The iPhone Lens Dial

Over the years there have been a lot of photography related accessories for the iPhone. Everything from stands, tripod-like gadgets, and even lens mounts. Some are a bit too ridiculous and some are pretty cool.

Here's another one I just came across at Photojojo. The iPhone Lens Dial. It's a gimmick, but it could be fun to play with. Here's how they describe it:

The iPhone Lens Dial boasts three optical-quality coated glass lenses: Wide Angle, Fisheye, and Telephoto. All wrapped up in a slim aircraft-grade aluminum jacket equipped with two tripod mounts (for portrait or landscape shots).

I'd like to see this as a built in feature of the iPhone. Imagine a small rotating dial on the iPhone that allowed you to choose between 3 lenses with different focal lengths. It'd be great to have a wide angle, a normal, and a telephoto lens built in.

Two photos edited with Pixlr-o-matic on the iPad

A while ago I downloaded a free iOS app called Pixlr-o-matic by Autodesk Inc. It's a hybrid iPhone/iPad app (they also have an Android version and Mac and Windows desktop versions). I'm not sure why, but I only had it installed in my iPad and I hadn't used it until yesterday. It's a fun app, extremely easy to use and I like the design. The icon, not so much.

Anyway, I just synced my iPad and have these shots edited with Pixlr-o-matic that I think turned out well, so I thought I'd post.

Both photographs are fairly old. They were taken with a Nikon DSLR and edited in Aperture. I just pulled them in from my photos library on the iPad and into Pixlr-o-matic, so they probably don't represent exactly what the app can do with photos taken directly with the iPhone or iPad. I may have posted the originals before. Can't remember though.

I'm really enjoying the app though. I'll keep playing with it for the next few days and will probably write a review soon.

Instagram update brings hi resolution photographs

Last week Instagram released a major update to their photo sharing iPhone app. I tried Instagram last year when it came out and really liked it, but the photographs it produced were so small (612x612 px) that I decided not to use it and deleted it off my iPhone. The latest update brings hi-res photographs (1936x1936 px in iPhone 4) so I'm giving it a go again.

iOS App: Test Yourself for Aperture 3

Pearson Education just released an iOS app that helps you study for the official Aperture 3 certification test. The app is designed for both iPhone and iPad and is called Test Yourself for Aperture 3.

The iTunes App Store description says:

Whether you are preparing for the Aperture 3 Level One Exam or brushing up on your knowledge of Apple’s groundbreaking photo editing and management software, the new Test Yourself for Aperture 3 iPhone/iPad app from Peachpit can help you prepare with confidence.

The app is based on the official Apple Training and Certification program. If you're interested in learning Aperture 3 it might be worth a look, even if you're not going after the certification.

It's only $1.99 and has good reviews, so worth a try I think.

The iPhone camera gets even better

I'm a bit of a geek and a bit of an Apple fan, so I was exited about the announcement earlier today. And if you've been following my site you'll know that I really like taking photographs with my iPhone. So, I'm really happy about all that Apple has coming, but what's really cool (and relevant to this site) is the new improvements to the iPhone camera app.

The grid lines and other composition things are nice, but what's really great is the "quick access" features they added.

With iOS 5 we'll be able to get to the camera straight from the Lock screen. This is a huge time saver, which is important when you want to catch a moment happening right in front of you. Currently, we have to swipe to unlock, find the Camera app, and tap it. Three steps. If I understand this new feature correctly, now all we'll need to do is tap the camera icon. One step.

The other very cool feature is using the volume-up button as the shutter. This feel way more natural and will make the iPhone feel more like a true compact camera than a phone with a camera.

Backlog of Project365 photos updated

I was in Mexico for a few weeks in December and had my iPhone in Airplane Mode most of the time because I didn't want to come back to a huge phone bill. That meant I couldn't upload the photo-a-day straight away, so I ended up with a bunch of them that hadn't made it into my Project365 blog.

I finally took the time today to upload them. Here are a few. To see all of them go to the Posterous Project365 blog or to my Flickr set.

Project 365 complete!

I did it.

Admittedly, I did cheat. But just a bit. It took me a bit over 365 days as there were a few I missed (I think around 8 days), but still. It feels great.

Over a year ago I decided to give this a-photo-a-day thing a shot. I was taking a lot of photographs with my iPhone and was loving the simplicity of it all. The apps are amazing. Well, some of them at least. I even reviewed a few back then, did a 3G vs 3Gs camera comparison, and created a new gallery specifically for photos created with the iPhone here on my site.

When I started the project, I wanted to give myself a few limitations to keep me focused. For this year's Project365, all photos had to be:

• taken with the iPhone
  
• edited in the iPhone using a variety of apps
  
• all in black & white
  
• uploaded directly from the iphone
  

To keep it simple, I created a new blog in Posterous for the project. The cool thing about this is that I could just email the photos to my Posterous blog straight from the iPhone and they'd automatically end up everywhere:

• In the project's blog
  
• In Facebook
  
• In Flickr
  
• In Twitter
  

So what do I think now that I've finished?

It's been a great experience. It's really cool having a visual record for every single day of your life for a full year. Some photos turned out really good. A lot are really lame taken while I was rushing from one meeting to the next, or at the end of the day with crappy light. One is just a black square! I took that one when I was already in bed. I remembered I hadn't taken the daily photo so I just grabbed the iPhone, chose the built-in Camera app, and took a photo. It was pitch dark. But it still counts.

All of the photographs are in the video above in the order they were taken. It's really a slideshow created in Aperture and exported as a movie file.

After I exported, I realised it needed music so I added (with permission) a track from Coto Normal called Negative. I recently discovered them and I'm a fan. Their music is amazing. A huge thank you to Coto Normal, the music made the video great.

You can find more about Coto Normal here:

• Coto Normal in YouTube (and listen to some tracks)
  
• Coto Normal in MySpace
• Coto Normal in iTunes (buys some tracks, you'll enjoy them)

Espresso coffee with iPhone

This is just a test post, so please bear with me. I'm doing some minor changes to my blog and I just want to see if I haven't broken anything. I may delete this later but I didn't want to just publish a random post with nothing in it. Or something that didn't make sense

So, the above is a photograph of a very nice espresso I had a while ago taken with my iPhone.

Project 365 - Day 1

Today I decided to start a Project 365. I started a new blog using Posterous where I'll be posting a daily photograph taken and edited in my iPhone. I don't know exactly why I decided to do it, as nothing really happened to make me think about it or anything. I wanted to check out Posterous and for some reason thought this would be a good idea for it. I set it up to automatically post to my Flickr photostream and my Twitter account.

I've read about this type of project from other sites in the past. I think the first was Photojojo a long time ago, it sounded interesting and I actually toyed with the idea of it for a while, but nothing really came of it. At the time I had a Sony Ericsson phone and it just wasn't as much fun as a camera. Now I love my iPhone and I'm a bit obsessed with using it for photography and have been posting my iPhone photographs regularly, so it's time to just go for it. Inspiration also came from Chase Jarvis, a commercial photographer that has a really interesting and inspirational blog and is an avid iPhone-photographer.

The photo above is day 1. Today. I was at work and just grabbed this magnetic thing and shot it quickly to get something up. Not really good, but if I'm posting a photo a day for a year it's pretty much a given that some will be crap, which is actually kind of liberating.

My Project 365 blog is here. We'll see where this goes.

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