iPhone camera apps

IPhone Camera Sample Image

/ Photography, Technology / , ,

River Ness – iPhone 4 photo cropped but no other processing. I used the Camera+ app (here) rater than the built in camera. The Camera+ offers lots of features but one of the best is the way it holds the images on the “Lightbox” and from there you choose to save or delete them – it is a good way of getting rid of the rubbish shots before committing them to the iPhone Camera Roll.

However the quality of this image is not as good as I would have hoped for (I did check out online examples of iPhone 4 photos before buting the phone) – so I will try the built in camera for the next shots.

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Smartphones

/ General, Technology / ,

I got my iPhone 4 just before Christmas – and it was not an easy purchase. I had set up many iPhones both 3s and 4s and iPads and really liked the interface and the hardware but the thing in the back of my mind is that you never own the iPhne it always belongs to Apple and it will work how they want it to work. I am an extreme user of PDAs and have been for many years using them in preference to laptops in my job and personally as first, ebook readers and later as videos and audio players and most recently as my camera and hill walking navigation device. Would the iPhone do all these things for me.

Now audio is not an issue – unlike many I have always thought iTunes was a reasonable product and have used it successfully with my iPod Nano. It manages the podcasts and I have it set to manually manage music allowing me to load audio books and drama into the Nano as playlists. I now use the automatic setting for managing music to the iPhone and create playlists in iTunes which I then select for syncing.

A trip to a friend who already owned an iPhone 3GS and an iPad answered several more questions. The word processor and spreadsheets could be handled by Documents ToGo – a program I was familiar with from previous Palm PDAs. My company uses DropBox extensively and I was very pleased to find Documents ToGo and DropBox so closely integrated.

That left Memory-Map. I have a large investment in maps both 25k and 50k which work on my PC and on my Windows Smartphone – would they work on an iPhone. To test this I bought a copy of Memory-map and tried loading my maps onto his iPad – and they worked.

Ebooks were next – I have a huge collection of ebooks and text files – I could use ereader again but I have become fed up with not being able to purchase the books I want from their web site because I live in the UK. A search on the Internet, and I discovered Calibre and Stanza.

So I was ready to go ahead and buy and iPhone. Within hours of getting it I had my business critical Contacts and Calendar synced and the iPhone linked to DropBox.

I spent some of my Christmas holiday getting to grips with more of the software. I am now on holiday in Scotland and the Lakes so I will have plenty of time to test the iPhone out.

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New PDA – Phone – GPS – Camera…

/ General /

In a previous post I discussed the tech stuff I carry when walking or just for work – and especially the number of devices and chargers I have to pack. Well just before Christmas I got an HTC Touch Pro – and it was great to have only one device in my pocket – which does everything.

I got the extended battery pack, which is essential if you use it as much as I do and want to get a full days use from it, the supplied slim 800mAh battery is just not good enough. I also added a 16GB memory card.

Great Points

  • Excellent camera, which includes a flash light, exposure compensation and auto-fucus.
  • The ability to photograph documents and even business cards – very useful for me as I am always losing bits of paper when I am at work, and as a Director in BNI I get dozens of business cards each week.
  • The keyboard is very useable – and illuminated
  • Exceptional screen – it is small, but sharp and very easy to read. I can easily use the Memory-Map navigation software on it, edit word documents using TextMaker and read books.
  • The supplied RSS Hub application is very good – downloading content in the background when there is  data connection – and even able to download on request podcasts – which can then be played from the application or saved to the storage card.

I hve always thought that the Windows media player, supplied with Windows mobile devices, lacks flexibility. On previous PDAs I have used the free TCPMP player – but that does ot work in WM6.1, so I bought a copy of its commercial replacement Core media player.

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Something to Read on Holiday

/ General / , , ,

Bought an excellent book to read whilst on holiday – The Digital SLR Handbook by Michael Freeman.

I have a number of photo books by Michael Freeman that I used extensively when I was working in, and teaching photography. He writes really informative books on photography so when I decided I wanted something about digital photography he was the only choice for me.

Now for lots of good reasons I do not have a digital SLR but use a Canon Powershot S2 IS – an excellent bridge camera, quick to use, flexible, creative and light to carry when walking. Many things in the book were not applicable but it covered the things I want to get to grips with really well. Top of the list was histograms and exposure – and I have been working on that and have seen an improvement in the exposures. I also want to start to use Photoshop on my images and he has some good things to say about that.

The final thing I got from the book (so far as I have not read it all yet) is that my next camera is likely to be a Canon G9 so I can shoot in RAW. So out goes the idea of a Nikon P60 as a lightweight walking camera (lost interest in that when I found out it does not have live view of the exposure) and in comes the G3 – the only thing holding me back on that is that it uses battery packs not AA cells. Well I am not going to buy it tomorrow so by Christmas there may be something else on the market that does what I want in a compact digital format,

  • Compact size
  • Viewfinder (absolutely essential)
  • SD cards
  • AA cell power
  • Short zoom 5x optical at least
  • RAW and jpeg (now)
  • Image stabilisation
  • Live view
  • Manual exposure
  • Some useful modes – snow and foliage are two I use on my S2 all the time
  • Hot shoe (well it is a low priority)

Well it is “my” wish list.

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Photos at last – Coast to Coast Walk

/ Photography, Technology, Walking / , , ,

I finally got around to sorting out my photographs I took whilst walking from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire. See our blog here http://www.octagontech.com/category/coast-to-coast/. I didn’t carry my Canon Powershot S2 IS with me every day – I heeded the warning we were given on Day 2 when we were soaked through walking from and the camera case had let water through and although the camera was damp it suffered no damage after carefully drying it. On bad weather days I used the perfectly functional camera on my Blackberry Curve for snapping the journey. However if you carry your camera with you in the bad weather see what happens here http://www.rkwinternet.com/category/coast-to-coast-walk/ – however the insurancecovered the loss and Richard now has a new camera. Richard has also posted an epilogue to the walk – I have also written about the experience and plan to post it in sections whilst I am away on my next holiday, when I have time to proof read the entries.

Here is a picture of my new boots in the sea at St Bees – taken on my Blackberry – http://www.flickr.com/photos/clivecphotos/2586254243/. As a camera phone this is the first one I have been satisfied with.

For Coast to Coast photos look here at my Flickr set

For more photos www.clivecatton.co.uk

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