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).
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Celebrating my first iPhone… a year and a half after my American neighbours.
I’m going to be a total party-pooper and say, “nay” on purchasing the new Apple iPad. “Ohh, but it’s so shiny and new. You know you’ll want one when you see it,” say the fanboys. True, it is shiny and new, but I still don’t want one.
That doesn’t mean that I won’t sweat and quiver a little when I hold an iPad in my hot little hands, but the moment will be fleeting and easily replaced when I grasp the 16-35mm f/2.8 I have my eye on.
Besides feeling mentally bloated with the sheer number of iPad related articles in my RSS reader, chatter on Twitter & Facebook, and unboxing and app preview videos on YouTube, I actually feel quite underwhelmed by the product. Here are the reasons why I’m not buying an iPad:
1. The iPad is not available in Canada yet.
Canadians and International customers are snubbed again. It’s like the iPhone all over again. All the Americans grinning with their new fancy toy, saying, “Haha. Want one of these? Hey? Want one? Well, you can’t have it. So ha!” What’s the deal? I live 1 1/2 hours from the US border. Couldn’t just pop a few in an air canon and send some our way?
2. I already own an iPhone.
I love my iPhone. It’s light and small and fits in my back pocket. It has 3G so I can use it outside of my house when I actually need to be connected to the internet and google maps, as I have the tendency to wander. It has a plethora of cool apps and I can even take pictures with it!
3. Any gadget without a camera is useless to me.
It should be a rule that every gadget has a camera. If I could take pictures with my toaster I would. Think about it. Toaster cam. Actually, add a video camera to that and live stream it on YouTube. Done.
4. I own a laptop.
I get it. Laptops are heavy to truck around. Even the Air can weigh you down after a while. But, laptops can actually do useful things like run Photoshop and Final Cut and they have actually have real keyboards that are attached to them! And honestly, who would ever go on a trip without their laptop?
I am an extreme multi-tasker. When I am on a long plane ride, I don’t watch movies or play solitaire, I edit photos or videos. If all I could do was look at pictures and videos and flick them around, I would become so frustrated.
5. I don’t have $500-$800 kicking around in my back pocket.
As a photographer I have a long list of “Things I need” that should and will go before buying something as frivalous as an iPad. Sure it’s cool, but I’m going to be honest with myself and my financial situation and groceries unfortunately have to come before gadgets.
It’s not that I don’t think it’s cool, it is just a completely impractical product for me. Honestly, I just don’t think I’m the right demographic for the iPad. For me, functionality and simplicity trumps any shiny, new fun thing.
What about you? Are you gonna buy the iPad or save your money and buy a sweet new lens?
A lot of people are asking me what I am using to record my most recent videos covering the Olympics, so I thought I’d share my set-up with you.
It’s nothing super fancy, except for the 5DMKII :) For lenses I’ve been primarily using the 35mm because it’s the widest lens I’ve got. Plus, my 50mm f/1.4 had a small accident and is currently in the Canon’s hospital for sick camera lenses. I rented the 16-35mm f/2.8 this weekend and absolutely fell in love with it shooting the crowd scenes in the Ignite your Dream video.
I’ve experimented with longer lenses, my 85mm f/1.8 used in the stadium during the victory ceremony video and the 70-200mm IS f/2.8, but found it impossible to keep steady while shooting hand-held and possibly clapping or screaming which seems to be a requirement during the games. Also, tripods and huge swarms of people don’t seem to mix well. I tried it once during the games and nearly punctured someone’s liver.
I’m using the RØDE VideoMic (Directional Video Condenser Microphone) for sound which has worked out alright. It’s obviously not ideal to shoot in noisy crowds like this video I shot in a crowd of enthusiastic hockey fans. But it’s a great, low priced mic that I’ve used in many video projects. You can tell the difference in using the VidMic compared to the on-camera mic at the end of this video.
