#Tip: Become a better smartphone photographer

By derekGavey on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Here are 12 tips on becoming a better smartphone photographer, as shared by CNN iReport.

The tips are from an interview with multimedia journalist and iPhone street photographer Richard Koci Hernandez.

Advice includes never to use the zoom on a phone camera, and to lock the exposure and focus.

The full list of tips is here.

(The post was published in September but the advice is obviously all still relevant.)

Update: And here are a further 10 tips on mobile phone photography, these from the Best Buy Mobile site. And five tips from Yanik’s Photo School site.

Hat tip: Marc Settle, who tweeted about all three posts.

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#Tip: Know where the video mic is on your iPhone

Image by renatomitra on Flickr. Some rights reserved

If you are an iPhone user and shoot video, do you know where the microphone is that records sound for video?

If you have an iPhone, 4, 4S or 5 and you think it is at the ‘bottom’ of your mobile, close to where your mouth would be when speaking on the phone, you are wrong.

The video mic on the 4 and 4S is the small dot next to the headphone socket (see image above). On the iPhone 5 the video mic is close to the camera lens.

The three models have a separate microphone for video, Marc Settle, who trains BBC reporters in using iPhones to shoot video, has pointed out.

As Glen Mulcahy, innovation lead at Irish broadcaster RTE, explains in this helpful post, Settle demonstrated to him that the video mic is not where many people think it is.

The advice comes after Mulcahy led a session on mobile journalism at Friday’s news:rewired, a conference run by Journalism.co.uk.

Read Glen Mulcahy’s blog post for more and for pictures of the mic locations.

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#Tip of the day for journalists: Consider getting interviewees to press record

Image by John.Karakatsanis on Flickr. Some rights reserved

If you have ever tried to find a way of recording a phonecall from your iPhone, you will know that there is no easy solution.

One way is to record the call to voicemail, an option that only allows for short recordings and does not enable you to ask for permission before hitting record. Another possibility is iPadio (for a guide see this link), but this makes the raw interview publicly accessible, gives a phoneline-quality recording, and again does not allow you to ask for permission before recording. The last time I tested there were no apps that solved the problem satisfactorily (do leave a comment below if you know of a solution or email me).

Update: See the comment from Mark from iPadio below

Here is a simple solution for getting a quality recording as tried and tested by US radio journalist Neal Augenstein, who we have reported on previously as he ditched other recording kit in favour of his iPad and iPhone.

In this post Augenstein explains that he now gets interviewees to record themselves on their own phone (while speaking to him from a second mobile phone or landline) and then asks them to email over the audio.

Interviewees could also record using QuickTime (file / ‘new audio recording’) on a Mac or Microsoft’s Sound Recorder.

Read Augenstein’s post to find out how interviewees can record on their phone and email you the file.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Tip of the day for journalists: mobile reporting pointers

Copyright: By Das Fotoimaginariumn on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

The 10,000 Words blog has a post which offers some tips for getting video footage with a smartphone. See the post here.

At Journalism.co.uk’s recent news:rewired event speakers on a mobile reporting session also shared tips on using mobile devices to report. Here is a liveblog of the session which featured lots of practical tips and apps for journalists.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Podcast – How iPhones to ‘green screen Nokias’ are being used for mobile journalism

Image by John.Karakatsanis on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Journalism.co.uk technology editor Sarah Marshall finds out how phones are being used for mobile journalism.

She speaks to:

• Nick Garnett, North of England correspondent for BBC Radio 5 Live.
• Natalia Antelava, BBC News correspondent, who this week won an award for a radio documentary which was recorded on an iPhone.
• Marc Settle from the BBC College of Journalism, who trains BBC journalists in mobile reporting.
• Libby Powell, a freelance journalist and co-founder of Radar, which has encouraged mobile reporting from ‘green screen Nokias’ in Sierra Leone.

Podcast: Download

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

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#AOPsummit: How ZDNet approaches mobile reporting with a responsive design CMS

Business technology news website ZDNet not only has a responsive site which adapts to the size of the screen it is viewed on, but has a responsively designed CMS, which scales to fit the screen size with the aim of making it easy for journalists to file stories from a smartphone or tablet.

The responsive CMS, which was developed internally, was introduced in July, Laura Jenner, product manager for CBS Interactive UK, which publishes ZDNet, said at today’s AOP Digital Publishing Summit.

