Monday, June 29, 2009

Panorama Using the iPhone’s Camera

I am sitting in a chair in my living room looking over some of the photography programs at the App Store for the iPhone, when I come across an application (app) called Pano from Debacle Software ($2.99), so I download it. Within minutes it is installed on my iPhone and I am ready to go. Remember, this is my first panorama, created with Pano and the iPhone, and it is all done without leaving my chair. My iPhone is the 3G, not the very latest one (3GS).

During this photo shoot, I was sitting about 10 feet from the wall. The wall is about 40 feet long. I am using no tripods, and no special lighting. I simply take 5 exposures, using the clever overlay process the Pano app provides. When I am done, the 5 images are stitched together for me and saved in my photos on the iPhone. The final resolution of the completed panorama is 2200 x 788 pixels.

I must admit, I was so anxious to see how this looked on the “big screen”; I transferred the panorama to my desktop computer to view it in Picasa at full resolution, before posting it here. While in Picasa, I did apply a bit of “fill light” to make it look a little brighter, but I could have done all that with another app or two from the iPhone.

Well, it isn’t perfect but I am impressed! Look for more panoramas using the iPhone to be posted here.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Sunset at Fort Desoto Park Beach


Fort Desoto Park Beach

These photos were taken at one of the nicest beaches in the US, Fort Desoto Park, located near Saint Petersburg, FL. The temperature was usually around 98 degrees, but when the gulf breeze came up, at the end of the day, it began to feel more like a breathable 90 degrees.




Monday, June 8, 2009

Creature Feature


I was looking down into the lake last Friday and noticed this strange looking creature. At first I thought it was an alligator, and then maybe a large fish, but neither seemed to fit the animal that I was looking at. It was at least three feet long, and maybe close to four. I was standing about 30 feet above the water and took the picture through a lanai screen. I was using a 12x zoom and a polarizer on the lens.
This must be how those Loch Ness stories start. Anybody know what this is?

Monday, June 1, 2009

When to Use the iPhone Camera and When Not

I was at the beach the other day, and I decided to use my iPhone camera. The temperature was over 90 degrees, there was no one on the beach, and it was very bright. I spotted a group of trees and thought I would try to capture the hot, bright barrenness. So I clicked an iPhone image and sent it to Twitter and Facebook. Now, you may know that it is nearly impossible to view a bright image on an LCD screen in the direct sun, it looked a bit dark, but I sent it into hyperspace anyway. Patricia had her Panasonic camera with her a she took a picture of the same scene.

When I finally got to see the image on a computer screen out of the direct sunlight, I can only believe that politeness alone prevented anyone from commenting on how horrible the picture was. It was so dark I hardly recognized the beach. Whereas the image made with the Panasonic camera looked correctly exposed. I have to believe that when the iPhone camera sees an overexposed scene, it does everything it can to compensate, and in this case it did everything, and overcompensated. The sky was bright, the sand was bright, and the water was bright, so the image ended up being murky dark.

So when is the iPhone camera a good choice and when is it not? Well, if you are not in a hurry don’t use it. Use your other camera! However, if you need features like the ability to post on the Internet immediately, you have no choice, and the iPhone camera will have to do. But, don’t be like me – try to resist posting everything, be selective, and pass on the image if it is below your typical standards. See if you can figure out which photo was taken with the iPhone and which with the Panasonic.

By the way on the was to the beach we traveled through a cloud of what is known locally as “lovebugs”. Fifteen minutes of travel on route 41 and there were over 200 sacrificed “lovebugs”. I estimated about 100 splats on the windshield but the amorous lovebugs are usually found flying in pairs. It might have been more interesting tweeting a picture of that mess, but I was focused on finding a car wash and cursing myself for even venturing forth in the car.

We are preparing for another photo trip (see the proposed routes at the very bottom of these blogs) and will keep experimenting with sharing photographs through a collections of tweets, blogs and Facebook, and of course I probably continue to use the iPhone camera.