- When it comes to Android camera apps
Open Camera is one of the leading options,
and in this video we're gonna step through a complete
Open Camera app tutorial to show you exactly how to use it.
(gentle music)
Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video
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and all the links to everything we mention in this video
you can find linked in the description box below.
Let's jump into it.
Open Camera is a popular choice
when it comes to camera apps on Android.
It unlocks some really powerful functionality,
but there's a lot of options in there
and it can definitely get overwhelming,
but don't worry because we're about to do a
step-by-step walkthrough to show you
all the settings that you need
and exactly how to get some awesome results.
And once we're done I'll also share with you
our fast track checklist to help you maximize your results
when you're filming on any smartphone.
It includes links to the simple gear that we recommend
and also a ton of simple tips that you can implement
right now to level up your smartphone video game.
And on that note
I'd love to hear from you down in the comments.
What's your number one tip for boosting video quality
on your phone?
Let us know, and don't miss out
on what others are sharing down there as well.
Okay, so this is what you see when you first open up
Open Camera, we've got your menu bar across the top here,
which has your exposure lock.
This will lock your exposure.
The next one across here will let you adjust your exposure.
The next one across here is where you can dial in
the look and feel of your shot.
We will jump into this in a minute.
You've got your settings button.
You can switch and rotate your camera around here.
We've got it currently set on video mode.
That is your record button.
And we can switch to photo mode pressing this one here.
This camera app does work for photos as well as videos.
And down at the bottom here you've got your zoom slider
to zoom in and out.
Now I just want to stress here that
on some Android devices you won't have
all of these features.
It will really come down to the device that you are using
and what's supported by that device
and what's supported by this app with your specific device.
So if you're missing any features
or some of these things don't show up for you
it's likely due to this app not being supported
by your device, but in most cases
you'll find you should have access to all of these things.
So the first thing you want to do is to setup the app.
So you come up here to settings,
and once again, I just want to say that
we're not gonna run through every setting in here.
There are way too many of them.
I'm just gonna show you the important ones
that you need to jump straight into
to get setup for best results
and then at a later time you can come back through
and go through them and see if there's anything else
that might help you with the type of videos you're creating.
So we're gonna go down here straight away to video settings,
and in here the first thing you'll want to set
is your video resolution.
So we can see here we've got video resolution
4K Ultra HD is set.
I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus,
so it does have a 4K camera.
So you want to select the resolution
that you want to shoot at here first.
You can see that there is a lot of options,
a lot more than the built in camera app on your phone.
We're gonna leave this here at 4K.
I'm gonna hit cancel.
Then you can choose the format of the video,
the next one down here.
Now what I suggest you do is leave this set here as default
or choose MPEG4 H264.
In most cases, unless you specifically need
one of these other formats I'd say
you could pretty much leave this as default.
The video bitrate is the next one here
that you'll want to lock down,
the next one you'll want to set.
So this one here is the quality of the recording.
So I've set the actual size, 4K, 1080.
Now this is the actual quality of the recording
at that size.
So the way it works is the lower the number
the lower the quality of the recording.
The higher the number the higher quality of the recording.
Now you can see here
you can go up to 200 megabits per second with this app
and with this device, which is crazy high,
that's higher than a lot of professional level cameras.
So there definitely is a point here of diminishing returns.
Will you notice the difference between
50 megabits per second and 100 megabits per second?
Whereas your file sizes are going to be twice as big.
In most cases I'd say probably unlikely.
So what I recommend for most people
is their setting their camera record quality here
probably around the 50 megabit per second
if you're after really high quality video
without it being ridiculous file size.
Now if you are someone who wants that absolute best
quality recording then just know that in here
that you can go right up to 200 megabits per second
if you need to.
Personally, I don't think I'd ever actually go above
100 megabits per second on a smartphone camera,
at least at this point.
So we're gonna leave it at 50 and I'll go cancel.
The next one is your video frame rate.
So this is the number of frames or
think of them as photos per second
to make up the motion in your video.
Now if you're after that cinematic film look
a lot of people will be telling you to shoot at
24 frames per second,
the standard frame rate for filming on your smartphones
is actually around 30.
So it will give you a different look and feel
for the videos that you're creating.
Now as you go above 30 and into 60 and above that
this is where you're entering slow motion territory.
So again, this is going to be device dependent
as to how high you can actually go here.
