is it possable to shot an event like a wedding with a cellphone

[oduodui]

is it possible to shot an event like a wedding with a cellphone?

lets say i want to make a video of about 45 minutes. what cellphone have good batteries? and good optical stabilization?

or going with a entry level camcorder still the way to go?

[Detmek]

Its possible. But if you want phone with OIS you need a flagship model, Samsung Galaxy 7, 8 or 9 or iPhone 7, 8 or X, Google Pixel 2 XL or something like that. Good thing is after that you still have good phone.
There were some promo videos and music videos that were shot with iPhone and they look good. I can't find link now.
You also need to worry about audio quality. Not all phones have good audio recording quality. Nokia 8 has good audio recording quality.
But if camcorder for that price or lower has OIS that camcorder is better option for quality.

[themaster1]

You will have to deal with low light environnement most likely, so not a good idea unless you have one of the latest premium smartphones (htc u11 plus etc...) which have a relative good aperture for a smartphone (~1.7) and catch more light than your budget to mid range smart p.
Then will come the depth of field issue. If you're far from the subject(s)more than ~ 5 meters i'd say (probably less) it's hopeless (no details and noise is what you'll get.
And last but not least the stabilization: it's not with your shaky hands that a decent watchable footage will come out even with an OIS
That's my 2 cents

[oduodui]

ok it seems camcorders is cheaper and will deliver better quality and the batteries is replaceable.

so for now camcorders.

thank you

[Cornucopia]

Also, one thing to think about is the practicality of the shooting. You will need accessories so you can hold, move & operate it over an extended period of time.
Plus, and this is important yet no one has mentioned it: a phone would have heat issues and may want to shut down after ~30-odd continuous minutes of recording, much like a dslr. It's not built purposefully as a (long-term) video camera. And this becomes especially evident in event shooting, such as weddings. Sure, it's easy to take just little snippets, 3 minute clips of certain moments, like many guests do, but then you lose the ability to capture EVERYTHING, especially those unexpected moments. Which is why wed videographers often have multiple cams, with some recording constantly throughout the event. You can always take out stuff you don't want in editing, but you can't put it in if you never got the shot in the first place.
That also brings up the other practical issues of battery/ac power for extended lengths, and storage capacity and/or swapping.

Scott

[johnmeyer]

I've shot quite a few weddings. You can certainly shoot it with a cellphone (please hold the phone horizontally, and not veritally!!). Problems you will encounter:

1. Holding it for long periods of time. I'm sure someone makes a tripod mount for cell phones, and you'd want to get one.

2. No real zoom. Sure you can "pinch" in to record a zoomed view but you won't get the real optical zoom that a good camcorder provides. Zoom is really important because if you want to get the wide shot showing the entire wedding party during the ceremony, but also get jut the bride and groom when they kiss, you have to be able to zoom in a long way.

3. No manual overrides. I don't own a cell phone, but when I use my wife's phone, while I am amazed at the quality it can take, and how smart its exposure control usually is. Having said that, the typical bride and groom present a really tough challenge because she is usually wearing white, and he is often wearing a black tux, or something similar. That contrast is really tough to expose correctly, and the typical result has the bride surrounded by this glowing, white hot halo, with very little actual detail on the dress. You usually need to manually dial down the exposure by almost a full stop, and then gain the shadows in post.

4. Very modest stabilization. If you do have to hold by hand, you want the best stabilization possible.

In addition, I always shoot with multiple cameras. If you screw up with your main camera, you can always cut away to one of the other cameras.

[Cornucopia]

@johnmeyer, agreed.
Note: All of those can have exceptions and/or accessories (there are some phone cam apps that can give you manual control of many parameters - though the exposure/vfr limitations is still there and still bothers me). If, however, one goes full bore with the accessories, it often can cost as much as a traditional camera rig.
My take is that you CAN use a cell/smartphone, but it usually isn't optimal, especially from a pro standpoint.
It doesn't hurt to have, especially for the convenience factor, and I strongly concur with the recommendation of having multiple cams. And that's one area where phones really come in handy - you can "crowdsource" some of your footage.

