Category Archives: Taking Pictures

Taking photographs with the iPhone

iPhone Camera Hipstamatic app updated with new Portrait Pak – also Free lens and film

A iPhone camera app Hipstamatic update means it’s time to get out and shoot with new photography effects. The app isn’t a filter post shooting app, everything is set up prior to snapping a photo.

The update to Hipstamatic takes it to version 255. The lens ‘Jane’ and the film Ina’s 1982 are now included to use at no charge. The ‘Recent’ photo area has had a redesign. And, the Hipstamatic app’s photos uploaded directly to FaceBook timeline, Twitter and Instagram can now include location tags.

Completely new for this update is the Portrait SnapPak. The in-app purchased Pak is the normal 99 cents, including a single lens and film: Foxy Lens and Sugar Film. I will get back here with an update to this post after having a few days to text the new Pak against my daily iPhone photography.

Taking Dramatic Black & White Photographs with the iPhone

Along with the iPhone camera, I also shoot with digital cameras and film cameras. While I love being able to do many levels of modifications to my iPhone photos, I enjoy the challenge of shooting with a few Lomo cameras too. The Lomo cameras have a very limited range of adjustments (usually a couple distance settings on the lens) and additionally limited in the quality of the equipment. The lenses are not perfect and even the film advance dials mean it is easy to create double exposures through planning or through forgetfulness. The fun with the cameras are in the area of taking the challenge of what will look good and what won’t when living in the limited world.

This weekend, I was shooting around San Francisco with my nephew. Several times he stated that he was switching his Android photo to take Black & White instead of color. Hmmm… my iPhone camera doesn’t have that setting!

Enter, Dramatic Black & white, an app for the iPhone photographer. When I grabbed the app, I was hoping it was going to force the photo through the iPhone camera be taken in Black & white, but the viewfinder screen shows color. I guess, that is what the real world film camera does too. Once the photo is taken or imported, it goes black & white from there forward.

Dramatic Black & White does offer a few fine tuning options, all around the visual impact of ‘non color’ photographs. Film speed, shutter speed, lens, etc… on a film camera it all causes the finished photo to be completely different. We are about with the app though to get to the same ending, but it is all done with adjustment sliders and filters. While most ‘filter’ apps offer two or three kinds of black & white effect, this app offers three full groups. As well, lighting eclipse and fine tuning of each filter.

I will post up a few screen shots I took of the app as soon as my iPhone Photo Stream picks them up. Meanwhile, here are a few from the developer of Dramatic Black & White:

Lesson for better Depth of Field Photography – works for iPhone too

This is post isn’t about an app for the iPhone, rather a nice video I saw that covers tips for better Depth of Field photography. I have covered a few apps where you can add the effect to a photo on your iPhone after you have taken the photo (eg. AfterFocus). You can still use those apps or use the focus ability of many iPhone camera apps (like ProCamera), there is more involved than just grabbing a photo and blurring out everything but your key object.

The video, Depth of Field by Cristina Mittermeier is about framing an image to tell a story. This can apply to taking the photo with your iPhone perfect when you hit the shutter button or later in your editing. The tips hold true whether your using a digital camera, a film camera or a iPhone. I’m not able to imbed the video here on this page, but you can jump over to Digital Photo Magazine and watch it there. Hope you find it as helpful as I did.

iPhone Photogs, ProCamera is on sale during WWDC

Just a quick shout out that ProCamera for the iPhone is on sale right now. The developers state that it is for the World Wide Developers Conference, which I don’t know if it mean in advance of the Monday kick off or through to the end of the event. So, if you have been thinking about grabbing ProCamera since I last reviewed in, now might be a good time.

Refresher on ProCamera. It is the app that lets you quickly get to fine tuning adjustments during the actual photography step. You can split your focus and exposure key points via a simple draggable square/circle interface. You can quickly jump to an enhanced zoom and anti shake setting so you can get ultra close ups. And, amongst many more camera features, you can zip off a bunch of photos in high speed via the Burst option. When you have the photo taken, ProCamera has a wide variety of fine tuning tools to get the most out of the images prior to saving to the iPhone’s camera role or sharing out through your favorite social sharing services.

Outside of the quick access tools via the camera view, ProCamera offers several screens list of items that you can adjust to get the tools to work the way you want them to. Choose the level of stabilization checking, turn on/off the volume button as a shutter release, adjust what additional data is saved with each photo taken, select framing for videos shot through ProCamera and to use Expert mode or not… just a few in the list to get the iPhone camera working for you rather than you adjusting to it.

