Now for something completely different, a Polaroid Film

Every day, my iPhone comes out of my pocket for a minimum of a dozen photos. Generally, many dozen images, are captured and played with with enhancement apps. The modern smartphone allows a person to take a lot of photos with near zero expense. By taking a lot of snaps of things all around, a person can learn how to judge what they see vs what will result in a photo taken. Not quite like taking photos with film. Film is pay-to-use, the roll has to be purchased, developed and printed. Which means developing photo techniques take a while. Polaroid offered a lot less of a lag between shooting and seeing a resulting image. Though, the cost of each of the instant gratification photos is considerably more.

I have mentioned before that I shoot with just about everything, all types of film in cameras across many years, for fun and profit. Last weekend was 620 and 127 films though cameras older than my dad. This weekend was a Polaroid 320 and Spectra.

Today I had a fun find, a full length movie about the last year of Polaroid. From the preview, it appears to cover the factory closure, photographers and the gent (team) that took over the equipment to produce The Impossible Project instant film. Time Zero is doing the festival rounds, with your own copy available for pre-order through iTunes. I’ll toss up a review when the movie shows up for viewing.
time zero polaroid

Creating multi exposure images through global not-so-anonymous collaboration

The first thing that comes to mind is “you have to kiss a lot of frogs…”

When I heard about Dubble, I was reminded of Rando. Here was a service to upload photos into a hidden network of other iPhone photographers and get something back. After a bit of quick uploads, I was happy to find that mixed with the randomness of who your image will cross paths with is not completely anonymous.

Dubble ‘me’ is a automated free service which takes a image you upload and adds it to a random ‘other uploaded’ photo to create a double exposure photograph. After you create an account, uploading images is either from social networks, your iPhone’s camera roll or taken new within the app. There are no filters or special effects features, if your image needs this, do it before you add it to your Dubble feed.

A short time after you upload a photo, a double exposure using that photo and a random someone else’s photo is returned to your copy of the Dubble app. The app lets you keep photos you have uploaded and the double exposures returned using those photos.

Below the double exposure is the name of the person that had uploaded the other half of the new image. You can click on their name to view their bio and their other double exposures.

Since the final result is a random mix of two photos, a result you may call ‘quality’ is one is… a big number. Swiping a double exposure does give you the power to resubmit the photos for another pairing. Keeping in mind that Dubble is all about fun, you could re-submit a photo quite a few times till you hit on something inspirational. Life.dubble.me is a site covering a few of those winning match ups.

Actually, when swiping across a double exposure image, there are a few options to choose from: share the double exposure with others through social media sites, download the image, re-submit your original image for another double exposure (the one already created doesn’t disappear), trash the double exposure and report an images as inappropriate. Deleting, or trashing an image, only removes if from your device. Once an image is submitted, it can not be removed from the service.

Since uploaded photos can be absolutely anything, tuning your snapshots to make a possible positive outcome better isn’t a science. I tried a big background like shot, a photo of a little item in the corner of the image, etc… then I remembered that this is for fun so I went back to just seeing what will come of a snap shot joining with someone else’s. Since Dubble allows the view of drilling through to another person’s account that submitted a photo matched with mine, it is possible to see a lot more Dubble created double exposures rather than being locked to just my single line feed. Which makes the whole adventure more of a pleasant social experience than just upload and shake to see what drops out.

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Moving from Printstagram to Print Studio to print a wider variety of shape photos

There is no shortage of apps that provide a service to print your Instagram photos. Then, the other extreme, solutions that will print photos on paper, mugs, tshirts, mouse pads and more. The developers of Printstagram, a Instagram only solution, has released a solution for printing a wider variety of photo shapes and sizes.
Printing your photos to paper and mailing for you is all that the iPhone app Print Studio does. Several sized squares, rectangles, cards and wall art. An item that stood out to me was the claim that submitted orders would be processed right away. In the world of instant gratification, I’m surprised by many of the available solutions take over a week before they print/mail orders. I’ll let you know how my first order arrives.

