Category Archives: Taking Pictures

Taking photographs with the iPhone

Update to Instagram for iPhone – changes you can really see!

The folks from Instagram (the social iPhone Photo service!) shot out an upgrade today. It’s full of what seems simple but will make a huge impact. A new filter, a new enhancement and a new UI!!

So, 2.1 includes the Lux photo enhancement. You may notice that it is very similar to Clarify in other apps I have mentioned before. It sharpens the colors and and brings the dark areas up to level with the lighter areas. There is also a new filter for your photos, called Sierra. It is a brighter, more colorful Earlybird.

Lastly, the Instagram buttons along the bottom have matured and the simplified look lightens up the whole experience. All fun stuff, looking forward to sharing my iPhone shots.

A DIFFerent case for the serious iPhone photographer

I’m always on the watch for a new case idea. The problem being is that I like the portability of the iPhone without a case, but like the features of many of the specialty cases. The Survivor from Griffin Technology is the case I use when I might be someplace the iPhone will get handled roughly. It does bulk up the iPhone 4 a lot though.

New to me is the Diff Case. The case is less about drop protect, which it does, rather it is more about protecting the faces and being able to mount your iPhone to a tripod. The Diff Case is currently $30, available directly from the manufacture.

The main ‘features’ of the Diff case is the doors that cover the flat sides of the iPhone 4, which can be opened tall or wide, and has a opening for the camera to work with the case still on. The two tripod mounts make it easy to set up for still or long exposure photographs.


The Science of Taking Low Light Photos with the iPhone

there are mixed opinions on if the latest iPhones are better in low light than previous models. The higher resolution, faster action and more capabilities to focus has gotten us to notice when our images are less than perfect. So, whether it’s a iPhone 3 or iPhone 4, photos taken in low light appear grainy at best.

One solution is to hold the shutter open longer to get as much of the available light into the iPhone’s camera. A new solution offers a different line of thinking… taking multiple pictures and merging them together. Both paths work best with the iPhone on a tripod or at a minimum on a solid surface. The solution, Average Camera Pro does as it’s name states, takes multiple images and averages them. Giving a brighter finished photo with stronger colors. Length of time and number of photos taken is adjustable.

Taking that a step further, when a iPhone camera is assembled, there are a few irregularities that show up in photos that are challenging. Average Camera Pro offers a solution to this problem too. Telling the app where the issues are, the app uses the info to correct those areas. “Telling the app” is as simple as taking a picture of a white piece of paper.

Getting the Tri-Filter Effect with your iPhone Photos

The Tri-Filter Effect, also known as the Harris Shutter, is where three photos are taken and merged together. Unlike TiltShift, the Tri-Filter takes the three images with different color filters: Cyan, Yellow, Magenta (some refer to as the Red/Green/Blue). Since the three photos are taken one after the next, any areas that move will show as a ghost on the final photo in a particular color. Imagine a person walking across the street, if you take three photos quickly, the background and road are still but you will have three of the people as they progressed between the time you snapped the shot.

Take that idea and apply it to anything that moves a bit like water or clouds. You can also move the camera to cause a color shadow on the objects in the photo. A few examples sites/pages: Tri-Filter Landscapes, Harris Shutter Flickr Discussion, “Apply Filter” looking at Tri-Filter photo options.

Since we have a iPhone in our hand and don’t want to haul around a bunch of filters to change out, there is an app to handle that magic for us. HarrisCamera will snap the three photos with digital color filters across 1, 2, 5, or 10 seconds. Then, save the image to your iPhone Album, email or share on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr.

Another iPhone HDR photo app, this one with a ton of fine tuning tools

I have covered several HDR photos apps for the iPhone. Some create a HDR like photos by applying filters to lighten the dark areas and push the bright colors with a bit of a boost. Then, there are a few that take actual HDR photos which is to say they take multiple images and merge them together.

A new option (to me) is iCamera HDR. The developer claims it is the first true HDR photo app in the iTunes store… I’m not sure about that claim since I have been using a few options for years now. What intrigued me about iCamera HDR was all of the fine tuning that app lets you do to the images. After you snap the photos (manual or automatic) and the pictures are made into one, there is a long list of adjuster sliders to tweak your iPhone photos to really bring out the strong parts.

The settings area is pretty extensive too if you want to get defaults set up. Then, when getting ready to take the image, there are last second options through the buttons around the camera button for stabilization and auto/manual.

Using the iPhone to get better film based Pinhole Photographs

While my iPhone is the ‘camera’ I always have with me. I also shoot with a 16 megapixel digital, a Diana Mini and a Diana Pinhole. Since the Diana cameras are film cameras with a level of uncertainty built in, a bit more thought happens before hitting the shutter button. Film is a lot of fun, with a large variety of simple camera being available at very low prices. The film they use though is getting more expensive as suppliers lessen as well there is the cost of developing/printing. Due to this, I’m less likely to just shoot up a roll of film of anything I see like I would with a digital camera. I must say though, when film/developing was less expensive, a lot of experimentation can really help create a person’s look/feel.