For extra lighting in night scenes or in door shooting, I’m using a Litepanels Micro LED light. This small LED light panel runs on 4 AA batteries and has an integrated dimmer dial that allows you to control your lighting output. You can also put coloured gels in the flip-down filter holder to correct any white balancing issues.
The mic and the litepanel are connected to my camera’s hotshoe using the Cool-Lux MD300 light and sound bracket.
This is my first time shooting with the 5DMKII and it has absolutely blown my mind how crisp and vibrant the footage looks even at ISO6400. Well, that is when it’s in focus! It is definitely a challenge to grab focus in night time shoots, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it.
Any questions or comments?
The BlackRapid RS-5 is by far the best dSLR camera strap I have ever seen. Barry Anderson of Mogo media and 5DMKII shooter introduced the RS-5 to me when I was DC for the Photoshop Live event. At the time, I was lugging around my beast of a camera all morning and had the worst neck spasm from shooting video footage of the White House (yet to be edited :S).
The BlackRapid RS-5 is not only comfortable, but it redistributes the weight of your camera so that you feel no stress on your neck. The locking fastener screws directly in to your tripod socket and allows you to quickly grab and swivel your camera. It makes you feel like a photo ninja. Hiyah!
Another great feature is the handy pocket in the strap which fits your iPhone, iPod or a Flip. There is also a zippered pocket where you can store extra batterys, memory cards, biz cards, and very small snacks!
Mine just arrived today! Photowalk anyone?
Sublime Sunset on Kits Beach captured with an iPhone.
So many people whine about the iPhone’s camera quality and say that it can’t take good pictures. It’s my strong belief that you can take great shots with any camera, even a 2 MP iPhone camera. It’s definitely a greater challenge to get a good exposure on an iPhone vs a 5D MkII, but it’s not impossible.
If you are up for the challenge, here are 5 apps that will help you take smashing iPhone pictures:
Fast Tap Camera snapped my awesome new scooter trick. :P
Shaky hands = shaky picture. Unless you are going for some motion blur, or light painting, then you probably want a sharp picture. The problem is the camera button is so fracking small and awkwardly placed, especially if you are taking a photo from any other angle other than straight in front of you. That’s why you need Fast Tap Camera. Press anywhere on the screen and snap! Excellent for narcissistic twitpics of yourself. :P
Easter eggs in a supermarket never looked so good.
The exposure is locked on the iPhone, which means that you can’t change it. There is a way to mess with the exposure by focusing the camera on a dark spot and quickly shifting it into the light, and snapping the shot almost simultaneously. This technique requires serious ninja skills. If you aren’t quite at a black belt level with your iPhone camera like Chase Jarvis, you may need a little post-production help.
Photogene allows you to adjust levels, exposure, colours, saturation, among other things (cropping, adding text, speech bubbles, etc.. I use this app more than any other. It’s well worth the $2.99.
NightCamera gives Buena Vista Park, SF a little boost.
You shouldn’t really have high expectations for iPhone shots taken in a dark restaurant. They are always going to look noisy and fairly crappy, but using NightCamera makes them slightly less crappy. Yeah! My suggestion is that you try using NightCamera any situation where the light is low, like the forest in the above picture.
Either way, NightCamera has a neat accelerometer assisted camera mode where the shutter fires when the phone is steady, and a timer mode. You can also prop up your iPhone on a table top or against a wall to keep it steady. If you are really gung-ho, Joby makes a gorilla pod for mobile devices called the Go-Go.
I used the Center Spot filter to fake the LensBaby effect around my mum and I.
Add an optical filter of pizzaz to your shots by applying one of the 26 filters in Tiffen’s Photo fx. This is one of my favourite apps for making photos pop. Add a colour gradient to make sunsets more punchy, a polarizer to make skies richer, vignette to make faces stand out. You can even layer a bunch of filers on top of each other for a super cool effect.
This boat house looks extra derelict with Camera Bag’s Helga preset.
