1015 – Plenty of Features: Tom talks Cell Phone Camera

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

In this episode, Tom Antion explores the often-overlooked features of modern cell phone cameras, sharing insights based on his experience with the iPhone 16 Pro Max. After watching a detailed tutorial, he realized how powerful and underutilized these devices can be for photography and videography.
Key Takeaways:
• Know Your Camera: Tom emphasizes the importance of watching a tutorial specific to your exact phone model (e.g., “iPhone 13 camera tutorial”) to unlock its full potential.
• Useful Camera Features:
o Fast Access: Learn how to quickly launch the camera.
o Editing Tools: Crop and edit photos directly on the phone.
o Timer: Useful for selfies or group shots.
o Focus/Exposure Lock: Tap and hold to lock focus/exposure.
o Optical vs. Digital Zoom: Understand the difference—optical zoom uses actual lenses, digital zoom can degrade image quality.
o Aspect Ratio Control: Easily switch between formats like 4:3, 16:9, or square (ideal for Instagram).
o Portrait Mode (Bokeh Effect): Blurs the background for a professional look; you can adjust the blur level.
o Live Photos: Captures a few seconds before and after the shot.
o Panorama (Pano): Stitch together wide-angle shots.
o Macro Mode: For extreme close-ups—activates automatically in some phones.
o Photo Flip: Correct mirrored images so text appears correctly.
• Video Features:
o Slow Motion: Records high frame rates for dramatic playback.
o Time Lapse: Captures motion over long periods while stationary.
o Hyperlapse: Similar to time lapse, but while moving.
o Cinematic Mode: Adds background blur to video for a movie-like effect.
Tips:
• Practice using features so you’re ready when it counts.
• Watch tutorials on a desktop while testing on your phone for hands-on learning.
• Tom links to a helpful YouTube tutorial in the show notes and recommends a 38-minute session to get up to speed.
Additional Resources:
• Tom offers video training weekends and one-on-one mentoring at:
o screwthecommute.com/videoweekend
o GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com
Bottom Line:
Most people are only using a fraction of their phone camera's capability. Learn how to use these features, practice them regularly, and your photo/video quality will dramatically improve.

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Episode 1015 – Cell Phone Camera
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1015 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about your cell phone camera. I couldn't believe all the stuff my camera would do, and I haven't paid attention to it for a while. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Hope you didn't miss episodes 1013 and 1014. It was part one and part two of Mobile Phone Cell. Mobile phone gimbals, which are really cool items to get some really spectacular shots or to make your regular shots much more smooth. Pick up a copy of our automation e-book and. Pick up a copy of our automation e-book at the commute. Automate free. Make sure you get version 3.0 because that's out now. 2.0 has older stuff, so get 3.0. How about that? Even if you got 2.0. Check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com, and my school at IMTCVA.org.

[00:01:32] Okay. Cell phone camera. You know, I had a couple hours off. Nothing was going on, no consultations. So I was looking at my phone. I have an iPhone 16 Pro Max, and I'm thinking, you know, I don't really. I knew all about the cameras on my older iPhones, but I didn't really know. So I did a tutorial on this one and wow, does it do a lot of stuff, I'll tell you. And I'm sure your camera will do a lot of stuff too, But it may not be an iPhone Pro, 16 Max or something, whatever the name of it is.

[00:02:10] So I'm going to suggest that you Google this exact phrase, your exact cell phone model like iPhone 13, whatever, iPhone 13 camera tutorial, or iPhone 15 or Android. I don't know the names of those ones. All right. And somebody will give you all the nitty gritty stuff. And some of it was right in front of my face and I'm thinking, oh my goodness, I need to go into the settings. I know I just had to know how to swipe a certain place, and it opened up all these things for me. All right. So so here's some of the things. This is just a big list of the things. And it's not even fully comprehensive. It's just tons of stuff that it'll do. But these are some things that I know that you'll need. If you knew that you had them easily, you'd use them more and your your pictures and videos would be better. Okay. So first thing and these aren't in any particular order, but this one kind of is it's opening your camera fast. You need to learn how to do that. Some of them have a button on the side. Some of them I don't know. You can shake it and it'll I don't you know, there's so many different ones. That's why I want you to get a tutorial on your exact cell phone.

[00:03:32] Okay? You should be able to edit and crop pictures right there. Before you save them. You should be able to set a timer so that you can run around and be in the shot. That's a good thing. Focus. Lock. This is a thing where in the iPhone, if you hold your finger down for a while on what you want to focus on, it locks it there so you can move around and other things are not going to make whatever you your main subject go out of focus. You got exposure and exposure lock. This is how bright the picture is. You can change it by just swiping your finger. I mean, like I said, it's on every different phone. It's different, but you should be able to brighten things up if need be or dim them down if need be. Now optical zoom and digital zoom. Like for instance, on my iPhone 16 Pro Max I have a five up to five times optical zoom. That means it's actually using the lenses. But then I have from 5 to 25 digital zoom. Now, the more you zoom and go up in magnification, the more noise gets in your pictures and and stuff. So. But anyway, you should know how to do that. I mean, there's been times when I just saw this crazy shot where there's like, um, a blue heron way on the roof of my other building and I, you know, whatever shot was better than nothing.

