There’s a whole lot of information swirling around about millimetre photography, and it’s no surprise when you think about it.
The big question for those of us who have experimented with it is what the heck does it actually mean. It’s a term I like to describe the process of taking a picture with a camera with a smaller diameter than the one on your phone. Most people know that a millimetre is about the size of a grain of rice, so to explain what millimetre photography is, I think it helps to explain what a grain of rice is.
Millimetre photography is a technique where your phone camera captures a picture with a slightly smaller diameter than the camera you normally use. This makes it possible to capture the same image with a camera that’s much larger than your phone and, as a result, smaller. It’s a sort of miniature camera, and your phone camera might as well be a tiny camera. In this case, the photo is actually made up of tiny lines of code.
For most of us this is the easiest way to learn photography. However, for those that are new to the art, it can be daunting. For example, if you’re used to taking photo’s with a large, DSLR-like camera you’ve probably got some issues with graininess in your images.
This is where the concept of “pixel peeping” comes into play. Rather than taking a photo with a camera with a fixed lens, like your phone, you’ll be taking a photo with a camera whose lens is moved. This move can be as simple as changing the focus of the camera, but it can also be as large as changing the size of the lens.
That can be useful if youre trying to capture a scene with the same resolution as a video that you will want to share with your friends, family, and/or work colleagues. It can also be helpful if youre trying to capture a scene that is difficult to capture on a DSLR with a fixed lens.
There is a wide range of applications for moving the camera, youll just have to know what you are doing. In the case of photographing a scene with the same resolution as a video, this can be useful if your camera is at the equivalent of a 720p resolution. For example, you could shoot a scene of a fire and then use a DSLR to capture a frame from that scene at 1080p.
There are also a number of apps that will move the camera automatically according to the scene you are shooting. The most common is CameraMove, which has built in scene detection. It can also detect the camera position and use that information to move the camera automatically. It is very useful, and I find it very intuitive for some situations.
I recently used CameraMove to shoot a series of indoor shots of a fireplace that were in the same room as the fire. The image captured beautifully, and I was able to edit it and play with the settings to get the look I wanted. I could also view the image on the computer and select the frame of the fire, which is the same as if I had taken the picture myself.
You can also use CameraMove to make a camera “see” the position of the subject. As a simple example, if I want to place a camera behind the subject and see where it is in the frame, I can do that by setting the camera’s position to look in the direction I want the camera to move. It’s a very quick way for me to see where the camera is pointing.