Category Archives: Taking Pictures

Taking photographs with the iPhone

Viewing your multiple social photo albums in one iPhone app

If your like me, I have my photos shared all over the place. I have several groups on Facebook for that group of friends, my constant posting to Instagram, Twitpic for my Twitter shares and the list goes on.

This of course means there are times I have shared a photo, removed it from my iPhone and forgot where it was that I posted it. Also, there are times I need to buzz to several albums when I’m mobile to find a couple pics to use in a post… loging in/out of multiple social services.

I found an app that seems to be from someone that has shared my pains, SuperAlbum. It’s a inexpensive app that lets me view across albums on Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Mixi, Picasa, Tumblr, TwitPic, and 500ps – all at the same time. I can grab a photo off of any of the services and re-share or even print.

Movement effects for your iPhone Photos

Prior to my iPhone, I carried a variety of digital cameras. While quick and easy to shoot, I missed a few features that almost seemed easier using my older film cameras. Movement in an image was one of those features. The ‘better’ digital cameras did movement but the entry level units froze everything in time.

For the iPhone, there is Slow Shutter. Do you want to show movement going by like water over a waterfall or car taillights on the street below, it gets that handled.

Slow Shutter handles the other side of movement too… like a picture out the window of a plane or car where the foreground frame is still and the background moves by. The app provides a manual mode for you to completely control the shutter open time as well an automated option where you choose a length of time and how you want the movement handled and Slow Shutter does the rest. There is a single image result but the app holds many images that you can move through to adjust the final… like in the case of cars going by you can adjust at what point in the capture had the right amount of light trails.

 

iPhone brings a film camera to your pocket

The days of choosing a 35mm film, a lens and the type of flash are not completely gone. While Hipstamatic doesn’t require you get the ‘f’ setting right or depth of field focus, it does offer a variety of yesteryear type choices. The output won’t be the super crisp photos of the big lens and big dollar cameras, rather it will give you the lower end experience of the bright spots and washed out colors of the not-so-perfect film cameras.

Hipstamatic comes with a variety of film types and lenses, as well a couple flash head styles. To choose, you just sweep your finger across the lens area side/side to change, and up/down to the film canisters. You can choose to use the flash or not.

You view through the little view finder window, snap your images… Hipstamatic takes a bit of time to create the image adds it to it’s own image roll. You can choose to have the photo also saved out to your iPhone’s Photo Library too. Sharing is done through the popular social services with the image including the specifics to the lens/film/flash you used. Additional film/lens combination packs are available through in-app purchase.

 

Real HDR for the iPhone, now with enhancements

High Dynamic Range… in case you where wondering what HDR was. The built in iPhone camera app has a option to shoot in entry level version of HDR in case you thought you had seen it before. Basically, you take a over bright and over dark image and merge them together so that the bright areas aren’t too bright and the dark areas aren’t blacked out. The effect works very well for inside of buildings and puffy clouds outside. There is a lot of other situations but those are the two types of shots you see most often by professional HDR photographers.

There are a lot of ‘fake’ HDR apps for the iPhone that take a single image and bring up the darker areasĀ and add more contrast to the brighter areas. But, side-by-side, the read HDR will win for a photo that pops.

ProHDR is a app that I use a lot when the need arrises. It can either take the bright/dark images on it’s own or I can manually override the shutter. The app is another universal app so it works on your iPhone and iPad2 (needs a camera of course). And, it works in landscape or portrait views.

New in the update today is effect you can add within ProHDR to your HDR photos. No need to snap a shot and go to anther iPhone app to add an enhancement. Now, you can crop, add a filter, add a frame and add text, then save to your iPhone’s photo library.

Paper photos to an online family tree using your iPhone

A family tree site is offering a free app to get your images from paper to digital. The idea is that you take a picture of the printed picture using your iPhone. The 1000memories app then lets you align the image on the iPhone so it is straight and clean. You can add text to the image as well as keywords, then upload to the online family album. So far, I have yet to see where they are charging for the iPhone app or the online service. Maybe bigger accounts of shared accounts carry an upgrade charge. I have yet to see that though.

Photo apps that play games

I don’t mean the headline of this post as a good thing. I’m not saying that this is a iPhone photo app that is for playing games. I’m pointing out that you need to look over photo apps before you buy. The below screen shot is of several apps that are for editing photos taken with your iPhone, all listed as different apps by different developers. Yet, if you take the time to look at them, you will see a common feature set. They all have a image of a back of a camera body with a spot to see what your taking the picture of. Each has a different camera but the differences stop there. All with a very limited list of features leading off with many filters. They don’t know how many filters they put in their program?

Just take a minute to look at an app before buying, many are very limited and usually cost the same or more of the real powerhouse editing apps.

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