lo-fi, hi-style » review http://lofihistyle.com Storytelling in a Digital World Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:04:32 +0000 en hourly 1 Two Excellent iPhone Apps for Photographers: CameraBag & Panohttp://lofihistyle.com/2009/02/two-excellent-iphone-apps-for/ http://lofihistyle.com/2009/02/two-excellent-iphone-apps-for/#comments Tue, 17 Feb 2009 03:49:00 +0000 Kirk Mastin http://lofihistyle.com/?p=481 I don’t openly shill for any kind of product. Never have, never will.

On the other hand I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t share two iPhone camera apps that dramatically improve your iPhone photo quality, (especially when you want to upload photos directly to a blog or Flickr account.)

Both of these apps would have been useful in India, where my girlfriend brought her iPhone while I brought my big ole’ Canon 5D.


CameraBag

CameraBag is a fairly inexpensive iPhone app that allows you to apply custom filters over your iPhone photos. You can either do this at the time of capture, or afterward by picking photos from your photo roll.

There are a limited number of filters available, each of which mimic a unique film style. The only filter that really sucks is the Infrared filter which is completely useless. That being said, the other filters, most notably the Helga filter (which supposedly mimics a Holga) is really nice.

iPhone Photo Experiments
Kirk + Robin. Seattle, WA. 2008.

You can save and reopen photos, adding additional filters each time to tweak your photo even more. All in all an idiot-proof way to tone photos without a computer.

iPhone Photo Experiments
’1962′ Black and White Filter.

iPhone Photo Experiments
’1974′ Vintage Film Filter.

Normally I would NEVER tone a photo in my iPhone, preferring the robust options available in Lightroom or Photoshop.

CameraBag is the first iPhone app to make me reconsider this rule.

Pano

Pano is an iPhone app that allows you to create very wide and very detailed panoramic photos with your iPhone.

Pano is easy to use and works very very well.

Just take a photo, and Pano will provide a semi-transparent guide from that photo that you align with the next photo and so on. Once you have shot up to six photos, Pano will adjust exposure for each photo and stitch the multiple images into one giant panoramic photo.

It is really incredible how well Pano does this considering the relatively small amount of processing power and RAM available on the iPhone.

Pano works much better than some of my manual attempts at stitching photos together on a much more powerful MacPro Tower using Photoshop.

If you shoot each photo using horizontal shots, you get an insanely wide final panoramic like this:

iPhone Photo Experiments

If you shoot each photo using vertical shots, you get a much higher resolution panoramic like this:

iPhone Photo Experiments

I’m hoping that savvy app developers will continue to expand the creative possibilities of the iPhone’s 2 megapixel camera.

iphone

(Tomorrow I am going to print an 11x14in from the above photo. I will report back on how that looks, but I will assume that it will look pretty damn good considering the camera.)

-Kirk

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]]> http://lofihistyle.com/2009/02/two-excellent-iphone-apps-for/feed/ 7 First and Last Pictures from a WWI AGFA Billy Record IIIhttp://lofihistyle.com/2007/10/first-and-last-pictures-from-wwi-agfa/ http://lofihistyle.com/2007/10/first-and-last-pictures-from-wwi-agfa/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:55:00 +0000 Kirk Mastin http://lofihistyle.com/?p=365
Guild Movie Theatre, Wallingford district, Seattle, WA.

Self portrait by blinds….even in perfect conditions on a tripod etc I could not get a sharp picture..

Random Rasta guy on 45th St. Shot at f22, I think at 1/500 sec. Still not sharp. UGH!

The camera in question. The Agfa Billy Record III

Some of the pics look sharp but they aren’t. Even when back or front focused, there is no part of the negative that is truly sharp. And the negative is like 20 times the size of a 35mm negative (or something like that.)

I’m starting a new project on bicycle culture in Seattle and I don’t necessarily want to lug a Toyo 4×5 around with me everywhere I go…even though that would be totally awesome. So I tried to use this antique 6×9 camera that has been on my shelf for ages.

I turns out it is almost impossible to use…to take a picture you have to use a tiny uncoupled range-finder window to find distance to subject, then adjust focus on the lens, set aperture and shutter speed, cock the shutter and make sure you aren’t double-exposing your negative.

All of this to get a picture that is not even very sharp at f22!!

So this camera is out of the running, obviously.

The ironic thing is that I owned a Mamiya 7 for a year or so and made beautiful pics with it. I sold it in part to finance a new Canon 5D. Now I have the urge to shoot film again….and well…maybe I’ll end with the Mamiya 7 I’m bidding on in Ebay. Or maybe I’ll win the Pentax 6×7, or maybe….just maybe….I’ll buy a Rolleiflex or Seagull TLR. Or if I win the lottery, a used Plaubel Makina 67.

I know Shawn is chuckling over this :)

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