01 Print Studio iPhone

02 Print Studio iPhone
03 Print Studio iPhone
04 Print Studio iPhonePricing seems competitive, watch out for little extras that can count up. The Print Studio service looks much more like the old days of a roll of film being printed and mail the whole roll of shots back or to a friend. Where some other solutions are more bias towards printing just a couple photos to be mailed, a nice ‘thinking of you’ solution.
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Photos are picked from the iPhone’s different photo libraries, or right off of a Instagram account. Then, each can be cropped and quantities can be adjusted. There are no filters or ‘enhancement’ options, Print Studio is for printing your already prepped photos, quickly. Of course, you have to tell Print Studio where to mail the photos and finally pay.
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07 Print Studio iPhone

Mixing slow motion and regular speed videos into one movie

It all started with a simple single piece plastic wrap around iPhone stand. The stand was available through Kickstarter, making it easy to mount the iPhone to a tripod for those low light or self shots. The mount, The Glif, was created by Studio Neat. Since then, the team has introduced updates to the month, an big hands stylus, and even square ice cubes. Finally, iOS software.

The first app was a stop motion photography app, Frameographer. Today, I received an email to enable more creative movie creation on the iPhone. Slow Fast Slow starts off by recording video at 120 fps on the 5s, and 60 fps on the rest of the newer iOS devices. Playback can be slowed down to 1/8 speed, which is twice as slow as the 5s built in slo-mo.

Well, I know I personally have played with other slow motion apps, so that just slowing down my video isn’t that ‘new’. But, further investigation explains the name, Slow Fast Slow. Which references the apps unique power to have full control of every part of a video’s speed across any portion. When viewing a video (forward or backward), any part of the video can be slowed down a little or a lot. Imagine a video of a car zooming by, normally you have either a car streak by or take forever to get to the closest view in slow motion. Now, just choose the part when the car is closest and show down at an increasing rate till you can see the driver and car details, then speed up to zoom off.

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As an added bonus in Slow Fast Slow, the audio of the slowed down portion of the video doesn’t get highly destroyed like found in normal slow motion movies. There is Pitch control to level out the fast and slow bits of the video.

Everything iPhone 5S Camera In One Spot

Over the weeks following the release of the iPhone 5s, there has been a variety of photographers posting their thoughts on the device’s updated camera. For me, the most notable is the speed everything photography related happens with the new chips and iOS7.

Of course, there is way more to the upgrades in the area of photography via the iPhone 5s. Rather than repeat the pros and cons posted by others, here is a list of articles you may find enlightening.

One of the first, longest and most detailed was TechCrunch’s, A Photographer’s Take On The iPhone 5S Camera. The article is broken into ‘Sensor’, What the A7 does for you, True Tone Flash (a lot of smarts in the technology), Auto Image Stabilization, SLO-MO, and wrapping up with “The differences, then, come largely in how Apple’s ISP hardware and its front-end software mesh to make life easier for photographers.

A nice real life experience for an iPhone photographer is a post on National Geographic by Jim Richardson Capturing the Aura of the Scottish Highlands With the iPhone 5sLeaving his trusty Nikon behind, Jim Richardson returns to a favorite spot to photograph, the Scottish Highlands, with a brave new tool—the iPhone 5S.

Connect Digital Photography Review did a very large 11 page review. Every feature and enhancement for the 5S camera is covered. There are a lot of comparison shots included to drive home the differences between earlier and other brand smartphone cameras.

Geek.com did a quick article covering the iPhone 5S photography results verses other popular phone options (HTC, Lumia and Moto X). The shot examples are at enough of a different angle between the smartphones used that the auto exposure feature on all of the devices could effect the result. But, the examples do show how the manufactures used their own unique solutions to the needs of photographers.

iPhone 5s and Sport Photography – a short post but very nice for anyone photographing moving objects like athletes.

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Fotor HDR is starting to see more action for iPhone HDR Photography

As promised, an update on the Fotor HDR post I did earlier (Fotor HDR wants to replace… ).

The first pass at anything new is usually, ‘how does it stack up against what I already use’. Which can be good if your current solution is your only path. In my case, I have always experimented with different types of photography. This means I have to continue to use a technique even if I wash it out initially since it may open my eyes to new things.