As promised, a easy to use Polarizer Filter Lens for the iPhone

If you have done much photography with a full size film camera, you most likely have a polarizer filter to screw onto the end of your lens. It cuts down on reflections on shiny objects so you don’t have the sky reflecting off of cars and you in the picture when photographing a window. A lot of pictures I take with my iPhone involving shiny objects, I want the reflection. But, I have longed for a polarizer filter to place over the iPhone’s lens those times I’m trying to take a picture through a window such as when doing street photography.

I mentioned recently that I found a ‘clip-on’ Fish Eye lens for the iPhone that also came as a twist Polarizer filter lens option. There are a couple full case Polarizer options, but we already covered how that option didn’t meet my needs as I don’t need the lens on all of the time so the case would be on/off all day. Instead, I spent the last couple weeks playing with the Gizmon clip (sold by Four Corner for $25 US) on option, and I can say it works as I had hoped.

The Polarizer filter lens turns freely so you just twist till the reflection goes away. Below is a shot with the lens on (image is the same without the polarizer clipped on) the iPhone but not adjusted to effect the reflection on the Nano’s screen. Notice the dark area in the upper right corner of the image, that shows I didn’t have the lens aligned correctly (just didn’t take a second to pay attention when I took the shot but it is something that should be watched for). The lens opening to go over the iPhone camera (or iPad or most other smartphone cameras) is plenty large to take a picture without any edge distortion.

A quick twist of the Gizmon Clip-On Polarizer lens and the reflection goes away…

Take a picture with your iPhone, add a filter, share on Facebook…. Facebook gets their own camera app

Everyone is talking today about how Facebook bought Instagram and now has a light version of the Instagram app with some filters connected to Facebook. The Facebook folks mentioned back when they were first making the purchase that they were about to release a Free Facebook camera app that had nothing to do with Instagram. I have a tendency to believe them that this new app had no Instagram employee assistance. But, everyone mixes the two to get readers.

So, what is this Facebook Camera app? It is to the Facebook app as the Facebook Messenger app is to the full Facebook app. The Facebook Camera app is for viewing your friends photos, like you can do with the full app. The difference is though that you can do a little tuning of your photos before sharing.

When you launch Facebook Camera, your taken to a scrollable list of photos your friends have posted to Facebook. You can view, comment and like the photos as your scroll through them.

From the main screen of the Facebook Camera app, you can use the camera icon in the upper left corner to take a photo, or choose the row of images to be taken to your iPhone’s photo library. If you pull down the thumbnails, you will see a list of the different libraries you have on your iPhone to choose from. Select one or many photos to upload to Facebook.

Your chosen photos appears in a new enhancement area of Facebook Camera. Buttons across the bottom will; take you back to the overview of photos on your iPhone, Crop, the magic wand brings up filter effects to apply, and the blue button will let you add text then post to Facebook.

When you post your photo, it appears with the text you added in the ‘Me’ area.

Hipstamatic camera for the iPhone, on sale for Holiday weekend 50% off

Fence sitters for the retro camera Hipstamatic app, it’s a pretty good time to jump in. Regular readers know I have covered the app through all of it’s updates and many of it’s film / lens pack additions. Today, the developers announced that they are offering the app for 50% off now through the holiday weekend. All of the basic included lens and films are included, ready for some fun photo shooting while your out and about.

Also, for the holiday weekend is the return of all of the previous packs that have come and gone. Many of the holiday packs appear for a few months then go away. If you didn’t grab the effects, it was no longer possible to buy them. Non of the packs seems to be discounted like the actual Hipstamatic app is this weekend, but it’s nice to have back a few that I had been slow to grab and didn’t in-app purchase. Now, off to mix and match while doing the faire this weekend.

Finally a Fish Eye lens for my iPhone that I can actually use!

Watch out… the tunnel walk ways, bridges, old buildings and dense forests will never been the same. At lease, not the same through the eye of my iPhone camera.

I have gone through fish eye options both software and physical hardware. There is some acceptable software available and that is what I have had to be using. The problem with the Fish Eye lenses I have tested on my iPhone (yes, I bought all of them, ugh!) has presented me with a variety of issues. Mostly the problem is because I have a thin vinyl protective skin on the back of my iPhone. It protects the iPhone glass face and it has a fun design I did that makes my iPhone mine in a crowd of millions of iPhones.

The hardware played with so far has included lenses that attached via a small magnetic ring that stuck to the iPhone… which covered up the flash all of the time. There was the full case version that would have been ‘okish’ if the lens could be removed from the case, instead it was full case on/off. One of my favorite is the Olloclip… very nicely made with three lens options to use… issue being is that it is a precision fit around a bare iPhone with too close of tolerances to allow a fit over the back skin. I actually made a template to use for cutting out the corner of the iPhone skin just so I could use the Olloclip, I’ll post that up shortly for you to use if you have the same challenge.