A nice little app I found to make sure my Pinhole camera shots are more often usable instead of over/under exposed is Pinhole Assist. It offers a few screens of dials for you to tell the app what the environment is like, as well what film speed you have loaded and how big the pinhole (or f stop lens if you have the option on your camera). The answer you will get is how long you need to have the shutter open.

Pinhole Assist does cover a nice list of particular pinhole cameras (Diana, Holga, Zeroimage, Ilford and more), as well it has enough flexibility to be used with a camera you may have built yourself.

The iPhone, a serious tool for photographers, amateur and professionals

Not all photography tools for the iPhone involve using the iPhone’s camera. I stumbled on this little gem of an app for pin pointing location data for making decisions on when the perfect photography time will be. The app, GoldenPic, is a valuable tool for outside photography.

When at a location, the app will tell you sunrise, sunset, weather for the next few days, the geo-location and data on the moon. If the timing isn’t perfect, save the location for later to check when your not there. Imagine, parks and landmarks in your area, bookmarked so that later you know when you should go to one of the locations to take photos because the environment around the location will be best suited for your shots. You don’t actually have to visit the location, just enter the name, address or geo-location into GoldenPic and save for later. Use it for planning out your next vacation path, know in advance when different stops will be at their best to take their picture rather than showing up when the weather, sun and time of day are all wrong.

Making your iPhone Photos square without cropping

Personally, my real retro film camera is 35mm, with images being wider than tall. But, the choice of most ‘social’ photo sharing services use square images. This makes the management of photos by the service much easier, they don’t have to worry about the presentation of wide vs tall images.

Unless you have a ‘square’ frame of mind when taking a picture with your iPhone, or specifically using one of the social apps to take the picture, you will be cropping every image to fit the format. This can mean the loss of some of the photo message.

A free app, Squaready, takes the opposite approach to the square problem than cropping. It gives you a square area to work in. Placing your image in that work area, you can expand to the edges, then fill in the area around the image with a color (tons available through picker). Squaready also offers a few tuning options; rotate, mirror, and manual resizing. When you have the image as you like, you can directly post to Instagram, save to the iPhone photo library or ‘sent to’ another app. A variety of image size and formats are available too.

The app is free, but has iAds taking up the lower edge part of the screen. There isn’t an in-app purchase option to remove the ads, but the developer claims that if you tap the iAd you won’t be bothered with it for a few hours.

Quick picture and note from the iPhone to your free Evernote Account

There are many options to jot notes down on the iPhone as well to keep ToDo lists. I find that I have much of my quick notes spread out amongst many apps. This causes problems trying to make sure I use the right app for the right project and that I check that app later. In an attempt to get everything in one place across my iPhone, iPad and notebook, I have been playing around with the free cloud notes system, Evernote.

An app I have been playing with over the last week, ShotMemo is helping with that process rethink. ShotMemo let me take a quick photo, resize it, add a bit of text and send it to my Evernote account. Super quick!

ShotMemo does have a lot of fine tuning features too for those times it’s more about appearance or more info is needed. You can choose to have the date/time auto inserted into the note. As well, Geo location can be auto entered. The background of ShotMemo’s notes area (resizable) can be changed to any of the 16 (I actually counted 17, but the dev says 16) options. If that isn’t enough, there is the option to in-app purchase 23 more.

When you have your shot and text, then choose to send, you have the option of the size of the image… which is handy when there is only slow internet available. Sending to has more options than just Evernote, you can also choose to attach the image/text to a email, or share through Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Flickr. In the case of Evernote, the last screen gives you the option of which folder you want the note sent to. So, while I say ShotMemo is super fast to get a photo and note to my Evernote account, there are tuning options that can stretch the sending out a bit. It all comes down to what you need at that time.

 

iPhone Obsessed – the iPhone photography book I wanted to write!

The concept was simple, but to pull it off meant a lot of work. I set about taking photos with my iPhone and editing them with a variety of iPhone photo editing apps. I then showed the original and the final options with effects applied. It has been a lot of fun over the last year, and it has been a serious lot of work for a year.

Over the holidays, I found and purchased “iPhone Obsessed“. A book that shows finished images and the app/settings it took to get the image. The author claims it took them a year of hard work to take the photos and work through the best solution to get the effect they were looking for. Having lived a similar year, I can say I believe them. The book is a very nice item to grab (found it on Amazon here) to save yourself many hours to playing around. It is still best to experiment to learn what you can do and equally what doesn’t work. But iPhone Obsessed takes a lot of guess work out of getting to the finished result you may be looking for. It’s a great way of ‘seeing’ ideas around what is possible when you frame up a shot too.