While Fotor HDR matched up pretty well to my current add-on HDR app selections, it needed to find it’s specialty to start to shine. Over the last week+, I have used it for quick snap shots, occasionally adding one of the built in filters, but trying not to edit outside of the app. Two areas I have found Fotor HDR really kicks things up a notch is in the area of Nature Photography and Black and White. With that in mind, the app was moved up the list in my sort order of camera apps to grab. Having the right apps to choose from to reflect the mood of the moment is the beauty of digital photography. It keeps a level of fun in the fine tuning of shooting without having to carry a big bag of lenses around like I did for years for film.

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02 Fotor HDR iPhone

Copy iPhone Photographs To Actual Polaroid Prints

In the 60s and 70s, as Instant film photography got more and more popular, people started noticing the lack of film negatives. Without a negative, the image shot and instantly printed to Polaroid framed paper meant that was the only recording of the image. It wasn’t possible to run down to the photography store and have another couple copies made for friends and family. Unlike today’s digital images, the one print was all you got.

Polaroid heard the noise and produced a couple models of the Polaroid Print Copier. Models 230 and 240. These where boxes a bit bigger than a shoe box with a dial, buttons, a lens, light and a power plug. Most folks that work with me in the Instant Photography world and stumble upon the Print Copier come to me to find out what type of film they need to buy. Actually, the hardware didn’t need film. A person placed their photograph inside of the device, close the door (with a lens in it), then attached their Polaroid camera to shoot through the lens. A light inside illuminated the original print, with a few tries a person could get the setting right. Basically, it was a clean environment to take a picture of a picture. It did what people wanted though as it enabled a single Polaroid print to become multiple prints.

Polaroid print copier

When a person thinks about that history, The Impossible Project’s Instant Lab doesn’t seem as strange. Of course, the company sells newly manufactured Polaroid style film so they would like us to jump on board and convert out iPhone images to Polaroid. For a person looking for the real effect of a older style photography without carrying an Instant (not exactly pocket cameras!) this is a nice solution.

With the free app installed on the iPhone, images are shown on the screen that are taken and printed via the lower Instant film camera. Producing a new impression of what analog photography was without the need for filters and ‘fake’ framed prints. While the $299 US price tag may slow many people a bit, the fun of producing a whole different view of their iPhone photos will hit home with the fan as a must have.

Impossible Project Black Lab

The Impossible Project iPhone app also allows the sharing and viewing of Instant Print images through their social network.

Note: The original Polaroid Print Copier produced the original style small border framed prints while the new Impossible Project product produces the print with the larger white lower area more recognized as a ‘Polaroid’ trademark.

Fotor HDR Wants To Replace Pro HDR On My iPhone

Today I saw some chatter on the Internet about Fotor HDR. I’m a fan of well done HDR so I’m always game to see what a new HDR iPhone option has to offer. A bit of reading gave me an answer I didn’t want to see, the app uses two photos to merge.  The HDR process outside of smartphones is done by bracketing three photos, not just two. With two photos being used, the impact of the final image is up to the creativity of the app developers.
Fotor HDR starts with the option to have a grid overlay on the viewfinder to make sure photos taken individually are aligned. The app offers two shutter options. One takes photos, one after another and saved to the app’s photo folder, without stopping so nothing is missed. Or, a single shot mode that snaps two photos to merge into a single.
Take the time to visit the Settings area, there is a nice anti blur/anti ghosting switch which will help avoid the white ghost outline around objects when photos are merged by the app.
01 fotor hdr iphone
After the photos are merged, a finger swipe up/down reveals the areas of photo tuning built into Fotor HDR. Along the bottom of the screen is a row of full image filters.
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Pro HDR does offer the ability to tap the screen to set the initial photo’s bright/contract spot. While Fotor HDR has a bullseye to slide around to set while Pro HDR doesn’t have an indicator of the spot chosen, just where you tap with your finger. Which can be tricky when the point being chosen is a small spot. After the photo is captures, a single page gives access to sliders to tune the overall image.
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Filters are available in Pro HDR also, just a different user interface. Both solutions have a nice variety of creative named filters, neither really offer what a photographer would find as HDR adjustments on desktop photo solutions.
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Here is the result of a snap taken with Foto HDR without any filters or tuning adjustments applied.
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And… a shot done with Pro HDR, again without filters or tuning done. I attempted to get as close a shot as the previous. If one is taken higher than the other, the app will see the brightness of the notebook’s screen and cause the result to be different so not a apple vs apple.
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I resized the two resulting photos above to fit on the page. Actual highest resolution out of the apps is:
Foto HDR  1916 x 2555
Pro HDR   2422 x 3232