In the session, which focussed on user experience and responsive (or adaptive) design, Jenner argued the case for responsive design, saying it is is “much better for user interaction” than an ‘m.’ mobile site.

And ease of using the site to download a white paper, for example, is key.

Loyal users are key to building audience as they always have been.

There are also business benefits of adaptive design, Jenner said, explaining that both users and search engines prefer using a responsively-designed site.

“Adaptive design is Google’s recommended option,” Jenner added.

And mobile means “you also have access to readers at times you didn’t previously”, she explained. “In the past you would have to wait until 9am on a Monday until people returned to their desks.”

Responsive design may also reduce the need for native apps and therefore reduce overheads, she added.

Asked how to convince advertisers of the advantages, Jenner said:

We are not forcing users onto another platform, they are already there. And we are providing a much better environment for advertising campaigns.

Asked whether journalists need to adapt articles or headlines to fit mobile reading, Jenner said “we don’t tell [journalists] to write a headline that fits on mobile”, adding that she believes people don’t want a shorter version of the story on mobile but want the full article.

In discussing development costs, she explained that responsive design is probably no cheaper as a one-off cost than developing native apps, but that the option is “far easier to iterate” and develop over time.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – mobile reporting field guide

Journalists interested in the latest tools they can use for reporting from an iPhone can find a guide on the Apple iBook store, which came out of a mobile reporting class at the UC Berkley Graduate School of Journalism.

According to an announcement the guide “is available as a free download in the Apple iBook store” and “can be viewed on an iPad” or can be downloaded as a PDF version.

This guidebook was the result of a mobile reporting class at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and is the work of Casey Capachi, Evan Wagstaff, Matt Sarnecki along with instructors Richard Koci Hernandez and Jeremy Rue.

Hatip: 10,000 Words

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – iPhone photography advice

With journalists often turning to their iPhone to capture images to illustrate a news story, here are some tips collected by the International Journalists’ Network, based on the advice of Cindi Hobgood, founder of Scout Photo Expeditions.

See the IJNet list here.

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#Tip: Follow Sky News reporter in using Bambuser to livestream video

Here is an idea for all journalists: use Bambuser to broadcast a livestream video from your phone.

The app and mobile site allows you to stream video from no less than 360 mobile phone models.

Sky News North of England correspondent Nick Martin yesterday used his iPhone to livestream a report on queues at fuel stations.

It wasn’t broadcast live or aired later on Sky news on this occasion but enabled Martin to share live footage with his Twitter followers. A total of 45 watched it live, with current viewer stats standing at 443.

He told Journalism.co.uk:

We’ve been covering the fuel problems at forecourts across the country.

It was just a case of going past a forecourt and seeing pretty lengthy queues of 50 or 60 cars and not having a cameraman with me.

It’s a way of getting pictures in real time to Twitter followers or to a news desk.

The quality sometimes isn’t great but a way of people being able to plug into what you’re doing as a reporter.

Martin said he saw real value in the possibilities during a breaking news story, such as the riots, of the channel broadcasting the phone footage live.

Martin explained that Sky News has its own technology to allow reporters to sent high quality phone video footage to the newsdesk.

Hans Eriksson from Bambuser told Journalism.co.uk:

Bambuser has been used by several smaller local media outlets in the UK over the last year but this is the first time it’s been used this way by a nationwide media.

Bambuser is a previous app of the week for journalists.

Nick Martin spoke about his innovative uses of apps at last month’s news:rewired conference for journalists.

Here are Martin’s three pieces of advice for journalists considering using mobile phones for reporting. The liveblog of the session is at this link.

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Al Jazeera to broadcast Syria documentary filmed entirely on iPhone

In an interesting development for mobile journalism, Al Jazeera is due to broadcast a documentary tomorrow night (Wednesday, 14 March) on Syria which has been filmed by a journalist using just an iPhone due to safety concerns.

According to a press release, the film, called ‘Syria: Songs of Defiance‘, “follows the journalist, who is not named to protect the people he spoke to, on a journey amongst the uprising in Syria”.

At the start of the documentary, the release adds, the correspondent for Al Jazeera will be heard saying:

I can’t tell you my name. I’ve spent many months secretly in Syria for Al Jazeera.

I cannot show my face and my voice is disguised to conceal my identity, because I don’t want to endanger my contacts in Syria.

Because carrying a camera would be risky, I took my cell phone with me as I moved around the country and captured images from the uprising that have so far remained unseen.

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