You can see here this phone supports 240 frames per second.
So that's pretty decent for slow motion on a smartphone.
So unless you're specifically after slow motion
you can come back down here and select your frame rate.
I'm just gonna leave this as the default,
which is 30 frames per second.
Now it's a good idea
while you're going through the settings here to check
this one here, maximum duration of video.
This is where you want to make sure it's set to unlimited,
otherwise your recording will stop
at whatever time is selected here.
So if you are going to be recording
and you've got it set to stop recording after one minute
then that could be pretty frustrating.
So it's always a good idea to come in here and check
that you have this set to unlimited.
And likewise with the maximum file size of the video
it's a good idea to check that one as well.
Just make sure that it's set to device default
so that way it's not gonna switch off again
while you're recording.
You'll also want to double check that you've got audio
recording enabled, unless you wanna
record a video without audio
then I would suggest that you leave this one on,
otherwise you'll have no sound.
And following on from that you'll also want to make sure
that you've got your microphone selected.
So select this one here, audio source.
Now if you're just using the built-in microphone
on your smartphone then you can leave this here
as camcorder, that's using the built-in one.
If you are plugging in a microphone then you will need to
manually select here, external microphone if present,
so that it will utilize that one
over the internal microphone.
So we'll leave that one there external microphone.
Okay, we'll go back up to the top here,
we'll back out of this one.
So that's video settings.
Then we'll come down here
and if this is supported by your device, use camera2 API,
I'd strongly recommend that you turn this one on.
This is going to give you, it says here,
extra features such as manual modes
for exposure, focus, white balance, along with RAW,
if it's supported by your device.
So I recommend that you turn this one on
if you've got this option.
Restart the app and that's going to give you access
to a lot more of these more advanced controls.
Now if we come up here to on screen GUI
this is where we can customize up how the app looks.
And we can add extra icons and tools
and those sorts of things to the dashboard layout
or to the main screen layout.
So if we come down here to show auto white balance lock icon
this is one that I would recommend that you turn on,
but obviously feel free to go through
and customize this up for you.
So we'll back out of this now
and we'll go back to our main camera screen.
You can see we've now got an extra button up here
for locking down the white balance,
which we're gonna get to in a second.
Okay, so we've gone through and setup our settings.
We've set our recording quality,
recording bitrate and our frame rate,
next up is to lock down our actual shot
and get everything looking the way that we want.
Now if you're someone who likes to shot in full auto mode
you can just press the record button, start recording,
but things are going to automatically adjust and change
while you're recording, like if I bring my hand in here now
you can see the shot got brighter and then darker.
So in order to take that automatic control away
from our phone and lock everything down
so that nothing changes in our shoot
that's when we want to lock down our exposure.
And also during these adjustments that are being made
the color temperature can also change
and that's why it's important to lock down
the white balance as well.
So in order to adjust the exposure
or the brightness of our shot
there's a couple of ways that we can do it.
We can either tap on the screen
on the area that we want to expose for.
As you can see if we tap on the microphone here
it's brightened up the shot
to make sure that that microphone is exposed correctly.
If we tap on the white part of the desk down here
that's going to darken the shot off
so that the whites aren't too bright.
So for us obviously the camera is gonna be the focus
of this shot here.
We're gonna tap on the camera somewhere or the microphone
to brighten it up like that.
Now if we're happy with that brightness at that point
we can just press the e here
and that will lock our exposure in at that point.
So you can see now if I bring my hand in
there's no brightness adjustment taking place.
It is locked in at that point.
Now if I unlock that for a second there now.
Now if we want to dial this in further and make our shot
brighter or darker we can come up here to our
exposure button here.
Now in here we're currently set to auto.
So just leaving this on automatic adjustment
we can just use this exposure compensation slider
and as we lift it up we're gonna brighten the shot.
As we darken it down or lower it down
we're gonna darken the shot down.
So we can just make minor adjustments this way
without getting caught up in all the settings.
And you can see the yellow text in the top left hand corner
is making those automatic adjustments for us
of ISO and shutter speed.
Now for a lot of people I'd say
that this is all you need to dive into,
but if you're someone who wants that advanced control
and wants to be able to lock everything down
then just at the top here where you're got the auto,
the m, 50, 100, 200,
if you actually press on those
then you can kick it into manual mode.
So let's press on m to open up manual mode.
