Power in your pocket.
A lot of people use video content - and lots is self-generated. If you're going to make video then a little bit of knowledge and some thought can get you some amazing results from the camera you carry in your pocket - your phone.
Earlier this year, I shot a short film whilst in Paris - and it went down very well, so in the spirit of adventure I set out to do something similar but in Amsterdam.
If you can't be bothered to read more - here's the film!
I've very fortunate that my job allows travel to lovely places (sometimes) and in those trips there may be an opportunity to have some time alone from the crew and client and just to my own thing.agraph text here.
I love Amsterdam (and not for the reasons most people think). It's a great city. The people are welcoming and there's a positive vibe pretty much everywhere. I've often said that if I had to relocate and could chose anywhere in Europe it would be Amsterdam.
Although the weather was pretty grim 90% of the time I was there - rain, wind and cold. In fact there were tonnes of delays and cancellations at the airport because of storms. I still managed to grab a few shots.
It's not the most pleasant weather to go out shooting. I did manage to squeeze in a few hours between shoots to do my own thing.
I decided to leave all my camera kit back in the hotel. I actually brought another camera for my 'wandering' but this time I wanted to focus (sorry!) on shooting some video.
I have been having a lot of fun with smartphone stabilisers over the years but I am pretty much settled now on my Movi Cinema Robot. It's made by the guys who make the very cool cinema camera stabiliser gimbal rigs so it's from good pedigree. It's just a bloody good device. Go and have a play with one - speak to Production Gear and they will look after you.
I also took with me a few lenses for my iPhone X. (I didn't upgrade this time around - to me there's no big different with the new iPhone XS etc to make me spend all that cash.)
The lenses screw onto a special case that houses my phone. They are made by a company called Sandmarc. They just launched their telephoto lens and were keen for me to test it out for them.
In lighting speed they send me over their new iPhone case and lens.
The case lets you use BOTH the cameras on the iPhone X - so putting the telephoto lens onto the 2x lens on the phone really brought things closer!
Take a look if you didn't already watch it at the top of the page!
Let me know what you think.