Cinematic photography is trying to create a focal effect that could emulate a movie scene on a photo. Photography is one of my passion and even if I am an amateur, I am always trying to create something different, to give a different feel to my photos or videos. However, I do not have the iPhone 13 as this is the only next verso of iPhone that does cinematic effect quite well on a video.
However, it isn't perfect yet and requires shooting multiple times to actually get the subject separation very well. I'm guessing this will be perfected on the iPhone 14. However, how I create cinematic effect on a photo is different.
One thing is important, a subject must be in focus before a cinematic effect can be created. I used to watch a lot of movies where the background would be pitch black, then the subjects would be in focus. In fact, back in the days, when watching Nollywood. If an interrogation scene is created, you have the light on top of the ceiling in focus, then the background would be totally blur and dark except for the light on top that's illuminating the room and even as at that, the room would still be dimly lit. It's also the same when creating an old or 1950 themed musical backstage. The inspiration for this creation emanated from having all those vague cinematic situations in my mind.
There's nothing special here. This was edited on my iPhone. The cinematic effect was created on the picture, then I edited it finally using snapseed. The only problem I had was getting the subject separation to be 100% another challenge I had was that I wanted to at least leave some subjects showing a little in the background blur, but I was unable to achieve this.
So what I did was to set the picture to stage light-mono then set the aperture to f2.8 I increased the vignette to the highest. (Noise reduction was tweaked too. Surprising, noise reduction doesn't totally reduce noise of this exact picture, it does for some) then the definition as well as the sharpness.
I put the saturation to the highest point, what it did was to take it make it not totally look monochrome. It gave it a little hue and brought out the richness of the color. I also gave it a negative Black point. (Black point is supposed to add a tint of dark to the picture). It made the blackness a bit light. I also tweaked the Brilliance then the highlights and Shadow.
Then I used snapseed to change the frame and cropped it. I also added a little ambience, then reduced the exposure. I also added how the picture looked before and after the effect
I'm not sure if I created the same feeling on anyone that would see this. Likewise, I had issues getting the subject separation despite all my tweaks. But the intent was to create a certain feeling with the depth and focus, then the picture itself. What do you think?