Scott

[oduodui]

Also, one thing to think about is the practicality of the shooting. You will need accessories so you can hold, move & operate it over an extended period of time.
Plus, and this is important yet no one has mentioned it: a phone would have heat issues and may want to shut down after ~30-odd continuous minutes of recording, much like a dslr. It's not built purposefully as a (long-term) video camera. And this becomes especially evident in event shooting, such as weddings. Sure, it's easy to take just little snippets, 3 minute clips of certain moments, like many guests do, but then you lose the ability to capture EVERYTHING, especially those unexpected moments. Which is why wed videographers often have multiple cams, with some recording constantly throughout the event. You can always take out stuff you don't want in editing, but you can't put it in if you never got the shot in the first place.
That also brings up the other practical issues of battery/ac power for extended lengths, and storage capacity and/or swapping.

Scott

Scott that is so true and even then your camcorder can also get hot if shoorting at the highest resolutions for long periods of time. and yes agreed you can never have shoot too much material and certainly one camera must recordf constantly from beginning to end as i have found out the hard way that at editing it s a time saver. especially for syncing everything and yes a second camera for backup preferably one shootinhg the same codec at the dame framerate.

[oduodui]

I've shot quite a few weddings. You can certainly shoot it with a cellphone (please hold the phone horizontally, and not veritally!!). Problems you will encounter:

1. Holding it for long periods of time. I'm sure someone makes a tripod mount for cell phones, and you'd want to get one.
.

found out that the hard way . i use blender to try and fix those long shots where you get tired of holding the camera.(i use the camera stabilization quite effective if you leave room for cropping) problem with a tripod is that if quickly need to adjust its difficult to a quickly changing scene if you you don't have fluid head tripod with a long handle that is torque adjustable and the the camera head needs to be balanced etc etc. quite a hassle

i am thinking of making a wood frame that fit over my shoulders that has a mount at the front and then handles extending down below where your hands can hold it while being moer or less in resting state.

[johnmeyer]

A tripod with a quick disconnect (most of them are built this way nowadays) will solve the problem of adapting to the unexpected, where you suddenly have to move. I did this in a wedding two years ago where I didn't mount the camera high enough, and when the bride approached and the congregation stood, my view of the aisle was totally blocked. After muttering an expletive, I pulled the tripod quick release lever and one second later I was shooting hand held.

To cover the interruption while I pulled the camera off its mount, I switched to another camera (during the editing). If you don't have a second camera, you can use another trick of the trade: the cover shot. Before the bride arrives, take lots of video of the surrounding area, the congregation, and anything else that will look roughly the same during the ceremony. You can then cut to that for a few seconds to cover a camera glitch.

The fluid head is mandatory for most video shots, but for a wedding, you don't absolutely need one because it is such a static event. Except for the bridal party and bride entrance (and exit), the rest of the shoot is almost completely static. It is this lack of movement, as well as needing to avoid tiring out trying to hold a camera steady for more than half an hour, that mandates a tripod.

I'll state once more that you definitely should try to get a second camera. I used to borrow one from a neighbor. Now that they are 100% solid state (i.e., no tape), there is virtually no wear and tear while filming, so most people are quite happy to lend a camera to you, especially if it is for a wedding. I will agree that the ideal is to have all the cameras identical, because this helps match shots in post. The next to ideal is to have them all set up to shoot the same frame rate and resolution, although I regularly shoot with my wonderful Sony FX1, because the optics and controls are semi-pro, but it is only 1440x1080, shooting 29.97 fps, interlaced. All my other cameras shoot 1920x1080 at 59.94 fps progressive. Using Sony Vegas, none of this matters, and Vegas takes care of adjusting resolution and frame rates. For really critical work, I use an AVISynth script to modify the 1440x1080 to match the 1920x1080 59.94 fps, which is likely to be the standard delivery format for at least another decade, despite UHD.

