Posts Tagged ‘Iphone’
iPhone 4
Earlier I wrote a post on going from capturing audiovisual content to publishing it on the internet all in one device, the iPhone 3Gs. Relatively low resolution video can be captured on the iPhone and the camera app allows for some rudimentary editing. The true power of the iPhone comes through the app store and the multitude of 3rd party editing apps you can download from there. It’s doable, with pretty good end results, but the max resolution is still only 640X480 pixels.
With the iPhone 4, Apple just one upped itself. Same size sensor, more pixels, better low light capability….and here’s the kicker…. the ability to shoot 720p HD video! The real strength comes from being able to edit that same 720p video on the phone itself, and sharing it out to the internet. This is big. Very big.
Think citizen journalism, think seeing the news before it’s broadcast on national media networks, think sharing your experiences and doing all of this in HD.
Then think of the increase in traffic on video sharing sites and the increase in data trafic that phone networks will have to to accomodate the sharing of all of this content. There’s no doubt that iPhone owners are a very active bunch when it comes to harnessing the power of the internet through their devices and there’s no doubt that the network providers will feel the burn.
Either way this is a very large step in the right direction. Not because of the technology or the features but because of the usability of the software and the always on internet connection. Many other devices capture 720p HD video, very few offer a relatively full featured editing and sharing package to boot.
Capture to web on the iPhone
Numbers are good, and numbers are part of what makes a camera great. The other part is how often you’re gonna be using it, because what good is a camera that sits at home gathering dust? This is just another segway into a rant about how great the iPhone is as a tool for photography and sharing images and video.
The images for this video were shot using the iPhone 3Gs. The photo apps used are PRO Hdr, Photogene, Ps Mobile and The Best Camera. The slideshow video was put together using ReelDirector. In other words this entire video from capture to web was created by a tiny pocket device most of us carry with us without even realizing its true potential.
ReelDirector will only do 640×480 output, so i’ll be posting the full-res images in the Iphone Art section.
For those of you interested the video was shot at Romme Alpin, a few kilometers away from Borlänge in Sweden.
The iPhone as a creative tool
My recent infatuation with the iPhone lives on. Recently i’ve been rethinking my approach to photography and digging deeper at the roots of the passion i have for it. Part of it is the gear, i’m obsessed with and addicted to anything shiny and new. The other part is the feeling i get when i see an image that moves me.
I’ve never really complained much about carrying a large photo bag all day in fact i like the look and feel of a heavy camera body. But gear isn’t everything. The iPhone is by no means a replacement for my camera gear. However it provides a great way to be creative on the go without having to lug my photo backpack with me. It also limits me, in terms of flash and the lenses i can use. I find this simplicity quite relaxing and inspiring and it makes me look for other ways to make an image great. Angles, composition and mood become more important and the lack of zoom or flash although technically a restriction does not stifle  creativity. This is generally true for any type of photographic gear. It’s also a pretty good tool for macro photography, and that’s something i haven’t done much of using dslrs.
What i mean to say is that a great picture doesn’t necessarily need to come form a dslr, it can come from pretty much anything. The more portable that camera is the more you’re gonna shoot with it. Chances of getting a “once in a lifetime” shot increase because you have a camera on you at all times. The most inspiring images almost always tend to be the ones that capture the energy of the moment, and that’s hard to do if you’re gonna need time to set up a shot.
The editing apps are getting more and more powerful too. The apps i own right now can pretty much do everything i need but image compositing and multiple exposure HDR, and i’m pretty sure that that will be coming out in one way or another. Panorama stitching works flawlessly with AutoStitch. While a lot of camera phones can stitch images, this app allows you to take a matrix of images in any order and much like PS it’ll figure out what goes where and blend it together. Photogene, Photo fx and Best Camera are the apps i use for color correction/enhancements and the results are pretty great there as well. Although ColorSplash has masking capabilities i really miss this in all the other editing apps, it would be great if before applying a filter you could just paint a mask over the area the filter is to be applied to. And time-lapse, yeah there’s an app for that too. It doesn’t put the images together into movies but it’s pretty versatile with how many images and at what intervals it can shoot.
All this lead to me starting a new page titled “iPhone art” where i’ll post shots i take and edit on the iPhone. Check it out, see what you think, and be inspired to play.
Getting white balance right
There is an abundance of 18% gray gadgets to help you get your white balance spot on. The most common is a graycard, a simple 18% gray plastic card that comes in different sizes. I’ve also come across 18% gray lens cloths and and this nifty little Expodisc which looks like a filter and according to the manufacturers “simulates a perfectly-balanced gray card in almost any situation”.
Getting the white balance right can make a world of difference in a lot of cases. Most of these involve  shooting jpg, or when balancing the light temperature when working with different types of light, say strobes and static studio lights. Correct white balance straight out of the camera can streamline your workflow but it’ll provide nothing that you can’t do with your images in post. Shooting raw eliminates the problem of messing up an entire shoot because of bad white balance  and given the low price of storage these days there is really no reason why anyone serious about photography would shoot jpg unless it’s for the sheer speed of having ready images right out the camera, say news or sports shooters who dump their cards to the newsroom’s server straight after the game.
An Ipod touch or Iphone is a pretty handy thing to have because you can store your entire portfolio on it and display it to  potential customers.  It’s even more useful with the slew of photography related apps available. GrayCard by Pixelexip,  does exactly  what the name says. It allows for temperature compensation as well as providing a very intuitive GUI to work with. At 7 SEK/$0.99,  it won’t break the bank either.
Here are the screengrabs:
