Category Archives: iPhone

New Mobile Photo Blog

Posted on by

20110729-080447.jpg

I have another blog. Because I don’t have enough places to post material already. Well, that’s not quite true. I now have a tumblr blog, but it’s about trying to get focus. I want one place to put my mobile shots. They were getting spread out. Hipstamatic, Instamatic, BestCam, twitter, google+, or stuck on my phone. They will now go here.

Part two of the reasoning is the inspiration from Sabrina Henry and her new mini-me photo blog. I am going to make another renewed effort to look for and take photographs daily. We get so busy, it’s easy to forget to shoot. More importantly, for me anyway, I forget to look. Training yourself to look, and see things that others pass by is part of the challenge and the fun of photography. I need to keep at it. The new tumblr blog is part of that effort.

Buy, upload, read CraftAndVision on iOS

Posted on by

Ever been out with an iPhone or iPad and Craft&Vision has released a new ebook that just have to read right now, but you are not at a computer? Well, there is a way to download directly to your device. It is possible that the concept if not the exact method would work on an android. I don’t know the software on that platform.

20110727-011052.jpg

The first thing you need to do is purchase an ebook. The site as it is currently is quite navigable by a mobile device. It isn’t optimized for mobile, but with a little pinching and moving around it is possible to follow the checkout process through e-junkie and PayPal and buy an ebook. This part of our exercise you could do from another computer somewhere if you have access. Just erase cookies when you are done if it’s a public machine.

Email from Craft and Vision

Once you have made your purchase, you will get an email from Craft and Vision. Check for it on your mobile device email client. Click the e-junkie link.

This takes you to a page on fat free cart’s site. This is where the PDF is stored, and the link on this page contains the unique code that allows you to download the PDF. Now don’t worry. You get s very generous 9 attempts, so you can re-download at home if you want.

20110727-015059.jpg

Press and hold for a second the “Click Here” link. This will bring up an option to copy the link. Press that button. Safari won’t let you save the PDF if you were to just open it. We need another program.

My favorite PDF tool is GoodReader. Navigate back to the main screen shown here if you had a doc open. There is an option for “Web Downloads”. Press that.

In the next screen press the “Enter URL” link.

20110727-105107.jpg

 

In the screen that pops up, tap and hold a second to get the iOS popup that let’s you paste in the URL you copied.

GoodReader will download it to your device and you can read it right away! Enjoy your PDF’s on your iOS device without your computer.

PS. This post’s images were taken on an iPhone4. Parts blurred using filterstorm, and uploaded and the post started using the wordpress app. I finished it by moving the images into place in the regular wordpress interface.

How to set up Hipstamatic

Posted on by

I’ve been snapping away with my iPhone lately. The app I have been using the most is Hipstamatic. I started with a few issues that bugged me, so I wanted to tell you how I set it up. This is not how everyone needs to set their camera up, just what works for me.

Resolution: this was disappointing. I shot a ton of images that I was going to put in a small book. They were all at the default resolution of 600px. Nuts. Too small to print. It took a long time to figure out that you set the resolution via a sliding switch on the side of the lens. You need to turn the camera around and slide the lever to the left of the lens up. You now have full resolution.

Push the lever on the left up

Composition: this drove me nuts. Some people might like the retro like aspect of not knowing exactly what picture they are taking, but not me. I like to compose carefully. To fix this, you need to be in the Settings app, Hipstamatic section. Here change the Viewfinder Mode from Classic to Precision Framing.

Hipstamatic setting page on the Settings App

Random changing film and lens: Again, maybe I am just not the target retro user of this app, but I don’t want the camera to randomly switch things on me when I shake the phone whether it’s accidental or deliberate. There are two ways to fix this. If you edit your lenses you can pick which lens you want it to pick on shake. Me, I use the sledgehammer approach and turned Shake to Randomize off completely in the settings app.

Set shake to change individually

Metadata: if you want tags and GPS info to make it to your photo sharing sites, you also need to make sure that this is enabled in the settings app. I think this is on by default. You can also set this each time you post. The biggest issue I had to getting this to work on flickr was that I had blocked this feature on the flickr account settings. Go figure.