Having the same codec in each camera doesn't matter at all, as long as your video editor can deal with each codec. Even if it can't, you can almost always convert to an intermediate codec, like Cineform. In fact, converting to Cineform has, for over a decade, been the preferred way to edit HD video because it introduces virtually no visual loss, yet it lets the NLE show the video at full frame rate, even after many effects have been added. The only penalty to this workflow is the time it takes to do the conversion, and the additional disk space required. If you plan to do more than simple cuts, converting to an intermediate can save tens of hours during a long edit.

Good tripods can cost a fortune, but if you poke around you should be able to pick up something that can hold the camera steady and level, for tens of dollars, rather than hundreds. I just did a quick search on Craigslist and found dozens of tripods, almost all of them under $100, and many as cheap as $25.

The shoulder mount is also an option. I inherited one from my late father and have tried to use it, but it never quite worked, even though the idea is sound: I used to shoot with a shoulder-mount camera, and it was definitely less fatiguing than holding a small modern camera in front of you. It also let you keep the camera very, very steady. My advice: don't bother to build one because it won't be as much of a help as you think.

[johnmeyer]

P.S. I just realized my conflicting statements about the shoulder mount are confusing. The reason they don't work too well, even though the old shoulder-mount cameras were not particularly fatiguing, despite their weight, is that the little cameras have to be mounted on the end of the shoulder mount. Why so far away? Because you need to look at the flip out viewfinder (or the iPhone screen) and for most people, this means it needs to be at least a foot in front of your eyes. This distance from your shoulder increases the movement. Also, to get the camera level, if your mount doesn't have a lot of adjustments (mine doesn't), you may need to hold the mount at an awkwardly high angle.

Finally, if you want to see the result of my panicked quick disconnect during the wedding, watch this video highlights video I did for the couple. At the 0:26 mark you'll see the flower girl being directed to her place. That was shot on the tripod. You can see that the camera is pretty high up, but not high enough as it turned out. A few seconds later the congregation stood and blocked my view. I didn't immediately notice because I had turned the camera to film the bride and her father, which you'll see. Then as I pivoted the camera as they approached the end of the aisle, I realized the problem. The next shot, looking straight up the aisle was filmed with the camera that I had popped off the tripod. I kneeled so as to stay out of the still photographer's line of sight, and I stabilized it in post using Deshaker (you can Google my name and Deshaker to learn more about how to use it).

Here's the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veqAZcauxw8

Those two shots looking up the aisle are actually, photographically speaking, far better than what I would have gotten from the tripod, so the near-debacle actually forced me into a better shot.

[oduodui]

wow that's really done well what a nice video.

this is the problem with holding the camera in front of you for long periods of time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqIjX929aJY

i stabilized with blender but i didn't over zoom and could crop for stabilization

[oduodui]

Those two shots looking up the aisle are actually, photographically speaking, far better than what I would have gotten from the tripod, so the near-debacle actually forced me into a better shot.

yes not being constantly bogged down by a tripod does leave you with the freedom to quickly change your shot especially when you use just one camera.

[oduodui]

Finally, if you want to see the result of my panicked quick disconnect during the wedding, watch this video highlights video I did for the couple. At the 0:26 mark you'll see the flower girl being directed to her place. That was shot on the tripod. You can see that the camera is pretty high up, but not high enough as it turned out. A few seconds later the congregation stood and blocked my view. I didn't immediately notice because I had turned the camera to film the bride and her father, which you'll see. Then as I pivoted the camera as they approached the end of the aisle, I realized the problem. The next shot, looking straight up the aisle was filmed with the camera that I had popped off the tripod. I kneeled so as to stay out of the still photographer's line of sight, and I stabilized it in post using Deshaker (you can Google my name and Deshaker to learn more about how to use it).

yes that's the thing the ability to change to a quickly changing situation without worrying about your tripod.