iPhone Diary - Day 7

This is the last day of the iPhone week and I can conclude the following. As a camera the iPhone is probably at the bottom end of all current phones, as a phone is fares even worse, asa music player it suffers from the horrid iTunes and Apple restrictions but as a gadget, internet device, gaming platform and lifestyle device (plan your train/tube/bus jouneys, find restaurants etc.) it is fantastic and the best you can currently get. So overall it is through the great interface but better third party software that this is such a great device. I can fully recommend it if you want a MID but not if you are looking to buy a phone.

I edited today's picture with the free Polarize app.

iPhone Diary - Day 6

Taking pictures with the iphone is fun but the biggest problem is not the slippery surface, the shutter and AF lag and it is also not the pretty poor image quality. The biggest problem for me is to use a camera without EV compensation, I don't need full manual controls most of the time, A or P mode with EV compensation gives me everything I need. Not having it is quite a problem here.
I also gave up updating the blog using the iPhone, it is nice and does work but I can't rename my pictures and due to the lack of a Blogger application it is more hassle to update everything.
Today's picture has been edited on the iPhone using the new 'Lomograph' filter from the PhotoBox application.

iPhone Diary - Day 5

I tried a different processing with this picture to make it look a bit surreal and bosted the saturation.

iPhone Diary - Day 4

Before going out in the evening I already had my picture for the day but then it started raining and I took this picture. I really like it and after processing it slightly to make it look older it looks very good. This to me proves that having a camera with you at all times is the most important thing, no matter what the quality of the camera is.

iPhone Diary - Day 3

Took this picture on my way home, this time it's not edited at all but as it came from the 'camera'.
I have also tried the email posting through Blogger, uploading pictures works great but it does not yet pick up the text.

iPhone Diary - Day 2

I still haven't figured out how to upload photos directly from the iPhone. There is a free app for Wordpress but none for Blogger.
I have edited today's picture with the PhotoBox app on the iPhone, it is not quite as convenient to use as Mill Color but does not resize the images. The post is written and published on the iPhone though.
Other than the Lomo and Holga look and feel, I wanted the picture to look a bit like from the 70s with the same colors.

iPhone Diary - Day 1

I have done it, I have joined the dark side, the evil fruit empire called Apple has managed to lure me into buying one of their (overpriced) products. About a week ago I decided to buy the new iPhone 3GS and so far it is the worst phone I have ever owned and probably ever will own. The battery life is pathetic, the reception is prety poor (mostly thanks to O2 for that), the shape is horrible and it is more slippery than a thin bar of soap and it is ridiculously overpriced thanks to the monopoly Apple has created wth the providers (where are the EU watchdogs if you need them?).
BUT and a big but here, if you are looking for more than a phone this is where the iPhone realy comes into it's own. Apple has tried hard to lock it down as much as possible and has ignored features every manufacturer had in their devices for years now but after 3 years Apple has finally managed to release the best iPhone yet. As bad as it is as a phone it is the best MID (Mobile Internet Device or beter Multimedia & Internet Device) out there at the moment. The interface is great, the apps are plenty and some are extremely usefull or just entertaining. Everything just works great in this respect, especially if you defy Apple and jailbreak it. This is the reason why I bought one and if you are looking for an MID and don't care much about making calls you should seriously consider this as there is not much that comes close.

This should not become a iPhone review however but more the start of an iPhone week. Don't get me wrong, I would not suggest for a minute that the "camera" in any phone is a real camera. Instead I will treat it as a Lomo camera and try to just have fun with it without considering technicalities or the final technical quality.
It seems that recently any self respecting photographer needs to take some pictures with a phone camera ;).

So for this week I will try to use the iPhone as a real MID and take, edit and hopefully post everything from the phone.
Today's post is written on my laptop but the picture has been taken with the iPhone camera and edited using the free Mill Color software on the iPhone.

Snapshot or More?

CX1, f6.6, 1/810, ISO 80, JPG, 66mm

Today's picture is a simple snapshot, something people might take with the CX1. It is nothing special and I did not spend too much thought on it. Now what if you take a boring snapshot and process it, can it become interesting? This was the question I asked myself and decided to find out.
I took this picture while walking by and while it is a pretty boring picture by itself, I have tried to find out if processing it changes that. I wanted to give it a very processed look, almost Lomo like but still different. What do you think of this? Is it a interesting picture or does it remain a boring picture and can (over-)processing an image turn a simple snapshot into something more interesting or will it always be a simple snapshot?
One thing the processing does however is make this picture 3x bigger than the original size. I don't understand why some people say you can only really process RAW files, JPGs can be very flexible and you can push the files a lot.

Tortoise

GRD II, f5.6, 1/70, ISO 80, RAW, 8.4mm

This is another picture from Greenwich Park but with the nice weather at the moment it is too nice not to go here on my way home. This is another "wildlife" picture and I thought of James after I took it ;).

By the Beach

GRD II, f5.6, 1/800, ISO 80, RAW, 8.4mm

Another lunchtime picture, this time from the city "beach". :)
The weather was great and it would have been really nice to be able to go to a real beach but since it was not posible the beach at the Thames had to do the job.

Boy in the Red Tracksuit

GRD II, f4, 1/100, ISO 80, RAW 1:1, 8.4mm

The weather was great today and since I finished early I took a walk through Greenwich Park. With the sun out I am more motvated and using the fish-eye lens pushes me to try out new things and different perspectives. This picture might not be so different from the usual pictures I have but it was the one I liked most from today.

Curious Squirrel

GRD II, f5.6, 1/400, ISO 80, RAW 1:1, 8.4mm

Following on with my 'Fish-eye Week' was a nice walk through Greenwich Park and along the Thames to the O2. The weather was great and there were a lot of people out and about.
Using the fish-eye lens is great fun and leads me to see thigs in a different light. There a few really cool things you can only do with this lens but when I briefly comapred it with the GR lens it is unbelievable how much quality gets lost by using the adapter lens. Then again, it is not about the quality but about the fun and about seeing things different.

Growing Chimney

GRD II, f6.3, 1/270, ISO 80, RAW, 8.4mm

I haven't used my fish-eye lens for quite a while so I thought it could be fun to have a fish-eye or Lomo-style week. I went out for a stroll around the neighbourhood today. This picture I liked and processed it to get this look.
The GRD II is better for this kind of pictures because it has a distance scale for manual focus and also remembers the focus distance even when powered off.