CameraBag is the easiest photo apps to use, and one of the coolest. Choose your photo and scroll through the 8 presets. I like the Helga (faux Holga) & Lolo (faux Lomo) settings the best. I find that the Fisheye setting never really comes out and the Infrared setting is just plain weird, but experiment with your own shots. You never know what you’ll come up with.
Photos don’t have to be perfect to capture a memorable place, scene, or moment, but they do need to be taken. So shoot with whatever you’ve got and make it spectacular!
So word on the internets is that Steve is planing on releasing a new iPod today. Seriously? When is he gonna slow down a tick? Can’t we just chill with the iStuff we have? I have a 80Gb Classic and it’s ace. Before that I was chilling with a mini for almost 2 years.
And honestly, I haven’t even got used to having an iPhone. I feel powerful knowing I can whip out my iPhone and completely disengage from any conversation, no matter how important it is. I gotta have more cowbell! Tink tink tink. :-D
Apple hype and over consumption is like a thorn in my side these days. I recently watched “Manufactured Landscapes”, a startling documentary following Canadian photographer, Edward Burtynsky, as he documents both the destruction and creation of humanity. The sheer magnitude of e-waste ie., computers, tvs, cables, phones, dvd players, iPods is literally astonishing.
50% of our recycled computer waste ends up in China where workers heat up the circuit boards and hand strip the components of all the precious metals which are mostly toxic. As you might imagine, this isn’t so good for the people living in these e-waste dumps or the earth “in general”.
The point is: I love new gadgets with a firey passion, but I think the world could live without another new iPod. WALL•E FTW!
Since I wrote this post and my blog was down for a while, thanks WPCandy :/, Apple did in fact release some new shiny iPods.
I have to admit, that ditching the small & stumpy nanos for a rainbow of slim & sexy design is way cool. As for the new Touch… having the iPhone makes it obsolete, so.. yeah. What do you think? Are you gonna buy a new iPod? & most importantly:
You must know by now, that I am a wee bit of an Apple fan girl. Obviously. It’s tough to question my loyalty to Apple. Well except the fact that I still have that late 90s Compac desktop sitting in my living room. I just can’t get rid of him, he’s like my personal WALL•E.
Nevertheless, my loyalty for Apple is unquestioned. I may not be die hard enough to say, camp out for days in front of an Apple store to pick up the first released iProduct, but I’ll properly follow the guys that are and feel a quiet self-reflective disappointment that I’m too lazy or apathetic to camp out for days in front of an Apple store. I try to make up for this by posting zany Mac-related videos.
With that being said, I’m going to say something controversial… mostly so be forewarned:
I wish Apple would fix the problems with their current iProducts BEFORE hyping, advertising, then releasing the next gen iProducts.
Especially with computers. Sure Steve, go nuts with the iPods, but your loyal, creative, freelancers and students really need consistent, bug-free machines to work all the time in order to pay rent and hand in artsy school stuff.
I don’t know about how your Macs are running, but mine are far from smooth sailing. Don’t get me started about Leopard. The worst appears to be over, but OSX continues to reek havoc on audio firewire interfaces. It’s not that Mac aren’t lovely and oh so aesthetically perfect I make cooing noises when I stroke the brushed metal, but experiencing regular kernel panics, the spinning pinwheel of death, force quitting, overheating, fan noise, and major battery fail are not memories that are adding to my love of Mr. J’s Empire of hype.
Speaking of hype, ahem, the 3G iPhone, which was just released last week, receiving such massive hype that no one actually ended up getting one. Huh? I don’t get it. Me neither. What is the world coming to when iJustine can’t get a freaking iPhone?!? And already the Apple rumour mills are churning with the pulpy goodness of new sleek and sexy MacBook Touch.
Now as someone who recently got a MacBook Air, is still paying off a Mac Pro, and is still emotionally attached to last year’s MacBook, when I hear about a next generation release or major upgrade to a better, faster, more awesome and streamlined machine than the one I just bought last week, I don’t feel anything related to happy. In fact I feel a little ill, then hysterical, then I get on the line with Apple, and then I wait, and wait, and crrrrrrrrry when my call gets disconnected.