Enter, the  Gizmon Clip-On Fish Eye. Simple design, why didn’t I think of it?!! The folks at the Four Corner Store Web site offer three versions. The Fish Eye, I’m covering here… The Polarizer, which I will review after I play enough to know it for a review, and the 3 Image Mirage… not my sort of thing.

Each of the Gizmon Clip-On lenses come individually packaged. The lenses are attached to the clip so you will be carrying as many full units as you need with you, not just a clip and lenses. That is fine, the lens/clip is reasonably small enough to toss into any bag. The clip slides easily over the iPhone edge, judging by the extra area in the loop, it should work over the edge of most tighter fitting cases. The pressure ‘finger’ of the clip does rest on the iPhone’s screen but since it is plastic, it doesn’t confuse the screen thinking it’s a finger. The design means that it will work on my iPhone 4s, along with my iPad and my friend’s older iPhone 3Gs too.

The lens is easy on/off. I found that for best alignment of the lens over the camera, rather than looking through the iPhone screen, I flip the iPhone over and look through the lens to encircle the camera. The larger outside diameter of the lens is working well for clearer images than I experienced with other options. I’ll do a head:head between this and the Olloclip and report back. Meanwhile, pretty happy with my purchase for easy of use.

Getting ultra wide shots with the iPhone and DMD Panorama

I’m guilty of it as many people are, thinking of Panorama apps as software to use on the iPhone to get images that go all around… a big circle image. Actually, they are great to get very wide images too, and DMD Panorama on the iPhone makes the process quick and easy.

For a period of time, there was a group of camera from the major makers that used APS (advanced photo system) film cartridges. With these camera, three image formats where possible (from Wikipedia):

– H for “High Definition” (30.2 × 16.7 mm; aspect ratio 16:9; 4×7″ print)
– C for “Classic” (25.1 × 16.7 mm; aspect ratio 3:2; 4×6″ print)
– P for “Panoramic” (30.2 × 9.5 mm; aspect ratio 3:1; 4×11″ print)

The camera and film came available about the time I was building a house that would be the first in the area of many houses. Every couple days, I could snap a shot out a corner window and get a wide image of the houses being built around me. It was much better than taking a bunch of images and trying to keep things in order over time.

For the iPhone, I have covered DMD Panorama before, the need came up for an inlet shot that one or several images wouldn’t do a good job with. The beauty of this particular app is the little Ying/Yang parts that come together as you turn so you know when the automatic shot will be taken. There is no ghost image that you have to line up the edges of the previous/next shot to. Just launch the app, aim the iPhone, click ‘Start’, and turn as a relatively quick speed (I generally slow a bit as the half circles are just coming together), then hit the finish button when you have the whole wide image captured. All done, wide angle image is sent to your iPhone photo library directly from DMD Panorama and you can move onto the next shot. No visit to the film developing shop needed. The image can actually be automatically pushed up to a hosted Web site to share with friends so there is no need to email the big image, just a link.

This is the bay, done automatically with DMD Panorama, which took three shots. The original export show was over 3200 pixels wide.

Reminder of how that ying/yang interface looks and works: Quick and easy panorama photos with the iPhone

Was Google’s graphical update to Google+ for the iPhone enough for you to jump in?

Google has been trying, trying very hard, to get you to jump on board with their Google+ social sharing. A lot of the big names in just about every industry have dipped a toe into the Google+ waters. A quick search will result in names you will know. Digging a bit deeper, you may find very little quantity of posts behind that quality of names.

The biggest change to the iPhone app for Google+ was making the string of posts from folks in your ‘Circles’ more graphical. Gone is the headline text, small icon, and teaser text on a plain white background. Now, the posting person’s name and image appear larger, with the headline or teaser text over the top of the key image of the post. This means that searching visually for text your interested in is more difficult, but swiping through the posts and seeing related images is quicker. It’s a interesting path change from a company that has the simplest of Search starting and listing pages to now a almost completely graphical UI in their mobile social app.

In the update prior to this one, a occasional issue was introduced where uploading photos in a post wasn’t always successful. Photos can also be uploaded to libraries on Google+ that you create. A feature that was introduced between the last and this update was the ability to have photos automatically saved from your iPhone to Google as a cloud storage option. This feature is similar to Apple’s Photo Steam, except with Photo Stream the photos sync back to your desktop while with Google they stay on their storage… a couple gigs are provided at no charge, adding more carries charges.

When viewing your photo libraries on Google through Google+, you can choose a single photo to look at comments others have made (those you chose to share). Swiping a photo takes you to the next in the series.

Photos are grouped by Google+ into areas that are similar to what you would see on other social share services. Multiple photos can be attached a post, which you can make viewable to no one, your friend’s circles or the general ‘public’.