The newest version of Camera+ offers some powerful tools to take great shots with your iPhone. I’ve seen some breathtaking shots from budding iPhoneographers through our weekly photo contests.
In this video tutorial, I demo some creative ways you can use our new Camera features, Touch Focus and Touch Exposure, to take your iPhone photos to a whole new level. I can’t wait to see your photos!
Link me to any of your great shots on this post!
When I was in SF for WWDC in June, I made the trek up to the TWiT Cottage in Petaluma to film an episode of MacBreak Weekly entitled “Harry Potter”. I always find the cottage such a cool place, so I thought I’d make a brief behind-the-scenes tour to share with you.
Special appearances by Leo Laporte, Andy Ihnatko, a camera shy Don McAllister, Alex Lindsay, Sarah Lane, Tom Merrit, super-edit Tony.
Thanks to Andy Inhatko for jumping in as camera man. :)
Since it’s summertime, I thought I’d do a video tutorial this week on how to take great beach photos with your iPhone since dSLRs don’t seem to like sand and water too much :(
The second contest’s theme is beach photos. Any images taken on or near a beach will be considered for the contest. Photos must be taken with the iPhone using the Camera+ app.
Here are the contest details:
1. Follow me, @mostlylisa on Twitter.
2. Share your photos on Twitter using the Camera+ Share button and include the hashtag #MLPhotoContest in your tweet so we can find you.
3. The contest ends July 15th, 2010 at midnight EDT.
There is no restriction to the number of entries, so feel free to enter as many times as you like! I will announce the winner on Friday, July 16th, 2010.
This week’s winner will receive a $100 iTunes Gift Certificate.
Congratulations to last week’s winner Kalle Oksa for his awesome Kullaberg landscape shot.
This blog redesign was painfully long over due. No more giant Lisa header. Yay!! Thank you so much to my tap tap tap colleagues for whipping this up in a few days.
Designed by the incomparable Wolfgang Bartelme, who did all the amazing design work for Camera, both in-app and all the promo pages. He obviously used my love of bokeh as a theme and I couldn’t be more happy with this design.
WP Theme, coding and moral support by Scott Meinzer, who gave up hours of sleep and trips to the Cheescake factory to finish my blog.
I feel really inspired to start filling this blog with more photos, video and a lot more love than I’ve given it in the past few months. Hope you like it as much as I do!
My video tutorial this week focuses on how to take great landscape photos with your iPhone. I will be running another Mostly Lisa Photo of the Week contest to encourage you to share your best Camera+ photo and win great prizes.
Kitsilano Beach. FX: Redscale.
1. Shoot during Sunrise or Sunset
The quality of light is one of the most important things in great scenery shots. Ideally, you want to shoot landscapes either at sunrise or sunset when the light is the most even and the colours are the most brilliant. Try to avoid shooting in harsh, high-contrast light around mid-day.
The first step to taking great photos is getting outside and taking a lot photos. I know it’s scary to step away from your Apple control station and out into the cruel world, but I know you can do it. We can do it together.
1. Capture the Big Picture
When you arrive at a location try to take a picture that captures the entire scene. Take a step back and try to compose your shot so that you get all the action in one shot.
Empire State, FX: Hipster + Vintage border.
I’m just about to fall asleep for the first time in 41 hours. The launch of Camera+, the iPhone photo App I’ve been working on with Taptaptap, coupled with iPhone 4 buzz, the AT&T fail, and general WWDC pandemonium.
I just wanted to let everyone, especially budding photographers, about this ridiculous promotion we are doing for Camera+ to win my dream camera rig (valued at over $10,000).
Read the rest of this entry »
Best iPhone Camera App Ever and my first App ; )
Camera+, the App that I’ve been working on for over a year, is now available in the App Store.
Woooo! *does a happy dance*
If you’ve been following my Twitter, Tumblr or Flickr stream, you’ve probably noticed a lot of iPhone shots pop up recently from my trips to New York and San Francisco. Now I can finally share the amazing app that created all those cool FXs!
A little good, before I present all the bad…
I’m doing a bit of digital spring cleaning today, starting with my library of photos in Lightroom. During my cleaning, I noticed all the crummy photos I’ve taken over the last few years. After feeling mildly embarrassed, I realized how much I’ve actually learned about photography, simply from taking bad photos.
So, I’m going to do something that I’ve never done, share some of my worst photos (eek) and the lessons I learned from them.
1. Learn to focus your camera manually.
Both focus and composition were not my friend in this picture.
Focusing is one of the most basic photography skills, yet it seems to be the most difficult to master. When I started I relied completely on Auto Focus, which rarely, if ever, worked in low light and back lit situations.
Because of this dependance I spent most of my time during shoots waiting for my camera to grab focus, then actually taking shots. Since I’ve been shooting a lot more video with the 5DMKII, I’ve had to master manual focus. Now, I find my eye is a lot more reliable than auto focus.
2. Learn to expose your pictures correctly.
Ouch, this photo is blinding me!
Nothing you do in post will save an overexposed picture. You cannot recover information that isn’t there to start with, so turn on your histogram and watch out for “blinkies”. Highlight warning flashes on your histogram let you know which parts of your photo are overexposed.
This is particularly useful when you are outside on a sunny day and can’t see your camera’s LCD screen very well. Look in your camera manual for Highlight warning and it should tell you how to set this feature up on your camera.
3. Don’t crop off body parts.
I haz no fingurz!
This would be a good photo except for her missing fingers and elbow… Doh! In going through my old shots, I noticed many shots where I cropped out a lovely model’s foot, chin, arm, or leg. Even your most creative editing job will not save a photo of model with a missing chin.
Lisa Bettany is a photographer and iPhone App Developer (co-creator of Camera+). She enjoys zombie flicks, British tea, R2D2 & her 5DMKII.
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Whether you’re a seasoned photographer or someone who’s barely touched a camera, Camera+ will make you love taking photos.
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