And you can see here now we're able to dial in our ISO
and our shutter speed.
So if there's a specific shutter speed
that you want to be shooting at
then you can dial that in here.
Now typically your shutter speed is twice the frame rate.
So if you're shooting at 30 frames per second
your shutter speed should be set to one over 60.
So after we set the shutter speed
then we can use the ISO slider up and down
to brighten or to darken our shot.
Once you've got your exposure set where you want it
then press that little padlock again
to lock your exposure at that point.
So this tip for setting up and locking down
your manual exposure,
this is one of the tips that we feature
in our free fast track video checklist
that I'm gonna share with you at the end of this video.
Now again, as we bring in my hand or anything here
we're not changing that exposure.
Now you will see that the focus is still adjusting.
If I tap on my hand here we're adjusting the focus,
but we're not adjusting the brightness
or the exposure of the shot.
So the next thing we're gonna do
is to lock down the white balance
or the color temperature of the shot.
So if we come up here to those three dots again,
press on that and we come down here
we can see that we've got our white balance preset.
So we've got auto, manual, incandescent,
fluorescent, daylight, cloudy,
so you can see that this is actually changing up
the colors or the color temperature
that is captured by our device.
So what I suggest you do here is go through
and find the one that matches the look and feel
of the shot that you're after.
So it could be daylight in our case, that looks pretty good,
or we could go to auto
and let it do its automatic adjustment
and then when we're happy with it
then we can lock it so that it doesn't change
just pressing the w at the top here
and now our white balance is locked at that point.
You definitely want to lock this down
so that your colors aren't changing
as things change in your shot or in your scene.
So now that you've got your exposure locked down,
you've got your white balance locked down,
the last thing to lock down is your focus
so that that doesn't change throughout
the length of your recording.
So it can be as simple as bringing in
whatever you want to focus on tapping on the screen
to focus on that point
and then coming up here to these three dots again
and hitting the padlock there for focus.
Now focus is locked at that point.
You can see as I move in and out it's not changing.
Now we can change up the focus mode
if we go back to our three dots there.
We've got automatic focus mode.
In which it's automatically focus
and make adjustments for us.
We've got infinity focus,
we've got manual focus where we get the
slider down at the bottom here and as I adjust this
it's moving in or out of focus,
and wherever we let it go
is where it's going to stay in focus.
So if I let go there, and our shot is in focus at that point
and it will stay there.
And you've also got continuous auto focus here for video.
So if I do bring my hand in it's going to adjust to there
back to the camera, back to my hand, back to the camera.
So depending on the type of videos you're making
you really want to set that accordingly,
but I would say for most people and most videos
what I would suggest is that you're locking down your focus.
So if I bring my hand back in here now
you can see that my hand is in focus.
We'll come up here and press the focus button
to lock it at that point, now our focus is locked.
So if this was someone presenting to the camera here
then there's no chance of this drifting
in and out of focus while we're recording.
So now that you've locked down your exposure,
your white balance, and your focus
it's a good idea to do a test recording.
So with your microphones and everything plugged in
press record, record for 10/15 seconds,
make sure everything looks good, sounds good
before you go and create your video.
So you could save a heap of time
just in case something wasn't as good
or wasn't set correctly,
wasn't set the way that you thought that it would be.
So then all you need to do is just press this
big record button here and your recording will start.
So that a complete step-by-step walkthrough
using Open Camera on Android.
Now if you're someone who likes to have
all the advanced controls and all the advanced features
then there is one other app
that you should definitely consider
and compare side-by-side
to see which one is going to be the best option for you.
And that's called Filmic Pro and that's available
for both IOS and Android.
And yes it does unlock
slightly more functionality and control.
Things like direct hardware integration
with gimbal stabilizers and advanced lenses,
but also advanced color control and log modes
to really get the most out of your smartphones.
So if you're someone that's after even that next level,
again, of control and functionality
then you should definitely check out Filmic Pro
and I've got a link up in the cards
to a review and walkthrough
that we've done on Filmic Pro as well.
Now at the start of this video I did mention that
I would share with you our fast track checklist
to help you maximize results
when you're filming on any smartphone,
including links to all the simple gear that we recommend,
a ton of simple tips that you can also use
to implement right now to level up your smartphone game
on any smartphone.
There's a link to that guide that you can click
and download right now on screen
and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.