no it definitely looks better
down there contrast let's have a look all the way to the right or too much
contrast let's go all the way to the left when color grading I play with a
every single slide up same with the Edit as well and just so you can be a hundred
percent sure you've made them the absolute best decision so do it anyway
even if it looks horrendous just do it all you have to do is swipe your thumb
you don't lose anything by doing it hey that's actually not looking too bad
bring the brightness right down because it really um highlights the that the the
lighter bits in the middle that makes them stand out more
it's almost added a vignette a natural vignette to our image which is really
good looks quite natural almost looks like a meteorite flying through space so
now we want to bring up those highlights a bit more that's looking really good
actually I'm very happy with that what else I think I mean I think that's just
add another vignette on top of that so we'll go vignette down there and here we
obviously there's our circle for vignette I want to make it you never
want to go into too much into the middle because then you start darkening details
that need to be visible and you want to go too too far out either because then
it's just kind of pointless isn't it so go for a circle about that size and just
a little bit it makes a big difference holding your thumb to the screen will
give you a preview of your vignette and the difference it made so that's with
without with without so it looks a lot better with lots light in a little bit
there we go so 27 vignette has made it different that's made it our image more
dramatic so I'm going to go ahead and yep ready to export so now it's as
simple as save save a copy and there we go it's saved to our camera roll and I'm
going to upload that to Instagram now alright guys I hope you enjoyed this vid
and I hope you start shooting wirelessly as soon as possible because you'll shoot
some of the best images you ever shoot without the camera in your hand I
promise you that if you want to learn more I have a book out it's called life
in 360 a beginner's guide to tiny planet photography and it'll teach you
everything to do with tiny plants and shooting on a camera like the Ricoh so
check it out and until next time guys Keep shooting!