iPhone Camera Shutter Animation
For our 3D Camera Video Tour, we needed to show how to use the iPhone camera to take two photos, but we didn’t want to simply point a video camera at the screen and press record. The reflective iPhone screen makes it very difficult to get a high quality recording.
We decided to use the excellent SimFinger utility along with Snapz Pro X to capture video of the iPhone simulator. Unfortunately, the simulator doesn’t include any camera functionality. So, we searched the ‘net for someone who may have had the same problem, hoping to find an app/animation/resource/whatever that might make our lives a little easier. Sadly, we couldn’t find anything.
As these things go, we spent a bit of time building our own camera animations, and we’ve decided to share them with the community. It’s our hope that these animations will help anyone who finds themselves in the same situation we were in.
First, download iPhone Camera Shutter Animation.zip (7.24 MB). The zip contains the following four files:
The thumbnail images are shown in the order that they should be used with the alpha channel represented as a gray checkerboard pattern. All of the media is at a resolution of 320 x 480, and the video files are 30 fps with 44 kHz audio.
To simulate the scenery, we recorded a short video with our iPhone 3GS. Then, we overlayed the four files on top of the video and paused the frame at the start of the Camera Shutter Animation.mov through to the Preview Toolbar.png.
It took some time to get it right, and while the animations aren’t perfect, they’re close enough…especially at the full playback speed.
We hope that you find them to be useful!
Dec 23, 2009
Thanks for sharing your work – you’re gonna help me make my deadline!
great job!
Dec 30, 2009
hey, thanks a lot for sharing this
might be useful for me 
thanks and take care, a good new year 2010,
cheers, rob
Aug 23, 2010
much thanks for sharing! Need this for work
Sep 13, 2010
Thanks alot for sharing. Been hoping to find that!
Jun 06, 2011
thanks a lot of sharing! I Need this for a work..
great job !
Jun 15, 2011
Live saver! Thanks so much for the download.
Jan 26, 2012
Every time I put this in FCP it corrupts my file… very strange…
Feb 01, 2012
thank you so much. saved me loads of time on a tight deadline. you guys are legend!