One of my favorite photographers, the Instagram-famous Jamie Beck of Ann Street Studio, creates images that are gorgeous and moving — literally.
Beck and her creative partner, Kevin Burg, make cinemagraphs, which are beautiful images that move ever so slightly. They're sort of like GIFs, but only one area of the photograph is animated. LG's new V40 ThinQ is making it possible for amateurs like me to create the same effect, with a new Cine Shot feature that takes all the work out of making a cinemagraph.
I'm kind of obsessed with this feature, which makes use of the V40's rear triple-lens camera system. Beck and Burg's cinemagraphs animate the details of a photo, such as the splash of champagne, the ruffle of a leaf or the sparkle of a high heel. I applied that aesthetic when I got a chance to test the V40's Cine Shot feature for myself before the phone's anticipated Oct. 3 launch in New York. (LG spilled the beans about the V40 in a blog post last week.)
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The new feature is tucked behind the Mode option at the top of the V40's camera preview. When you tap Cine Shot, you'll notice a red button pops up to record video. Cine Shot records 3-second clips, then lets you highlight the area of the video you want to animate. You can zoom in to get detailed with your animations, or you can swipe at the screen to animate a larger area. The result is saved as a full-HD MP4 file on your Camera Roll, and you can then share the creation as a video on Instagram.
As you can see in the sample I created below of a hot dog stand, only one of the carts has an umbrella that ruffles in the breeze, while the other cart's canopy stands still.
A Cine Shot I created of my colleague Adam at an LG event was easier to capture, because I could just highlight a circle around the pinwheel as it spun.
Cine Shots are particularly fun to create when there's continuous movement in the same direction, such as this fountain shooting water into the sky.
It's tough to capture an object moving quickly across the screen, such as a car or a dog, without animating basically the entire photo (and that defeats the purpose). You'll want to keep it simple, at least at first.
I'm never going to replicate the technical expertise that goes into a real cinemagraph, but quickly making something that approximates it using Cine Shot is a delightful experience. We'll find out what other cool features that triple-camera system enables at the LG event on Oct. 3.
Credit: Tom's Guide
