Prior to a recent cruise I picked up the iOgrapher for my iPhone 6. Having seen the product at NAB a few times, I knew it created a stable camera platform for the iPhone making the camera much more useable. I was more than impressed with the stability and ease of use of the system. In fact I shot a LOT more video than I originally intended on the cruise. While I was really happy with the with overall results, I felt that camera control and audio quality were lacking. The iPhone camera auto irises too much and the color temperature changes, sometimes at random. When the phone is mounted into the iOgrapher, the microphone is essentially blocked by the unit. So before my next trip, I knew I wanted to improve both areas.

While on vacation recently, I was able to combine two of his passions. Video production and cruising. Just before sailing on the Celebrity Cruises “Silhouette,” to the Caribbean, I picked up an iOgrapher which makes a very useful camera platform for the iPhone and iPad. Featuring interchangeable lenses, cold shoe mounts and tripod mounting points the iOgrapher essentially turns the iPhone into a professional camera giving the videographer great camera stability.

The cruise was the perfect testing platform as I'm looking for new ways to work with video, especially in social media. We’re also testing some new ideas for the upcoming Contemporary Living Network and we can see the benefits of creating original content with this setup.

The one thing I didn’t have on this trip was a shotgun microphone. Since the phone is mounted sideways on the iOgrapher, the microphone on the phone is not great for picking up natural sound and spoken word. Before the next vacation, I’ll be adding a shotgun mic.

I also didn’t know about some additional apps for the iPhone that allow for manual Iris and Color Balance controls on the phone. You’ll see the auto-iris kick in quick in quite a bit with all the bright / dark areas. And the color balance does change from time to time. I'll add those apps before the next vacation as well.

All in all, very impressive to see the picture quality and especially the stability of the images. This entire project was filmed with the iPhone 6. Absolutely NO camera stabilization was added to any of these images in the video below.

Also VERY impressed with Celebrity Cruises and their Silhouette. This was our first time on Celebrity and we were so impressed with the ship, the crew and of course, the food that we booked another cruise on the Celebrity Reflection. Celebrity is just top notch, white glove treatment but without the stuffy attitude. Beautiful ship, wonderful people and a great time.

To read more on the iOgrapher: http://www.iographer.com

To read more on Celebrity Cruises: http://www.celebritycruises.com/

To find those light leaks and many other effects: http://rampantdesigntools.com

If you like the music, that's from The License Lab: https://licenselab.com/