Too much Apple. Too often. Too much exposure and hype and advertising and mainstream blah! Remember when Macs were so underground that you had to fight tooth and nail to get even an once of respect? Like that time you were thrown out of computer camp for refusing to use a PC. Oh you weren’t thrown out of computer camp? That was just me? Ok fine, but It was important for me, at the age of 12, to really lay down the law. Oh and remember when you were the only one with sweet graphics in your 4th grade essay on tornados cuz you had Paint? Yeah, those were the days. Now, anyone from Beyonce to (puke) Spencer from the Hills (don’t ask me how I know that) can use and abuse a MacBook Pro. But, it’s all good right? More money for Apple, more live John Mayer keynote performances, better products for us… Yes? Or more like a n-n-n-No!
What do you think? Has Apple’s mainstream hype and lack of product accessibility (ahem… iPhone) got you feelin’ less than perky? Or are you jacked into your feed reader jumping with glee when your Apple RSS gets all kinds of new, sweet iProducts & Software?
(On top of Moscone Centre, San Francisco)
This was my first Holga lomo picture to actually come out. I took it the day after the madness that was WWDC 2008. My first roll, I accidentally exposed to light while taking it out of the camera. My second roll, I shot mostly at night in San Francisco (which looked so so cool) but I forgot to set the camera to “bulb” and all the shots were underexposed. Gah!
Film is intense. After having the immediacy of digital shots, waiting for film developing drives me bananas, but you can’t deny the coolness of the medium format. The graininess, the subtle vignetting, the saturation of colour, the sweet 70s feel it gives photos. I’m really excited about exploring the lomo now!
Check out lomography.com or the flickr Lomo group for inspiration. And if you are experimenting with lomography link me up to your flickr photos.
I love my digital SLR, and I don’t see myself ever using film as my main format, but there is something almost too perfect and unnatural about digital images, especially those that have been photoshopped. You lose all the unexpected surprises in the process of using film cameras that can produce seriously beautiful shots. After seeing my lomo shots, I realize that it is still important for photographers to experiment with film and develop a style that is independent of digital automation.
What do you think? Is there still a place for film in today’s digital photography age?
I was the special guest on an uber cerebral podcast last night called the Friday Night Party Line. I promise that I most definitely said something to embarrass myself. We talked about Esperanto, kids, video editing, environmental issues, polar bears, GPS, and what we would spend $5000 if we had to spend it.
What I would spend $5000 on if I was in some alternate universe where money grew on trees and responsibilities floated away on hot air balloons and the world wasn’t in peril (so I’m excluding things like rent, food, bills, saving the environment & polar bears et al.):
Ok I went a bit over. Spending fake money is super easy.
Good lenses are ridiculously expenses, so for most of us, owning a bunch of good glass is just not financially feasible. I own one good lens for my Canon Xti/400D. The 50mm f/1.4. Such a beautiful lens, but limiting. I also have a crappy kit lens 18-55mm f/cr.ap, but i refuse to use it now, because I know the results will be sub-par.
The other option is to rent lenses, which is actually a lot more affordable than you think. Plus, you get to take the lens for a test spin, keep the photos, and not have to sell stolen girl guides cookies out of your garage. Come to think of it, that’s not such a bad idea… No not a good idea… A very bad idea…
You can rent pretty much any lens, even the elite L-series, for approx. $30 a day. And with most camera rental places, if you rent a lens on a Friday, you can keep it for the weekend. If you live in Vancouver check out Beau Photo or Leo’s Cameras.
So I wanted to ask all the photogs out there:
What is your favourite lens?
What awesome lenses do you think I should try?
PS. Thanks to my twitter peeps, I had a nice list going on twitter, but then the tweety bird freaked out again. So I’d like to compile a list on my blog, because I’m fairly certain WP won’t try to lift a giant whale with tiny songbirds.
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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