A mobile phone camera workshop for HE?

[mrodoc]

Although I have resisted the idea of using a mobile phone underground on the grounds they are phones not cameras I have to admit advances in the technology used on the photographic side have been astonishing. It cannot be long before they incorporate a phone's ability to integrate with cave to surface radio communications - probably somebody is working on it already! That was a deviation from the main topic in this thread. The quality of images currently produced was brought forcefully home to me early this year when on a trip into a Devon slate mine I discovered I had left the memory card out of the camera! However all was not lost as somebody had a new smart phone and I ended up as director for a series of shots, some good enough to put on the front of the Belfry Bulletin suggesting the resolution issue has improved. In fact my flashes ended up obsolete as well - shots taken with them were burnt out and available light was all that was needed.

If they can be protected sufficiently and, certainly, waterproof housings already exist for divers they have got to be the way to go. I know people are solely using them and perhaps some person with experience would like to conduct a workshop at HE on advantages and pitfalls. Having just received a cascade of shots from some remote Mendip caves there are issues that people need to understand those being image framing, creative lighting and coping often with relatively long exposure times. There are also issues with regarding to image resolution, storage and post processing.
Who is prepared to do it?

 

[CNCC Training]

Apologies for “piggybacking” your thread mrodoc

We have discussed about putting a CNCC workshop on this subject recently.
Anybody with the requisite skills and is prepared to run a workshop for us please email: training@cncc.org.uk

Kind regards
Ian Patrick
CNCC Training Officer/ coordinator

 

[aricooperdavis]

That's a great idea! I find that one of my main issues is that, despite resolutions increasing, the physical sensor size remains small (much like with GoPros and other action cameras) so there's only so much light that can actually reach the sensor. This can result in graininess, which post processing attempts to deal with by blurring and then oversharpening. "AI" image enhancement that's baked in on many phones does a better job at remedying these small sensor sizes, but I would love to hear how expert users are selecting good phones for photography etc.

 

[jonnybellman]

If your phone has the option to capture in .RAW or similar, that might give you more scope for editing, but as you've said above, it ultimately comes down to sensor size and stuffing enough light into it to get something decent out. Also, depends where you want to use the photos, I'd guess most phone pictures would look good blown up to poster size, but might look lovely when viewed on a phone or tablet screen.

Having said all that, I've been blown away by how nice photos out of the newest iPhones (16?) look. Right out of the phone without editing, they seem really good. Disappointing as I'm a Samsung user

 

[tdobson]

I could run such a workshop. Unfortunately, I don't have the capacity right now for _anything_ extra.
If anyone can do childcare for me, I maybe could... but I fear there's not people here who'd be willing to step up for that one!

 

[ZombieCake]

As others have said the quality of small sensors in the likes of iPhones and Action cams have progressed within reason. Laws of physics still apply and there's lot of skulduggery in the post processing. That said I recently filmed a helicopter scene using DJI OSMO Pro 5 in a real helicopter 4K and was nice to be able to set shutter speed to 1/50th ('cos it's 25fps) and it turned out very nicely.

 

[pwhole]

My phone can shoot in RAW, and the quality is much better, but obviously is still limited by the sensor and lens sizes, which are tiny. My full-frame DSLR and high definition lenses are orders of magnitude sharper - but I wouldn't take them underground. The earlier APS-C model I do though, and it's taken some great shots. I just published some phone photos in a magazine, and they look fine at that size though.