Now, the reason I started and continue to shoot with this app is one lens and film combo. I saw Josh Bradley using this when he took the portrait that I am using in twitter and Facebook. I downloaded them right away. I use the BlacKeys Ultrachrome B+W film and the Lucifer VI lens. You can get them both in the Portland Hipstapak. It will cost you a couple of dollars via in app purchase. Its the only combo I am using. I know I should be more adventurous.

Anyway, this app is all about fun, so have fun taking pictures.

iPad Ready and bgStretcher2 Update

Posted on by

I took this picture, from my iPod, of an iPad showing off my portfolio. It looks amazing. The images are actually sized perfectly for this device. But there was something weird. All the images in the night album, and the occasional other image won’t show. I get the blue image not found icon. Very weird. I wonder if they are exported with some weird settings. Not sure how that happened.

I was also able to confuse the javascript by pressing on the album and next/previous buttons. I will have to take a look at that. As noted yesterday, it doesn’t work well on the iPhone either. I also checked Kelby’s site again, and it looks great too, just not on the iPhone. I am wondering how that device reports it’s screen size. I might just need to look for that browser and then display presized smaller images.

If you want to get a rough idea of what your site would look like on the iPhone, check out iPad Peek. It doesn’t show the broken images like the iPad did, but it will give you a sense of size and how your content will fit. Just enter your site in the address bar at the top.

Photoshop.com on iPhone

Posted on by

Adobe has released an iPhone app for Photoshop.com, their online editor. There are some cool things that you can do with the app, such as the sketch filter that you see on the left here.

There are also some other filters such as the soft vignette that look neat, but the rainbow filter that modifies all the colors on your image so that it looks like a rainbow is a little odd. I suppose my 5 year old would think it was pretty cool.

Anyway, it looks like a neat app. You can send your images to Photoshop.com, or save them back locally. The app creates a new image at the end of your camera roll, so your original picture is not changed. You can choose to take a picture right from the app too.

It is free, and looks like it is worth playing with a bit. Search the app store for Photoshop.com.

iPhone wont make or take calls

Posted on by

iPhonePicI am starting to get pretty annoyed with my iPhone. It all started after I did the carrier update to get the MMS capabilities. What happens, is that I lose the ability to send and receive calls and messages. I can still get email at least.

My wife tries to call me, and the phone goes right to voice mail. Then she emails me. If I am checking email, then I power down the phone, then power it up again. This works for awhile. If I leave it for a period of time, or charge it (that could be just time) it stops working.

The weirdest is when I try to call out. The phone gives the Calling… screen, but it never makes the call. Weird.

I have tried to reset the phone, by wiping it out from iTunes, and doing a reinstall. That didn’t seem to help.

This is not an isolated incident. I know two other people that have had the same problems. The fix? Get a new phone. I guess I need to make an appointment with the “Geniuses”.

UPDATE (10/08/09 9:00PM): I am installing the 3.1.2 iPhone update, and a “new carrier update”. That makes me nervous. We’ll see what happens.

I have my Camera Manual on my hip.

Posted on by
d90

D90 Manual

I am now using the iPhone app Good Reader. Scott Kelby had posted about this in September, but I hadn’t got around to looking at it until now. This app is a great way to view and manage pdf files. It was really easy to get the pdf files onto my iPhone. You can point to a web url, and it will download as I did with one of the files, or you can set up a file server with one button press on the phone. This is really easy. All you have to do on your computer is connect to the displayed IP address in the finder with the Go/Connect to server… menu option. I then dragged the other items to the finder window, and they transfered over. Very simple. It works well. This is what I have on my iPhone so far.

  1. My Nikon D90 camera manual
  2. My SB-800 camera manual
  3. My SB-900 camera manual
  4. 10 By David duChemin (eBook)
  5. 10 More by David duChemin (eBook)
  6. DLWS participant packet

It works pretty well. You can easily read, zoom, change pages, even navigate directly to a page. I like it. I haven’t used the manuals yet, but I like the idea of having them sitting on my hip within reach.

The Best Camera

Posted on by

iphoneThe Best Camera is the one you have with you. This is something that Chase Jarvis has been saying for awhile now, as he has been churning out hundreds of pictures from his iPhone. Some of them have pretty cool effects applied to them, and I have often wondered how¬† he got those done “in camera”. I figured he must be bringing them into Photoshop or something like that.

