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Tag: apple

September 26, 2021

How to Use an Apple Watch as a Remote to Snap a Better iPhone Photo

If you should come upon an amazing vista and desire a picture of yourself using your iPhone’s rear-facing camera, you can use your Apple Watch as a remote viewfinder to frame the shot. Here’s how.

I’ve often found when using my iPhone’s camera that one of my biggest challenges has been framing enough of the environment into a selfie pic. This has been especially difficult when I’m also trying to jam several people in. Sure, capturing all of the faces is hard enough, but if you can’t see where everyone is, the picture has limited value.

Of course, the solution is to move the iPhone to a distance beyond your arm’s length, which will get you the wider shot. But then, it’s not a selfie anymore. Well, not exactly. Let’s call it an ‘extended selfie.’

But how do you take the picture if you can’t touch your iPhone?

Camera Remote App
If you also have an Apple Watch, you can use it as a remote for your iPhone’s camera. The Apple Watch’s native Camera Remote app essentially controls your iPhone’s camera and offers a convenient 3-second countdown after you tap the shutter button. That should give you plenty of time after your look down at your Apple Watch and tap it to then look up at your iPhone’s camera in the distance.

Easy Activation
To turn on your Apple Watch’s Camera Remote app, you can simply proclaim to your iPhone, “Hey Siri, take a picture.” Or if it’s too noisy around you, you can also tap the app’s icon on your Apple Watch’s screen.

The Value of Using a Remote Viewfinder
This Apple Watch app can control the front or rear-facing iPhone camera. So that means you can take advantage of the better quality of your rear-facing camera for your extended selfie. That’s because even though you can’t see your iPhone’s screen when using the rear camera, you can still frame the shot using your Apple Watch. It effectively becomes a remote viewfinder.

Removing Yourself from the Picture
Using the Camera Remote app also opens up plenty of photographic options beyond selfies. If you’re able to position yourself far from your iPhone (but close enough to maintain the Bluetooth connection), you can erase your presence from the environment. And that should allow you to capture more natural moments.

Bring Along a Tripod
All of these options will give your iPhone photography a lot more flexibility. That said, you should also bring along a tripod. Propping your iPhone up against an object to get the right angle can be a really difficult and potentially risky exercise for your iPhone.

I know that using a tripod doesn’t exactly match up with the spontaneity of pulling your iPhone out of your pocket to take a quick shot. But a little Joby tripod with an iPhone grip should fit easily enough into any bag or backpack.

Shooting Beyond the Distance of a Selfie Stick
Yes, using a selfie stick can also help to get the shot you want. But performing this remote Apple Watch trick will offer even more opportunity to create a really great photo.

Just be careful not to put your iPhone in harm’s way… now that you no longer maintain physical contact with it. (I’ve have a tendency to do that with my cameras.)

To date, I’ve been successful protecting my iPhone while using it as a camera and found that using my Apple Watch as a remote viewfinder is a nifty tool to enhance my iPhone’s photos.

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June 6, 2021

How to Use Apple’s Photos App to Quickly Create a Memory Movie

If you need a way to display a group of photos in a movie-like presentation, Apple’s Photos app can do this trick for you. Here’s how.

Apple’s Photos app on a Mac contains the powerful functionality to organize your pictures into collections and then display them as “Memory Movies,” complete with photo zooms and transitions. The app does this on its own to generate unexpected and often delightful photo-montage movies from your photo archive.

But you can also put the Photos app to work to create a Memory Movie using your own (human-directed) collection of pictures.

It’s simple to do, and with a couple of clicks, you can also add music and a title graphic.

How to Make a Memory Movie
The trick to quickly creating a Memory Movie is choosing one of your existing albums of photos. But it’s also not hard to create a new album for this use. The bottom line is the album feeds your movie structure.

Once you’re in your album, you’ll see the option on top to click on “Show as Memory” or “Slideshow.” (The difference is Slideshow doesn’t contain the photo moves and zooms.)

On the next page that appears, you’ll see your Movie Memory ready to start.
Click the play icon.

That’s it!

To adjust your music choices, click on the tools icon on the right side of the playback controls.

Fast and Good Enough
Once you understand the easy steps to creating a Memory Movie, you can pull one together in minutes by using one of your existing albums.

It’s a much faster process than importing your photos into a video editing program and then manually setting up all of the photo transitions before exporting your video file.

Sure, a manually-edited version would be more creatively precise. (AI-directed photo moves and transitions can sometimes be a bit off balance.) But I’d say for most uses, letting your computer do the work is just fine.

A Memory Movie is also an especially simple way to quickly pull together and share a collection of photos for a Zoom meeting.

A couple caveats: You can’t create a Memory Movie using a shared album. It needs to be one that lives locally on your Mac. And you can’t actually export your Memory Movie into a separate file. The movie experience is generated and remains within the Photos app.

Display your Memories
There are any number of ways to display digital photos these days. But if you’re already using the Photos app for your photo management, this quick and easy presentation trick is a no-brainer.

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February 7, 2021

How to Turn AirPods into a Wireless Microphone for iPhone Videos

Looking for better sound on your next iPhone video project using one of Apple’s Bluetooth earbuds? You’ll first need this workaround.

If you own a pair of AirPods or AirPods Pro, you may come up with the bright idea to use them as a wireless microphone when you record selfie videos on your iPhone. The problem is you can’t do that using the iPhone’s native camera app. Apple didn’t build its app to support Bluetooth microphones.
(Strange, but true.)

Perhaps the visual of wearing little white sticks in your ears while shooting selfie videos originally seemed silly to Apple’s designers. But the pandemic has changed countless norms over the past year.

So many of us have been living our lives recently glued to our computer screens wearing geeky headsets, bulky headphones or slick little earbuds. If you don’t have a Borg-like audio device attached to your face, you clearly haven’t been assimilated into our new norm of daily video communications.

I Can’t Hear You
Recently, I produced a video with a colleague who needed to record an on-camera introduction using his iPhone. I suggested that he use his AirPods as his microphone so he could easily step back into his shot, unhindered by cables.

As I coached him from afar using the Microsoft Teams app, everything sounded fine. But when I listened to his test recording file, the AirPods clearly weren’t capturing his voice track. The iPhone’s onboard microphone was doing the work instead.

Third-Party App to the Rescue
Of course, we weren’t the first ones to uncover this problem. After doing some online research, I discovered that a variety of people have been complaining about this incompatibility for years.

The good news is there are two popular workaround solutions. Both involve downloading a video recording app to your iPhone that does allow you to use a Bluetooth microphone, including AirPods and AirPods Pro.

Both of these apps are primarily designed to give you a massive increase in control over your iPhone’s camera settings for video shoots, but they also provide the additional Bluetooth audio support for AirPods or AirPods Pro.

Problem solved.

What’s That in your Ear?
Even before the pandemic, I saw so many folks running around the streets of New York City with little wireless earphones protruding from their heads. That laid the foundation for an acceptable new look in public. And that metamorphosis has now been truly cemented. (We’ve stared at each other over the past year on countless video conferences wearing any number of audio devices.)

It’s ironic that once upon a time, hiding your microphone while recording an on-camera video was considered a sign of professionalism. Now, most anything growing out of your ears is acceptable.

And if you want to put your AirPods to work for your next iPhone video recording, just don’t forget you’ll also need to spend a few bucks for a third-party app to secure the connection.

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