January 24th, 2012 by Allison Gibson Posted in Blog, News
9to5mac is reporting that shortly before he passed away Steve Jobs met with Lytro CEO Ren Ng to discuss cameras, product design, and the ways in which he might apply Lytro’s groundbreaking light field technology into a new generation of iPhone cameras. According to “Inside Apple,” the forthcoming book by Adam Lashinsky, which 9to5mac excerpts in their report, “At Jobs’s request, [Ng] agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple.”
“Jobs actively pursued his goal of reinventing photography, asking the CEO of Lytro to outline three specific things that the company would want to work on with Apple,” reports 9to5mac.
If you’ve forgotten, Lytro is the tiny rectangle camera designed by Ng—a Stanford PhD—that captures “living pictures” that are focused after the fact by capturing an image’s entire light field data in one click. The “living picture” bit means that the image is forever adabtable. Now imagine if this technology were applied to the ubiquitous iPhone camera, which, as 9to5mac points out, is already “mobile photography at its finest.”
Give the circumstances now it’s uncertain whether the Lytro/Apple mashup will ever see the (excuse the pun) “light” of day, but it is a pretty exciting prospect to imagine.
November 17th, 2011 by Allison Gibson Posted in Blog
What, do you imagine, is Annie Leibovitz’s camera of choice these days? No doubt she has a serious arsenal of professional gear, considering she has shot some of the most iconic images in recent American historys, including an iconic photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and a nude and pregnant Demi Moore for the cover of Vanity Fair. Well, in conversation with NBC’s Brian Williams last night, the legendary photographer admitted that she’s a big fan of a camera that you might be surprised to find you already own: the iPhone. She called the iPhone “the snapshot camera of today” and went on to sing the gadget’s praises by referring to its accessibility and multipurpose format. “It’s the wallet with the family pictures in it,” she said.
So, what do you think? We’ve had this conversation before. Is the iPhone your pocket cam of choice or do you still prefer to use a dedicated digital camera? Or maybe, like Annie, the iPhone is just another tool for you to take photos, especially when lugging around a pro DSLR isn’t possible.
November 1st, 2011 by Allison Gibson Posted in Blog, News
The ShoeBox iPhone App allows you to quickly scan, store and share your old, paper photographs—which, according to ShoeBox’s commercial below, are likely gathering dust in a storage closet shoebox at the moment. Because the iPhone 4S features an 8-megapixel camera that takes images at 2448×3264 resolution, “Using Shoebox to scan a typical 4″x6″ photo produces a DPI of 550—the same high quality recommended by scanning experts like ScanCafe,” according to the app’s creators. The app, which is free to download, uses “edge detection and perspective correction [to] make sure that the paper photographs you scan turn out beautifully. After scanning, you can quickly crop, straighten, rotate your photo, as well as record the stories behind the photographs by adding captions, dates, and tags,” according to 1000memories.com—the site where your images will be backed up and preserved through a partnership with the Internet Archive.
You can download ShoeBox for free here, as well as read further about the storage and privacy rights of your archived images.
August 9th, 2011 by Allison Gibson Posted in Blog, News
Instagram, a favorite photo sharing app of the creatively inclined iPhone user, has recently reached the 150,000,000 photo mark. Since its launch in the App Store in October 2010, Instagram has had over 7 million international users join in on the photo sharing fun. Whether they’re sharing their lives with family and friends, or vying for a spot on the Popular Page, these users have now collectively shared over 150 million snapshots.
You can catch DP’s Instagram action by following @digiphotomag. (And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook as well!)
Hands-on with JOBY Frame X Frame
Text, Images and Video by Allison Gibson
The recently introduced JOBY Frame X Frame camera app for iPhone is a fun and easy tool for capturing stop motion video—and it’s free, to boot. JOBY calls the capture process “one button,” which is true if you go with the default options, but there are a few additional steps in the menu before shooting if you’d like to customize your animation. Still, the app is very intuitive and produces great results. The app also offers geotagging (by automatically attaching exif data to your pictures), and allows you to instantly share your creations on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.
How it Works
600 shots/1 second/10 fps
Frame X Frame stitches together captured frames to create the illusion of movement in a stop motion video. The app allows you to choose different interval times (from one second all the way to one day), number of shots (1 – 2,000) and frames per second (20 – .5) in order to customize your video. It also automatically tells you how long the resultant video will end up being when it’s complete. You can also choose between continuous or manual shutter, but as you might imagine, the continuous option offers consistent results with a lot less work.
In Use
600 shots/1 second/10 fps
The two issues that you need to consider before you capture your stop motion video are: time and camera shake. In regards to time, I am referring to the fact that in order to capture a decent length video you need to have several spare minutes to wait while the timed shots are taken. In the JOBY Frame X Frame promo video, they recommend reading, dancing and finger-tapping as helpful ways to pass time.
Even the most steady-handed among us will likely incur a little camera shake when shooting hand-held, especially given that you will need to hold the camera steady for a good chunk of time to get the most of the effect. To combat camera shake, JOBY recommends using a GorillaPod—which is not very surprising considering that they manufacture the product, but it is in fact a useful tool. With that said, all of the test videos that I made were shot during impromptu moments—walking at the beach, riding on a boat out on the lake, or hanging out in Downtown LA—and as much as JOBY would probably prefer that I keep my GorillaPod on my person at all times, I do not. So, all of my videos were shot hand-held. In some cases the camera shake is pretty obvious and in others not so much. The biggest disadvantage of shooting hand-held was that I was unable to capture longer videos because, frankly, I became uncomfortable and impatient. These issues cannot be blamed on the app, however.
The app offers a one-touch Anti-Shake option, which is what accounted for the relative stillness of my sample videos, but you’re better off using a tripod of some kind to get a steady, long shot.
Reminder: don't ruin your eyes and cameras looking directly at/shooting the solar eclipse! Here's how to look safely: http://t.co/fLCzSVUM'all'2012/05/20