Nope. Maybe at first, but not any more. He has a new site¬†for sharing, and a new¬†application for the iPhone out. Here is the post where he shared it a few days ago. I just got to installing it yesterday. The picture at the top was my first shot. Goes to prove that a few new filters still doesn’t equal an unsuck filter for a crappy photograph. It kinda looks like a mouse on a golf course green, covering a¬†¬†hole…. right…. sort of? It’s actually a mouse pad. I wasn’t very creative last night.

The app is pretty cool. It has several filters that work well, and the ability to share right from that app with flickr, facebook, or the bestcamera site. I wish it had a sharpen filter, and a way to trigger the picture when the device is steadier. I find most of my images on this phone blurry. But, it is worth checking out.

New iPhone 3GS

Posted on by

“S” as in Super phone, or at least “S” as in speed. If you missed the WWDC live, you can check the recaps from the live feeds that Ars Technica and Engadget posted.

The highlights are the speed, and the new hardware bits. I don’t find my iPhone to be too slow; more network bound than anything, but I am sure for the folks playing games that the extra speed will be welcomed.

I think the compass sounds interresting, and the ability of the phone to allow accessories will allow TomTom (they demoed the app) to do turn by turn directions. The biggest hardware piece I think is the new camera. Not the most exciting, but now a 3MPix camera that can autofocus (currently fixed) and do macro, and video. Already I heard someone complaining about only 3MPix. COME ON PEOPLE! How big a sensor do you think is in this thing. More pixels than that just equals more noise!

Anyway, they are also talking longer battery life, all fitting into the same size hardware. The 3G version has dropped to $99, and the new 3GS will be available on June 19 (with the iPhone OS 3.0 available June 17). It will be $199 adn $299 for 16meg and 32 meg versions.

I am continually amazed at the applications that are created for a device such as this. I use apps on my phone (not even games) more than I use the phone capabilities. Build it, and they will come.

They also demoed voice control, but I wasn’t sure if that was a 3GS feature, or a OS 3.0 feature. Either way, voice control over not just dialing, but things like iTunes is pretty cool.

There were lots of cool OS 3.0 features demoed. The google maps service will be empedable into other apps with full pan and zoom, custom annotations, current location and geocoding. The ability for iPhones to talk to each other sounds really cool, but the push notifications are what looks to be a great feature. Not sure how it will effect battery life, but having notification from other apps would be great, although as I add more and more poeple to my twitter friends, I am not sure I want to be notified everytime someone tweets!

Find my phone appears to be only for Mobile Me users, but it allows you to locate a missing phone on a map. You can send it a code to have your phone (even if set to not ring) to make a noise. If you are convinced that your phone is gone, you can even send it a code that will wipe all your data.

I can’t believe it has taken so long to get MMS messages on the iPhone, but they will finally be here. Not on June 17 with the new OS, but sometime this summer when AT&T gets around to getting their support for it. Really? Yikes. I don’t suppose that this or AT&T blowing off tethering support all together is going to set that well in Jobs corner office. That’s right, AT&T has chosen to not implement tethering on it’s network. Shakes head. Sees new carrier in Apples future.

Well, looks like I will be doing a sync and update around June 17, but despite the new camera features, I won’t be in line on the 19th. I don’t want to be stuck in an AT&T contract and find out I can switch carriers 🙂

Update: Looks like Chase Jarvis is getting one for the camera features, but then again, he takes better pictures with his iPhone than I do with my camera… sigh…

Update: Apples guided tour via video: http://www.apple.com/iphone/guidedtour/

iPhone OS 3.0 is coming this summer

Posted on by

iphone1I was just comparing notes with another iPhone user, talking about how we don’t know how we ever did without the thing. I was checking an RSS feed, and sure enough, Ars Technica has a post about the iPhone OS 3.0 that will be out this summer.

This is not a point release. Turn by turn GPS, cut and paste, MMS messages, push notifications, bluetooth connections to other iPhone users, and more API hooks into the default apps for developers to access.

Free upgrade for all iPhoners when it comes out. Sweet. How did I live without this thing?