GUIDE 1/3: Mobile Alchemy with Deborah Loeb Bohren
 
Slow Shutter Cam and Average Camera Pro, settings explained. Part one of three, from the Mobile Alchemy series.
 
You download the app, open it, and find three capture modes, a blur strength slider, a shutter speed, an ISO and a settings menu with twelve things in it. Nothing tells you which combination makes the picture you had in mind. So you tap about for a while, get one image you like by accident, and cannot repeat it.
 
This guide is the answer to that. It is the written companion to part one of Deb Bohren's Mobile Alchemy series, covering the two apps she reaches for most, and it is built to be worked from with the phone in your hand rather than read once.
 
The series is still running, and you can still join it. Details are at www.camversation.co.uk/deb
 
What is in it
Forty pages on Average Camera Pro and Slow Shutter Cam, with annotated screenshots of every screen that matters.
 
How to set your phone up before you start, and which of the app settings actually change anything. Deb tested them, and she tells you plainly where one does nothing at all.
Every value of blur strength, shutter speed and ISO listed out, with suggested starting points for motion blur.
Side by side comparisons of the same subject at 4, 8, 16, 64 and 128 layers, with her view on where the sweet spot sits.
Motion blur against light trails, shown together with the settings panels that produced each one, so you can go and repeat them.
What you can still change after the shutter has closed, including increasing or reducing the blur, and shifting hue.
A six step workflow for building multiple exposures without losing the one you wanted, and a tip about saving as you go that will save somebody an evening.
 
Why we love this one
Most app guides are a tour of the buttons. This one tells you what the buttons are for, and where the app lets you down. The layer comparisons are the part I keep going back to, because you can see the moment more stops being better. Deb has made thousands of images this way and it shows in what she chose to include.
 
Please note
All screenshots in this guide are from an iPhone. The techniques apply on any phone, but the screens will look different on Android.
 
About Deb
Deborah Loeb Bohren is an award-winning abstract photographer based in New York. The daughter of two photographers, she has been in a darkroom since she was five. She leads international photography workshops through The Traveling Lens, and describes her work as visual alchemy, using the camera like a paintbrush.
 
deborahloebbohren.com · travelinglensphototours.com
 
This is part one of three, and the series is still going.
Part two, a whole evening on Bluristic, is Wednesday 7 October. Part three, layering and editing in Fine and iColorama, is Wednesday 4 November. Booking now gets you both evenings live plus the recording of part one, so nothing is lost by joining late.
 
The guides for parts two and three can be pre-ordered at £6 each until the session they belong to has run.
 
The simplest route is the series ticket at £34, which includes all three live evenings and all three guides.
 
[ Join Mobile Alchemy → www.camversation.co.uk/deb ]