[00:05:04] So I zoomed in as far as possible to get a shot of that blue heron sitting on my roof. All right, so things like that. Aspect ratio. This is the one that I was just. Oh my God, I wish I'd have known this. So aspect ratio is like is the picture four by three like an old television screen. Is it 16 by nine which is a more modern landscape or is it square like for Instagram? And to change it, I used to have to dig into the settings and this, that and the other. But there was it was right in front of me by swiping a certain place. And I'm going to have a link for you in the show notes of the the guy that he's very good in teaching stuff and showing you examples of these things. And I happen to, you know, have the iPhone 16. But I think he's he's been around a long time. I think he's I checked it because Mark has in my office has 13 and he had a whole tutorial on 13 cameras. So chances are, and he doesn't, it isn't just iPhone. He covers all kinds of stuff. He's a tech guy. So I'll have a link to the show notes for that for you. But anyway, I could change my aspect ratio. Like boom boom, real quick boom boom boom.

[00:06:25] All right. Now you may have noticed you can slide over between photo, video, portrait, slo mo cinematic hyper tech. Yeah I forget what they call that hyperlapse. Time lapse, those kinds of things. Okay. Well the difference between portrait and photo is that portrait has a thing that we in the industry call Boca. And that is the blurring of the background, which is considered a really high quality shot. So that's when you move it to the portrait mode. It's going to blur your background and you can adjust on most phones. As long as you learn how to do it, how much it blurs it. See? So that's portrait mode. You also have live mode, which is. It shoots a little bit before and a little bit after the main picture, and it turns it into a video with sound. All right. So that's live. And you may have need for that if you want to catch something before and after. Now pano is where you can stitch a bunch of photos together. Like you hold your phone and there's this arrow. And you have to keep this arrow in this certain line to make sure everything lines up. And you move from left to right, and it keeps taking pictures the whole way or right to left. And if you play some games, you can go bottom to top and top to bottom. And that stitches them all together for super wide angle.

[00:08:03] That's pano. Then this is something I never knew. When you get really close up to something. My phone goes switches to a macro lens. Macro lenses are for really close up stuff, and if you don't have that, you can only you know, I know some of my older phones, you couldn't do anything within three feet. But now these more modern phones will switch to macro mode. And on my phone, a little circle with a flower comes in it to tell you you're in macro mode. So that's a close up stuff. And then the guy that I took the tutorial from went into the background into all kinds of settings. I don't even I'm not even going to take time to mention them here. There's so many settings to make your life easier or more professional, and some of them are. You really need to know what you're doing to turn them on so you don't want those on. If you're a beginner or you don't, you're not a professional photographer. You might not need those things, but there's all kinds of settings and your tutorials should go through them for you. Then there's another one about flipping the picture. Have you ever seen something where somebody is on video or something, and then everything that's written, like if there's a sign behind him, it's backwards. Well, most phones now, you can flip that to make sure that whatever is seen is readable on the picture.

[00:09:26] All right. Now when we get into video, slow motion is where it shoots loads of frames like 120 frames a second or 240 frames a second, but then plays it back normal, and then that slows everything down. So that's the slow motion thing. Time lapse is where you set the camera up on a tripod or something, and then you tell it, okay, take a picture every 30s and then you see, then when you play it back, you see clouds moving fast or whatever you were. You know, you need to do time lapse on something that's moving because it's just stupid to have just a static picture over and over and over again. Now, Hyperlapse. Now time lapse is where the camera's like on a tripod or stationary. But Hyperlapse is where it's doing the same kind of thing. But the camera is moving like you could be walking down the sidewalk shooting a hyperlapse. And and then when you play it back, everybody's like going 100 miles an hour walking really fast. That's really cool. And the cinematic mode is, remember I told you about the Boka or the portrait and it's blurred in the background? Well, that portrait is for pictures. Cinematic is the same effect for video, which is also a very high quality, you know, movie looking shot. So and you again, you can change how much blur is in the background.

[00:10:55] So that's cinematic. So I implore you to take a time, watch one of these tutorials, have your cell phone in your hand, watch it on a desktop is the best because then where you can stop the desktop and then fool with your phone and duplicate. Because if you don't use any of these things, then you'll forget them when you need them. But really, really worthwhile 38 minute tutorial for me to open up and learn about this new camera mine. And so now I'm using all these things every day so that I own them. And then when the time comes, when I really need them, it's not time to go watch a video again, right? I'll already know. All right. That's my story. I'm sticking to it. Uh, this kind of stuff's for all kinds of modern cell phones. So you just look up the name of your cell phone camera tutorial and guaranteed on YouTube, somebody's gotta going to have one for you. So, uh, there you go. So if you like one on one help with this, like all this kind of stuff we do in our video weekend. So you can either book it yourself or you can get a group together and I make you a special deal. So that's screwthecommute.com/videoweekend. And of course, all of that is included in my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com. All right, we'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.