World Wide Garage Sale Shopping On The iPhone – No Travel Required With Stuffle

Driving down the road you see the cardboard hand written sign announcing someone’s garage has stuff in it that they want to sell. You stop to find picnic and fold up tables in a driveway, covered with a mix of household items. There will be a bar or rope strung across an opening with hanging cloths as well as a small pile of a child’s toys with a child looking on. There is no logical reasoning to the order things are on the tables but depending on what a person is looking for, a ‘must have’ item is hidden amongst a lot of worn out other previously loved items.

This is how Stuffle sees the world of people’s stuff for sale. There is no grouping or tags to narrow a search, it’s just a long table of a mixed group of items other users have for sale. Photos taken with an iPhone, then shared to the world’s garage sale table.

01 Stuffle iPhone

Getting started is quick and easy. Snap a photo, put a description and price on it and wait for someone looking for what you have to stumble on it. No need to worry about little sticky price tags falling off or rain to dampen the forecasted sunny weekend. Stuffle sells 24/7 with little action on your part. Of course, you will have to ship the item you sold, which is a little harder than carrying it out to the end of the driveway to someone’s car for them. The only negative so far using Stuffle for me is the lack of items for sale in the United States. Every item I have looked at so far has been in another language. I will have to see how someone reacts to my buying their discarded lamp in Germany. Fun to look at the scrolling table of things though without the pressure of the homeowner’s anxious selling eyes.

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iPhone Photography App Update: Camera+ for the Win!

So, your favorite app, how did it handle the move to iOS7? Did the developers do a new UI to look more like the new flat OS? Where any features added? Did they release a new version you had to buy, just like the old version, but will be the only copy of the software continued to be supported?

If you use Camera+ and follow the team’s updates notes, there is always a bit of fun humor. The update released today had bug fixes, new features, enhancements to the UX and poked fun at a title that took advantage of their customers by charging again for the same app.

Camera+ for me is an app that keeps getting used. I have a nice selection of apps to do light to extensive photograph enhancements. Camera+ is usually my first app to hit since it is best at adding just a little more to a photo without going over the top. Basically, it’s the app that helps enhance the photo’s story. There are a couple additional filter packs that can be in-app purchased, but they aren’t required for continuing to use the app on a new iPhone/iPad and new iOS.

Below I have inserted a brief Camera+ UX history via screen shots. The first is the Pre-iOS7, then iOS7 slightly flattened and improved buttons, and finally today’s update with nicer example thumbnails and text overlay. Simple, yes. That is all that is needed.

One fun area of enhancements in Camera+ 4.2 is the addition of the filters that Apple now includes with their camera app. Also, higher resolution Burst Mode snaps. No extra charge!

01 camera plus iPhone

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Oh yea… here is the text from the update. Guess who Camera+ is poking fun at for their iOS7 upgrade path.

So the previous version of Camera+ had a little bug where burst-mode shooting would crash. We fixed that.

We almost stopped there and just called it version 4.0.3, but then figured that it’d be the perfect time to boost burst-mode snaps to full-resolution on devices that could handle it (like the iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, and the unapologetically poorly-selling iPhone 5c).

That was enough to justify calling it version 4.1. And then we thought about jumping on the bandwagon where we put Camera+ out as a whole new app and let existing customers pay for it all over again. And of course there’d be the ensuing sh__storm where those customers felt cheated and we’d have to backpedal and reverse that shortsighted decision.

So it was Clear that that would’ve been a knuckleheaded move, so instead we decided to treat our lovely customers fairly and make Camera+ 4.1 a free update as we’ve always done. But then we felt like it was all give and no take… so to make us feel better about giving-in too easily, we chose to call it version 4.2. That’ll teach you to mess with us.

Then we felt bad about jumping ahead two version numbers and giving you little for your troubles. So we added a new effects pack that includes all the filters that Apple’s standard Camera and Photo apps include (for users on iOS 7). Two hours of coding (and eight trivial Core Image filters later), the Standard Effects Pack was born.