Lights, camera phone, action!

Photography workshops are no longer about DSLR-wielding amateurs thronging a class to learn from a veteran. Mumbai’s latest photography workshops deal with the nuances of not a camera, but a phone. They are increasingly being used in place of bulky DSLRs, by professionals and as a part of courses in Mumbai colleges. A film directed by Shlok Sharma, Zoo, has, in fact, been shot completely on the iPhone 6S. The movie, which stars Shweta Tripathi (of Masaan fame) is the first  B’wood movie shot with an iPhone.

According to the actress, the experience helped her get more comfortable in her own skin, since it come with an army of cameramen. “The experience was mostly the same as it would have been with regular cameras. However, there were comparatively lesser people involved in the process, and that helped me act more naturally, since I was less conscious,” she explains.

But is it as much of an advantage to people behind the lens? Director Karan Anshuman certainly seems to think so. “If films shot on a smart phone have good content, then that is what matters. In fact, the fact that a mainstream film was shot on an iPhone will probably encourage more budding directors to make films on lower budgets,” he says.

If you’re a student at city-based photographer Ritesh Uttamchandani’s workshop, you’d learn to not think of your camera phone as a camera phone, but just a camera.

“The camera is just an instrument, at the end of the day. If you use it well, then that is what matters. I usually ask the students in my workshops to check which phone camera is giving them the better printout. That is what matters ultimately, not the backlit images on the screen, which will look good anyway,” he explains.

A still from Yeh Mera Bombay, a song shot on an iPhone.

Interestingly, the trend has seeped into organised educational syllabus too. Photography modules now encourage students to step out with their smart phones — a move that would’ve been considered blasphemous by traditional lens men. Vanaaz Rana, who is currently pursuing an Audio Visual Production course for her BA degree in Mass Communication at Sir Vithaldas Thackersey (SVT) College, had to shoot a short film on her phone for her term project. She recalls, “We were initially apprehensive regarding the clarity but we shot on iPhone 4S and also a Samsung phone. The only problem was the battery, which drained very quickly. Also, since we were not using any stands or tripods we had difficulties in balancing the phone and stabilising the shots.”

There is, however, a breed of cameramen that hasn’t been able to embrace the trend, unlike some others. Swapan Mukherjee for instance, has his reservations. “The software and picture quality on a DSLR is much higher than that of any phone camera. When photos taken on phone cameras are actually printed, they are often grainy,” he says, adding that the medium is even less convenient for photography than for filmmaking. “When you watch a film on the silver screen, you watch it from at least a 30 foot distance. So, even if the camera does not have a 2K resolution — the usual standard set by cinematographers — it might not make such a glaring difference. Photos, however, are viewed from much closer quarters and must therefore have much higher resolution,” he asserts.

Ronny Sen, who won the Getty Images Instagram Grant, surprisingly, agrees with Mukherjee — on one point in particular. That smart phones can never ‘replace’ the DSLR experience. They could, however, add a different dimension to the art. “It is not the medium you use, but how you are using it differently, and what you are adding in terms of repertoire that matters. The Polaroid camera added the Polaroid aesthetic, the point-and-shoot cameras added the snapshot aesthetic. Now, the phone camera is the latest in a long line of photographic inventions. It is up to the photographer how to optimise it,” he signs off.